By: Melanie Gilbert
LOWELL — The dozen toddlers in the Blue Room at Lowell Day Nursery didn’t even look up when U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan entered their classroom. They were focused on a morning painting project. But when she knelt down and cooed over their artistic skills, she had their undivided attention, with one ready to hand over his paintbrush for her use.
Trahan visited the school, located on Hall Street in the city’s Acre neighborhood, during a 3rd Congressional District tour on Wednesday. The nonprofit, early education child care center, which was founded in 1889, cares for and educates children from the ages of 15 months up to kindergarten.
She came at the invitation of the Service Employees International Union Local 888, a labor union that represents almost 8,000 municipal and education workers across the commonwealth, but which is also organizing in low-wage, historically so-called pink-collar occupations like child care. The union recently organized the Children’s Center, which serves the children of Boston University faculty, staff and graduate students.
Scott Larmand, a teacher at the LDN school for two decades, and its union president for the past six years, told Trahan how the silver lining in the COVID-19 pandemic was the increased state and federal funding that allowed the school to survive — and even thrive — in what, at baseline, is an economically challenging environment.
“There’s such a demand for preschool,” Larmand told Trahan during a roundtable discussion after her tour of the sprawling facility that is at capacity with 108 students. “But the industry is just suffering. Between 80 to 90% of our families are on vouchers, our hourly rate just broke the $20 mark and no one is going into the industry.”
Providing a livable wage to child care workers, along with affordable care for families who need it, is a nationwide issue, Trahan replied. She brought her lived experience to the discussion, noting that her grandmother from Brazil was a textile mill worker in Lowell, and described how her mom juggled minimum wage, part-time jobs in order to care for Trahan and her three sisters.
“You can’t afford child care and go to work,” Trahan said about a reality then that persists today. “In Massachusetts, it’s $20,000 per child on average to get child care.”
Access to affordable child care was an issue that was recognized 134 years ago when LDN was established to take care of the children of the city’s mill workers. Tuition cost 5 to 10 cents a day, said board member Pauline King.
“And it’s still taking care of a lot of folks in need who need day care,” she said.
Massachusetts received $500 million pandemic-era funding through the American Rescue Plan Act to buoy the state’s child care industry.
“The frontline workers who went to work every single day — health care, public safety, transit and grocery workers — they did not have the option of working remotely,” Trahan noted. “Thank goodness you all stayed open.”
With the end of the emergency relief, though, SEIU Local 888 is worried about the future of both the children in LDN’s care and the workforce caring for them.
“We need stronger financial stability for places like this to continue to thrive,” SEIU Political Director Anthony Landry said.
“A lot of the people whose children we serve here, they were the public servants and the hospital workers during the pandemic,” he said. “So their role was crucial during that time frame and we’d like to keep that energy and awareness going forward.”
Trahan told the group, which included SEIU Local 888 President Tom McKeever and Political Organizer John Peavy, that she shares those concerns.
“Health care workers aren’t back to work because they can’t even afford child care for their own kids,” Trahan said. “That’s a vicious cycle that degrades our economy. We have millions of women who left because of COVID, they’re not coming back at the same rates. We need to raise the wage of folks who are in this industry so that we can get people back to work at a faster rate.”
Peavy asked Trahan how the union could work to preserve the social safety net that was put in place during the pandemic that essentially provided a federally funded, universal model for child care.
Trahan, who is the daughter of a union iron worker, said the union message of raising worker wages and benefits resonates better with people who have seen the positive impact of supportive economic programs unleashed during COVID.
“These programs have literally bootstrapped our economy and families and gotten them over the poverty line,” Trahan said. “Federally, this is going to be a tough budget year, but the president has put his stake in the ground.”
She said President Biden’s budget has some continuation of funding beyond the public health emergency, but bipartisan support is needed to renew federal investment in programs that worked during COVID.
“How do we not lose ground coming out of COVID?” she asked. “These investments were lifesaving. We need to let folks know who is for what. The key is to focus on leveraging these investments so that people can have the support that they need to go back to work. That’s how you get your economy online. That has been a very salient and compelling union message — raising wages and giving people the (benefits) that they need.”
