Child Care Workers Vote to Join the SEIU
By ARNIE ALPERT, Active with the Activists
HANOVER –The teaching staff at the Dartmouth College Child Care Center has voted to unionize and affiliate with Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, which already represents hundreds of campus workers.
The workers voted 21 to 1 in favor of the union, according to a representative of the National Labor Relations Board, which supervised the December 19 election.
The vote marked “a significant step towards protecting and enhancing the Dartmouth College Child Care Center as a valued family-first resource for the faculty and staff of Dartmouth College,” the union said in a news release Friday.
Local 560 already represents three groups of campus workers, the two largest of which negotiated new contracts earlier this year. The college has openly refused to bargain with the third, which is made up of undergraduate basketball players.
College librarians are in negotiations over their first contract, while the undergraduate Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth is negotiating its second, now including undergraduate advisers as well as food service workers. Last year the college’s graduate students won their first union contract after a 3-month strike.
According to the NLRB, the childcare center bargaining unit includes 26 teachers, lead teachers, and floaters.
“Dartmouth was wholly supportive of our teachers’ right to participate in a secret ballot election, and we acknowledge and respect the outcome of their vote,” said Jana Barnello, Dartmouth’s Director of Media Relations and Strategic Communications. “The next step will be for Dartmouth and the SEIU to begin collective bargaining in order to reach agreement on the teachers’ future terms and conditions of employment, which includes pay, hours, and other benefits.”
The union said its newest members “look forward to working collaboratively with Dartmouth College to ensure a supportive and successful environment for workers and families alike. The unionization is an opportunity to strengthen the center’s ability to provide exceptional care while supporting its workers in their professional development and well-being.”
The union added that improved wages and benefits will help with recruitment and retention of childcare center workers.
