Affordable Child Care Now!
COVID-19, and the economic recession it triggered, has made it clear just how terrible the capitalist system is, particularly for working-class women and women-aligned folk. Women have been hit especially hard by the pandemic with the double-sucker punch of massive job losses and the ongoing lack of adequate childcare. There have been many headlines about women losing decades of workplace progress, although the “progress” has been slow and only partial.
In March, the tourism, hospitality, and service industries were forced to shut down. Women accounted for 62% of job losses in these sectors. For young women under 25, they accounted for 41% of total job losses in BC compared to 27% for their male counterparts. Mothers and single-parent families were also among the hardest hit by COVID-19 job loss – even before the pandemic, mothers weren’t as active in the workforce due to lack of childcare, but the closing of many childcare centres has made it even worse. Today, the number of women in the workforce is the lowest it has been in decades, and now that the second wave of COVID-19 has arrived, it is unlikely that the numbers will fully recover anytime soon.
The lack of adequate supports for caregivers and families is one of the main barriers to women accessing the workforce. The pandemic has forced large numbers of daycare centres to close, and parents have had to make difficult decisions on how to care for their children. It has been predominantly mothers who have had to decide to either forgo employment in order to stay home and care for their children, or to juggle the responsibilities of working from home while also taking care of little ones. For women working from home, the majority of childcare and home maintenance tasks continue to fall primarily on their shoulders. At the same time, while some mothers have jobs that allow them to work from home, many working-class caregivers don’t have this luxury. For them, their choices are especially limited, and with the potential of an extended winter break for school age children to slow the growth of the virus, it puts them in an especially tough position.
The COVID-19 crisis has brought to light the ongoing failings of the non-existent Canadian childcare system. Childcare in Canada is a privatized industry, meaning that it comes at a high financial cost to parents and caregivers. In BC it is the second highest expense for families, after housing. Private provisions mean that there aren’t enough controls to make sure that there are enough childcare spaces – as of October 2020, there’s room for only about 20% of the total number of children in BC. There are also inadequate controls on quality – the privately run care homes for seniors have cruelly demonstrated what for-profit care looks like. Daycare workers are often not paid enough for the work that they do, aren’t provided enough educational support, and often go without any kind of health benefits package.
A national childcare program was first proposed in 1970 by the Canadian Royal Commission on the Status of Women, and over the years the federal Liberal and Conservative parties have both made countless empty promises to implement a federally subsidized childcare program. Most recently, it has come up again with Trudeau’s Liberal government claiming that it would finally implement a national childcare program. In the November 30 budget update, the Liberals have promised child care, in the future, for now providing $20 million to begin crafting its “child care vision.” Time will tell if this long overdue program is implemented, 50 years after the Royal Commission.
In BC, in 2017 the NDP promised to introduce a $10-a-day childcare program across the province. So far, they have only done half measures. The plan should be universal and publicly run with unionized trained workers. Again, Premier John Horgan promised the $10-a-day childcare plan when he was re-elected in October.
The pandemic has made it clear that $10-a-day childcare is more important than ever. Parents and caregivers need affordable, long term childcare. Children benefit from good childcare. Childcare workers need to be paid well and receive high quality training and education at no cost. While providing quality childcare in a pandemic-safe manner is substantially more costly for the government than in typical times, we need to hold the federal and provincial governments accountable to their promises, no matter the circumstances. Right now, women, children and their families are paying a very high cost because of the lack of public good-quality childcare. In order to create the society that we need, we need to fight for social services that meet the needs of working-class people. The fight for affordable childcare is just the start, and we won’t stop there. Join the fight for a socialist society, join Socialist Alternative!
