When I lived in Vancouver I took a job in childcare working part time for $13.50 an hour. I had no experience with kids and was not educated in the childcare sector. A friend of mine in Whistler also worked in youth services for more than twenty dollars an hour, I may be wrong and it might have been closer to twenty six. On Monday I will begin a job in Toronto working for a corporate childcare program that partners with big companies to provide childcare to their employees. The pay starts at $10.50, I was bumped up a notch to $11.00 an hour because I have a University degree.
So I am a 24 year old graduate of a highly reputable Canadian University with a Bachelor of Human Kinetics, who has experience working in youth programs and even as an assistant youth coordinator. I am willing to work full time hours with children from 0-3 years of age. I will be spending eight hours a day, with an unpaid one hour lunch break and two unpaid 15 minutes breaks, feeding infants, putting children to sleep for naptime and supervising all of their activities. I will be cleaning their diapers, holding them when they cry for their mothers, bandaging their scrapes when they fall and teaching them their first words. Because lets be honest, when their parents are working 40 plus hours a week and spend most of the time at home sleeping or working, I am the primary caregiver. Not legally so, but I have a large influence on these children's lives that is arguably greater than the 6 or so hours their parents see them each day. So why am I paid $10.50, sorry $11 big ones an hour?
When I went on a tour of the facilities at this unmentionable company, I was a bit distraught by the lack of organization and the poor language, communication and supervizing skills of the employees. All of the employees I saw, (more than 15) were females, and were immigrants to Canada, clearly displayed by their poor grasp of the English language. The supervisor who was giving me a tour was constantly bombarded by silly questions from 40 year old female employees who were behaving like 15 year olds. "Can I go on my break, I wanna go on break now, Im bout to bust from this mornin' let me take a break please", "Where is the damn ice cream, I been told there some ice cream around here?" Granted it was Halloween so chaos was expected, but this was accepted chaos that the children, the employer and the parents seemed accustomed to.
Upon entering a few of the childcare rooms I was a bit worried for some of the children's wellbeing. There was a group of 14 toddlers in one room and only one supervisor who was holding two children and ignoring three little ones who were yelling and screaming about some knocked over train tracks. I wasn't yet a hired employee but I took it on myself to intervene, because money or no money, these kids need help.
That moment reminded me why I wanted to be a part of the childcare industry. Ultimately I would like to be a peadiatric nurse and also have an influence on the health of kids, but for now I just want to help them to learn what is right and wrong, how to be nice to eachother and how to behave, the things all kids are expected to be tauht by their parents. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the women employed at this company are there because they have no other options and since they have raised their own kids they can throw that down as their one and only work experience. But what if their kids didnt turn out alright, what if they smacked their kids till they were blue, what if their kids in jail for murder.... having kids is not enough. I was sitting in the office filling out forms when a woman in her late sixites wandered in. She asked if she could have a job in nervous, broken English. The supervisor, to my shock, said "yeah yeah we are always in need, did you bring a resume?"
"no, no I don't have a resume" the elderly woman replied
I wonder to myself who shows up to look for a job without a resume.
"No problem, I'll be with you in a minute", replied the supervisor.
And this is the way they hire the people that spend 40 hours a week caring for the chldren of Toronto. And not even the kids in low income areas with government assistance. This is a childcare faciility in downtown Toronto, in Financial District where their parents are plugging away all day helping their companies make millions and billions of dollars. These are the children of the working class.
I am willing to take a step down from the wages of a professional, yet irritated waitress. I am willing to take a paycut more than 4 times less than what I was making slinging sushi in Vancouver, but not for long. Eventually I will run out of savings and I will not be satisfied with the emotional fulfillment alone, I will need money for food and shelter. $11 an hour, with no benefits and no paid lunches, no time off, nothing, this will not keep good people in the childcare industry. Even with an ECE diploma wages begin at 14 or 15 dollars an hour. I know people who make more working at Taco Bell.
Kids are killing kids. Kids are killing adults. Kids are raping, stealing cars, doing drugs. They don't go to school, they don't know how to speak English, they don't know how to read, they don't have anything to do. Perhaps, in the first few years of their lives they were lacking in the love, intelligence and nurturing that a caregiver is supposed to provide. Instead they were surrounded by angry women who barely spoke English who smacked them around and scorned at their wimpers for $10.50 an hour. I'm not drawing any conclusions, but it may or may not have passed through my mind.
