WHEREAS:

            New York City’s multi-billionaire mayor has attempted to destroy the nation’s most comprehensive child care system for the past 10 years in office by trying to ram through backward and regressive policies, which would harm tens of thousands of children, working families, poor parents and dedicated employees; and

WHEREAS:

            Mayor Bloomberg, through various schemes over the years has attempted to privatize the entire system, leaving some 325 subsidized day care centers and 150 Head Start centers vulnerable to closure despite the growing need for these services; and

WHEREAS:

            The introduction of his Early Learn Program will decimate the city’s child care system this fall by closing 120 day care and Head Start centers, refusing service to nearly 19,000 children (despite the city’s admission that only 27 percent of eligible families receive these services) and terminating close to 2,000 unionized day care and Head Start employees, many of whom are women of color and heads of households; and

WHEREAS:

            Bloomberg’s Early Learn Program was never tested through a pilot program or through an environmental impact study as recommended by policy analysts; and

WHEREAS:

            The Early Learn Program will create a $130 million ERISA liability for the city and many of the nationally respected cultural institutions, because the city intends to cut the health and pension benefits for these workers who belong to the same pension plan; and

WHEREAS:

            The Early Learn Program will force parents, who have depended on safe, quality and affordable child care for forty years, to find more expensive, disreputable or in some cases,  dangerous child care options; and

WHEREAS:

            The Bloomberg administration’s Head Start Super Grantee status is being investigated by federal authorities because of possible manipulation of Head Start members’ health plan and not because the high quality of the program was ever in question; and

WHEREAS:

            Day Care Employees Local 205 and Head Start Employees Local 95 of District Council 1707 have opposed the mayor with the assistance of AFSCME, which has provided battleground staffing and advertising funds to wage this continuing battle, and the assistance of our sister affiliates, DC 37 and CSEA, and other labor organizations, elected officials, religious organizations, parents and progressive child care advocate groups.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

            That Locals 95 and 205 will win this battle by fighting on many fronts - legally and politically - and taking it to the homes of average New Yorkers, who believe that we are fighting the good fight and should not stop; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

            That Locals 95 and 205 request continued assistance from the International until the Early Learn Program is defeated in this battle to save child care and the jobs, wages and benefits of more than 6,000 AFSCME members.