Letter to Friends

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It was a struggle of will and perseverance to achieve a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for child care professionals and support staff unionized by District Council 1707/Local 205. We fully understood the goal and pushed the Administration to start the negotiations between DCCNY and District Council 1707/Local 205. All parties involved, i.e., the City’s Office of Labor Relations, the DCCNY and District Council 1707/Local 205 agreed on the objectives but not the funding amounts for three major areas: salaries, health insurance and pension benefits. Our advocacy on this issues encompassed organizing a major press conference in January 2016; participation in at least three others; issuing a policy paper entitled, Failing Our Children: Certified Teachers Disappearing from CBO Child Care; meetings with elected officials and testimony at public hearings, and interviews with the press on the ongoing status on negotiations.

After more than a year of meetings with city officials and the union beginning in March 2015, we agreed on a CBA that raised the salaries of unionized staff; set up a new health insurance program consisting of low co-payments and minimum deductibles; and funding of the pension contract. We did not secure salary parity for teachers in our system who have the same credentials as their counterparts in the Department of Education. It was a key objective for DCCNY and other advocacy groups. We will continue our work on achieving this goal for early childhood professionals.

Throughout the process, we were fortunate to have with us the dedicated members of the DCCNY Labor Management Team representing board members and executive directors from the membership. We extend a most sincere thank you for your presence and willingness to challenge the Administration on its duty to recognize this sector and make substantial changes. Do we have complete satisfaction? Not quite; but we have significant steps in a positive direction.

We invite you to join us now to keep our cause “front and center.” Until then, thank you for your support.

Sincerely yours,

Andrea Anthony, Executive Director

Lorenzo Newby, Board President