Can early childhood educators improve their working conditions through collective action?

• In Event: Collective action towards ECD

Proposal

Background and aims

Despite increasing efforts worldwide to promote early childhood development, many countries still face challenges in providing adequate early learning, responsive caregiving, and social protection services to young children and their families. Improving the quality of early childhood services hinges on strengthening the skills, professional development, and working conditions of the professionals who work with young children (Neuman & Roland, 2018). However, early childhood workers are frequently undervalued, underpaid, and unprepared, leading to a global challenge in recruiting and retaining these workers (Putcha & Mitter, 2018).

Even before the pandemic, UNICEF (2019) projected that low- and lower-middle-income countries would need to recruit 8 million more early childhood educators - four times the current number - to achieve universal pre-primary education by 2030. Facing a shortage of qualified early childhood educators, providers in many countries are unable to adequately staff their programs, effectively turning families away (Beavan, 2023). Therefore, it is timely to consider what can be done to improve working conditions and elevate the status of the early childhood profession.

Across the globe, early childhood workers are turning to collective action to improve their working conditions and ensure that families have equitable access to affordable child care (Mitchell et al., 2022). Last September, early childhood workers across Australia held nationwide strikes calling the federal government to improve child workers' pay, value the sector as part of the education system, and put children before profit (May & Kelly, 2022). A few months later, following a strike involving more than 30,000 Anganwadi workers in Karnataka State in India, the state government agreed to demands related to compensation, health check-ups for workers, infrastructure improvements, and learning materials (The Hindu, 2023). Similar protests have occurred recently in Kenya, Canada, Ireland, and the US.

The purpose of this paper presentation is to explore the following questions:
To what extent are early childhood workers around the world turning to collective action?
What is the role of trade unions in improving the pay, status, and working conditions of early childhood educators?
What are some of the challenges in organizing workers in this field?
What are the factors that facilitate or constrain successful efforts to achieve better pay and working conditions for early childhood educators?


Methods

This paper draws from a qualitative, comparative case study analysis of three countries: Kenya, India, and the Philippines. These countries were selected because they have (a) diverse levels of union membership overall; (b) decentralized responsibility for early childhood provision; (c) recent experiences with early childhood workers mobilizing to improve their working conditions.

Data for this analysis come from two sources: The first source of data is a rigorous review of the literature, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries, where enrolments in early childhood education lag far behind global goals and the needs of the early childhood workforce are particularly neglected. Second, key informant interviews with union and/or campaign leaders, along with experts in each of the case study countries, provide insight on facilitators and constraints of these early childhood worker movements.


Findings and Implications

The analysis will highlight both lessons from the individual case studies as well as from the cross-country comparative analysis. First, unions have the potential to give voice to low status female workers in early childhood settings. Organized labor can elevate the voices of the marginalized and address gender inequities in working conditions. Second, early childhood workers are unlikely to benefit from workers rights movements, especially in LMICs where unionization rates or low or early childhood education workers are excluded from existing unions. Third, the priorities of early childhood educators may differ from those of other teachers; in response, separate pre-primary teacher unions have emerged in some countries.

This study will contribute to the literature on trade unions in the education (and social welfare) sectors in general and to scholarly work on collective action in the early years field more specifically. The focus is on the situation in low- and middle-income countries, where enrolments in early childhood education lag far behind global goals and the needs of the early childhood workforce are particularly neglected. From a policy perspective, as national decision-makers consider how to expand their early childhood programs without compromising quality or equity, prioritizing workforce recruitment and retention will be essential.

Authors

• Michelle Neuman, University of Pennsylvania

• Tomi Oyedele, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania