Community Unionism without the Community? Lessons from Labor-Community Coalitions in the Canadian Child Care Sector

Community Unionism

The theory and practice of community unionism has been central to discussions of alt-labor and labor movement renewal and revitalization (Black 2005, 2012; Cockfied et al. 2009; Fine 2005). However, definitions of community unionism have varied, partly due to the different ways scholars define community. ¹ As Tattersall (2008) has observed, in the union renewal literature, there are three conceptualizations of community that tend to be used interchangeably: community as a substitute for a community-based organization, community as a people with a common identity or interest, and community as a geographical space in which people live, such as a local neighborhood. For my purposes here, I understand the community in “community unionism” as a community-based organization, which is typically formed by people who inhabit a particular geographical space and share a common identity or interest (this could be a tenants’ rights group; a faith-based, environmental, or antipoverty organization; or a workers’ center). Following Lipsig-Mumme (2003), I therefore understand community unionism as the coalitions and cooperative partnerships labor unions forge with community actors in the pursuit of the goals and interests of either or both.

Canada’s national labor federation, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), has highlighted the importance of the labor movement protecting “workers and their families where they live by working with like-minded community allies” (as quoted in Tattersall 2010, 9). In endorsing labor-community coalitions, the CLC acknowledges the vital role such alliances can play in organizing the unorganized, advancing legislative reform, and broadening the reach and influence of the labor movement. In this, the CLC follows labor organizations in the United States, Europe, and Australia in recognizing the potential of alliances with community partners around shared interests and common goals (Tattersall 2010). As one of the leading scholars of labor-community coalitions, Amanda Tattersall, has argued, “[t]he crisis of the labor movement has made it ever more necessary for unions to unite with other social forces if they are to successfully advance a broad vision of economic and social justice” (Tattersall 2010, 2).

There is now an established literature on labor-community coalitions that demonstrates the varied interests around which they are formed, from living wage campaigns (Luce 2004), education reform (Tattersall 2010), and the establishment of labor-based political parties (Reynolds 1999), to issues of global justice (Acuff 2000), the defense of public services (Black 2012), and the prevention of plant closures (Nissen 1995). Unions may look to community allies to support campaigns to organize the unorganized, as in the oft studied example of the Service Employees International Union’s Justice for Janitors campaign and “L.A. model” of organizing (see Banks 1992; Marvin 2015; Milkman 2006), and community organizations may turn to labor to add organizational muscle and resources to advance their members’ interests vis-à-vis local governments, private developers, or big corporations (MacDonald 2011). And while labor-community coalitions can operate at and across different geographic scales (Tattersall 2010), much of the literature on community unionism explores the phenomenon at the local, regional, or urban scale (e.g., MacDonald 2011; Milkman 2006; Turner 2007).

Coalitions can bring out the best in community organizations and unions, mobilizing complementary resources to launch campaigns capable of confronting the neoliberal agenda (Black 2012). While such campaigns vary widely, the literature suggests some necessary conditions for successful and sustainable labor-community collaboration, including establishing relationships of reciprocity, respect, and equality between labor and community partners (e.g., in decision-making structures); the presence of “bridge builders”—from labor and community—who foster relationships and maintain mutual trust between participating groups; the development of goals and strategies that represent common interests or concern; and in relation, mutual recognition of the strengths and weaknesses each ally brings to the coalition (see Clawson 2003; Glover and Rose 1999; Nissen 2004; Reynolds 2004; Tattersall 2010). Yet factors internal to coalitions are only half of the equation: coalitions must navigate what social movement scholars call “political opportunity structures,” which are often complex and case-specific, making generalizations about “what works” in labor-community coalitions a difficult endeavor (Turner 2007, 6-11). ² What we can say is that coalitions that do not have the ingredients listed above are unlikely to sustain themselves, advance shared interests, and ultimately build workers’ and community members’ power (Tattersall 2010).

What much of the literature on community unionism assumes, however, is the presence of “community,” that is, a ready-made community-based partner or ally with whom unions can engage in coalition work. While the balance of resources and power in a labor-community campaign will vary, labor’s community partner is generally understood to have some organizational presence; be in a position to contribute political, financial, and/or organizational resources to the campaign; and have some capacity for collective action. As Marvin (2015, 298) points out, whereas Milkman (2006) and others have suggested that the “L.A. model” of “creating powerful labor-community coalitions is replicable in other cities,” urban contexts that lack a strong tradition of community organizing may pose a unique challenge to community unionism as a mode of union praxis.

One such context—as highlighted in this study—is the suburbs. While most major North American cities are home to some form of progressive community-based organization, such organizations may be weaker, or perhaps nonexistent, in the more conservative political landscape of the suburbs, which tend to be dominated by rate-payer associations and a narrow homeowner politics (see Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009, 56-58). The conservative tilt of the suburbs also means that labor is less likely to find allies among local elected officials or have the “political insider status” unions may enjoy in big cities (Kwon and Day 2007). Thus, while weary of overgeneralizing, the political-economic geographies of the North American suburb may pose barriers to replicating the labor-community coalitions that have become a fixture of labor struggles in many a big city (see, for example, Milkman 2006). ³

Labor-Community Coalitions in the Canadian Child Care Sector

Community unionism has been a long-standing practice of a number of public-sector unions in Canada (see, for example, Camfield 2007; Ross 2013). As Ross (2013) has noted, public-sector unions recognize that their power is not primarily economic but rather rests on their capacity to mobilize service recipients and the broader public as allies against employers. Canadian child care workers’ unions are examples of this mode of union praxis par excellence. In particular, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has played a central role in English Canada’s child care movement, which since the early 1980s has taken the form of national, provincial, and local coalitions of nonprofit child care providers, social justice organizations, activist parents, women’s groups, and unions. The movement’s organizing and advocacy has been grounded in a feminist and broad left politics, which sees high-quality universal public child care—provided in unionized settings—as a social right and a necessary step to achieving gender equality and social justice for women in general and for the highly feminized child care workforce (Amoroso 2010). ⁴ CUPE, which represents twelve thousand child care workers across Canada (CUPE 2016), has contributed significant financial and organizational resources to child care coalitions, and the union’s members and staff typically hold positions on coalitions’ boards of directors. ⁵

CUPE sees this coalition work as vital, particularly in a political climate hostile to public-sector unions (Young 2009). As Ross (2013, 57) notes, amid a growing public backlash against public-sector unions—fueled by right-wing populist and corporate media narratives that blame public-sector workers for high levels of public debt—public-sector unions’ “claims to represent the broader public interest have fallen on deaf ears.” In this context, despite their engagement with broad labor-community campaigns to defend public services against austerity, public-sector unions such as CUPE have struggled to frame themselves as defenders of public—rather than sectional—interests and fear public hostility should they engage in collective action to defend their collective agreements or public services more generally (Ross and Savage 2013). As such, many public-sector unions have chosen to play a more behind-the-scenes role in coalition work, leaving service users, advocates, and activists to take the lead in campaigns to defend public services while continuing to provide community allies with political, financial, and organizational resources. This role of “unacknowleged legislators” allows public-sector unions to advance employment goals—preserving union jobs and defending wages and working conditons—while managing the risk of public hostility and political backlash (MacDonald 2017).

As the comparative case study in the following illustrates, in the context of a right-wing populist mayor who rode a wave of public anger over a municipal workers’ strike into office, the union representing municipal child care workers in Toronto played a behind-the-scenes role in a coalition to oppose plans to privatize unionized city-run daycares. CUPE Local 79, working with coalition partners and community allies, successfully fought the privatization of the city’s fifty-seven child care centers, preserving union jobs and child care funding in the process. However, this fight was part of a much broader community mobilization against proposed cuts to a range of municipal services and social programs. I contrast this case with an unsuccessful campaign to stop the closure of municipally operated child care centers in the Region of Peel, a suburb of Toronto. Child care workers and support staff in Peel’s centers are not unionized. However, in recognition of the strategic importance of these centers—as high-quality public services and cornerstones of a universal child care program—CUPE and the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) organized a campaign to oppose the closures. Lacking allies in local government, and in the absence of a strong local child care coalition and broader community-based mobilization against austerity, this campaign ultimately failed.

The broader political context of these struggles was shaped by successive public-sector strikes in Toronto. In 2009, the City of Toronto’s municipal workers went on strike, including the municipal child care workforce. As Fanelli (2011) has argued, Toronto’s municipal workers suffered from “widespread resentment and political antipathy in the wake of the strike.” In Peel, the campaign to save municipal child care centers overlapped with a bitter labor dispute between the region and its unionized workers. In both disputes, municipal governments stressed the need for fiscal responsibility and public-sector wage restraint. As mentioned earlier, these political dynamics informed union strategy in the two campaigns: CUPE played a support role by working through their coalition partners, leaving community allies and service users to take the lead.

Data and Method

Data for this article are drawn from a larger project on labor-community coalitions in the Canadian child care sector. Here, I examine campaigns involving two such coalitions. I draw on in-depth, qualitative interviews with five informants active in the campaigns. Three of these informants were active in both campaigns, and the fourth and fifth were active in the Toronto campaign only. The informants include CUPE staff and organizers in the OCBCC, Toronto Coalition for Better Child Care (TCBCC), and an affiliated group, Mothers for Child Care (MFCC). Participants were asked about campaign strategy, tactics, and the process of coalition building. Each interview lasted between forty-five minutes to an hour. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed.

In addition to interviews, I reviewed campaign materials and key government policy papers as well as city/regional council meeting minutes. In addition, I reviewed the public deputations of activists and organizers presented at Toronto City Council and Region of Peel Council. Finally, I reviewed media and Internet coverage of the campaigns to supplement fieldwork.

Toronto: The “Save Every Child Care Dollar” Campaign

Toronto’s child care system is recognized as one of the most extensive and dynamic in Canada (Mahon 2005). The city’s child care movement has combined with a tradition of urban reform in City Hall to shape a “citizenship model” of child care considered to be unique in Canada outside Quebec (Mahon 2005, 289). Under this model, child care is defined as an essential public service that should meet high standards and be accessible and affordable to those who need it. Furthermore, the model posits that municipal government is well suited to administer child care services and ensure services are sensitive and accountable to local needs and priorities. As such, the City of Toronto is mandated with demonstrating leadership in child care planning and development (Mahon 2005). Civil servants in the city’s Children’s Services division are committed to this citizenship model and for the most part maintain a good working relationship with child care advocates. The pride of Toronto’s child care system is its fifty-seven municipal child care centers, that is, city-run centers whose employees are municipal workers and members of CUPE Local 79. These centers are widely considered to host some of the highest quality and most innovative child care programs in the country (Cleveland 2008). ⁶ Beyond the city-run centers, child care in Toronto is a patchwork of nonprofit and for-profit daycares.

While CUPE has been organizing child care workers since the 1970s, union density in the sector remains fairly low: only 16 percent of child care workers in Toronto are unionized (Mojtehedzadeh 2015). Furthermore, a patchwork system of care has translated into a patchwork system of collective bargaining: there are seven CUPE locals—many with multiple bargaining units—representing child care workers and support staff across a diverse range of settings, including the city’s elementary schools, and community-based nonprofit, for-profit, and municipal child care programs. This has not stopped CUPE from winning improvements in wages and working conditions in the sector: while the median hourly wage for nonunionized child care workers in the province of Ontario is $16.00 (Mojtehedzadeh 2015), child care workers in Toronto’s unionized municipal centers earn between $28.45 and $34.68 an hour (City of Toronto 2012). CUPE has also made strides in directing public funds toward unionized settings: working with their allies in the TCBCC, in 2004, the union convinced City Council to issue a moratorium on purchase of service agreements with for-profit providers, effectively bolstering the nonprofit and public sectors where union density is highest (Cleveland 2008). ⁷

The Context

In Toronto’s 2010 municipal election, a social democratic mayor leading a center-left city council was replaced by a right-wing populist mayor with a center-right council majority. Since the neoliberal restructuring of the 1990s, Toronto, like other municipalities in Ontario, has had to cope with inadequate funding arrangements, new costs and responsiblities for public services that have been downloaded onto municipalities from upper levels of government, and growing fiscal pressures in a context of increasing social need (Fanelli 2016). Some commentators have suggested that this dynamic fosters a neoliberal politics of tax revolt that favors right-wing politicians, as local tax increases appear to do little to improve municipal services in the absence of sustained funding for cities from upper levels of government (Fanelli 2011). In addition, two public-sector strikes were thought to have harmed the municipal left’s performance in the 2010 campaign: a 2007 transit strike was followed soon after by the largest municipal strike in Canadian history when twenty-four thousand workers represented by CUPE walked the picket lines for thirty-nine days. In both strikes, union leadership made little effort to publicly make the connection between communities, and public-sector jobs and services, or build coalitions with community allies and service users (Fanelli 2016, 47).

Toronto’s new mayor, Rob Ford, was elected on a promise to cut taxes and eliminate perceived wasteful spending at City Hall. In the context of an austerity agenda pushed by the federal and provincial governments, in 2011, Ford ordered a review of the city’s core services by the auditing firm KPMG. The primary goal of the review was to find 750 million dollars in savings for the 2012 municipal budget (Fanelli 2016). The push for municipal austerity was also fueled by the administration’s antipathy toward organized labor. Throughout the 2010 mayoral campaign, Ford had pledged to “stand up to Toronto’s unions, privatize assets, contract out services and reduce the financial burden for Torontonians by showing ‘Respect for the Taxpayer’” (Fanelli 2011).

The core services review set up one of the biggest budget battles in Toronto history, with a wide range of municipal services and social programs on the chopping block. In the area of child care, KPMG recommended cutting over two thousand child care fee subsidies, reducing the number of quality inspections, and divesting the city’s fifty-seven municipal centers to the private sector (TCBCC 2011a). All of these recommendations were hastily endorsed by the mayor and his executive. According to child care advocates, the cuts would result in an increase in child care fees, a decline in the quality of child care services, and longer waiting lists for child care subsidies (TCBCC 2011a).

The Campaign

For CUPE and the TCBCC, KPMG’s recommendations marked a direct assault on Toronto’s “citizenship model” of child care, the city’s status as a leader and innovator in child care programming, and the municipal center workforce who set sector-wide benchmarks for wages and benefits (Interviews 1 and 3). In response, the TCBCC established the Save Every Child Care Dollar campaign, to which CUPE pledged its support.

CUPE had to carefully strategize its participation in the campaign (Interview 2). While child care workers (early childhood educators and support staff) make up a significant segment of Local 79’s membership, the proposed budget cuts were to affect a range of municipal services, affecting members in a variety of sectors. Local 79, thus, had to wage a battle on multiple fronts. Furthermore, the union was concerned about its public image, severly damaged in the 2009 municipal worker strike, the unpopularity of which had emboldened the new mayoral administration to attack public-sector workers in the first place. Parents with children in city-run child care centers were part of the broader public who had been inconvenienced by the strike, and CUPE could not take their solidarity for granted (Interview 2).

With these dynamics in play, the union developed a strategy that emulated that of previous successful social service campaigns (Interviews 2 and 5). The focus was to be on mobilizing community allies—including the direct consumers of services—to pressure politicians to stop the cuts. And in the TCBCC, CUPE had a coalition partner with experience in mobilizing community members and various stakeholders in the child care sector, including parents. ⁸ In relation to the Save Every Child Care Dollar campaign, CUPE was to play what one union organizer called an “enabling role,” providing critical resources such as meeting space and campaign materials, while parents would act as the public voice of the campaign (Interview 2). As a TCBCC organizer put it,

we all know the people who have the most credibility with the politicians are those people who are going to be directly affected and that was the parents. So it wasn’t a strategy to not have them [the union] play a lead role but just a wise recognition that the message was most powerful coming from the community. (Interview 3)

TCBCC joined a burgeoning grassroots mobilization against the mayor’s budget, as a loose network of antipoverty activists, community organizations, tenants’ associations, social service providers, and labor unions fanned out across the city to organize opposition to the cuts neighborhood by neighborhood (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). This broad community mobilization had two main wings, the Stop the Cuts Network, founded by a radical antipoverty organization, Occupy activists, and an immigrant rights group, and Respect Toronto, which was composed of public- and private-sector unions, the Toronto labor council, and more moderate community organizations such as ACORN (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). CUPE devoted organizers to both campaigns and held a full-day anti-austerity orientation and organizer training session as part of its solidarity actions labeled “Keep Toronto Public!” (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). In April 2011, the anti-austerity movement excercised its organizational muscle as several thousand people marched on City Hall to rally against privatization and cuts to public services. Organizers called on Mayor Ford to halt plans to privatize city services and public transit, sell off public housing, and impose user fees at recreation centers (Yew 2011).

With the budget vote scheduled for January of the new year, in the fall of 2011, the TCBCC embarked on a campaign of public outreach (Interview 3). Among other tactics, organizers leafleted parents outside municipal centers at drop-off and pick-up times. The messaging of the campaign was clear: stopping cuts and privatization was not about saving union jobs—which were never mentioned in campaign materials—but making sure the mayor and council knew that parents could “not afford to lose ONE dollar, or ONE space, or ONE subsidy, or ONE grant out of this child care system!” (TCBCC 2011a). As a result of its outreach, the coalition marshaled a large group of parents prepared to make deputations at budget hearings and engage in a mass phone and email campaign, which over a period of a few weeks bombarded city councilors with messages of support for public child care, saying “no” to cuts and privatization, and telling politicians, “child care is a ‘must have’ service for families” (Interview 3; TCBCC 2011b).

The city’s child care administration also played a role in the campaign. Civil servants in the Children’s Services division provided the public with data on the potential impact of cuts on child care access and program quality (Interview 1). This information found its way into the TCBCC’s public deputations at City Council and made a compelling evidence-based argument to centrist councilors who had yet to decide whether to vote for or against the mayor’s budget. In addition, CUPE and the TCBCC worked with councilors who had a strong record of support for public child care. As the TCBCC mobilized parents, these allies worked to convince council’s centrists to vote against the cuts (Interviews 1 and 3). While they may have been in the minority on council, a number of progressive councilors had years of experience as advocates for child care. One influential left-winger, Councilor Janet Davis, was past president of the OCBCC and past vice president of the CUPE local that represents child care workers in the city’s public schools (Scheuer 2003).

In short, the KPMG report and the mayor’s budget had become lightning rods for community organizing and activism. As child care advocates and concerned parents were front and center in the “Save Every Child Care Dollar” campaign, CUPE continued to work behind-the-scenes in the broader struggle to defend the city’s public services and union jobs (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). The fight to save city-run daycares and stop cuts to child care funding was embedded in this broader struggle.

Turning the Tide against Austerity

The impact of anti-austerity organizing became evident in the months leading up the January 2012 budget vote. The mayor had been elected in 2010 with 47 percent of the vote, and had received relatively high approval ratings in his first few months in office, including after privatizing a portion of the city’s garbage collection, breaking the sanitation workers’ union. However, a September poll conducted by a respected independent polling firm—commissioned by CUPE 79—found a strong majority of Torontonians opposed the administration’s austerity budget (Doolittle 2011). Furthermore, some of the strongest opposition proved to be in the mayor’s executive members’ wards, which were the target of intensive outreach and public education by anti-austerity groups. Emboldened by the poll, a “Rally for Toronto,” the second mass demonstration in five months, brought a few thousand activists, trade unionists, and community members to City Hall in late September (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). As organizing intensified and City Hall’s budget wrangling continued, the administration scaled back its child care plans from the privatization of all fifty-seven city-run daycares to the closure of only three.

The advocacy and organizing of the TCBCC was bolstered by a Mothers’ Task Force on Child Care. The task force had been launched on Mother’s Day as a grassroots project to investigate the accessibility, quality, and affordability of child care services in Toronto. It had the financial and organizational backing of the TCBCC and OCBCC, and was endorsed by the city’s most well-established feminist and antipoverty organizations in addition to a number of social service agencies (MFCC 2011). Importantly, CUPE was not directly involved with the initiative; the task force spoke as an independent voice representing the interests of mothers as the consumers of child care services. CUPE staff did, however, participate on the task force by virtue of their membership in the TCBCC and OCBCC (Interview 4). Furthermore, the task force was endorsed by City Council’s child care champion and former CUPE vice-president, Janet Davis, and its chief spokesperson had a background in the antipoverty and labor movements (Interview 4).

MFCC (2011) held a series of forums across Toronto to hear the perspectives of parents struggling with access to affordable, quality child care. The group also conducted an online survey, did outreach through social media, and included a downloadable volunteer tool kit with campaign materials on its website (Interview 4). The results of the hearings and online survey were gathered into a public report distributed to the media, city council, and the general public. The report concluded that Toronto needed more, not less, city-run child care centers, lower fees, and better and more subsidies (MFCC 2011). Overall, MFCC urged government at all levels to “step up to ensure quality, affordable child care is available in a comprehensive system” (MFCC 2011, 18). In addition, the group did outreach to parents at the three municipal centers slated for closure, organizing “flying squads” of mothers to protest the mayoral administration’s scaled-down closure plan (Interview 4).

This organizing dovetailed with the ongoing work of the TCBCC, and when it came time for public deputations to the city’s budget committee, some fifty-plus parents and child care advocates packed the room to make arguments against subsidy cuts and center closures. They were joined by hundreds of other community members, trade unionists, and tenant organizers deputing in support of municipal services and social programs (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). The day before the first budget meeting, MFCC held a “Keep Your Mittens Off Our Child Care” news conference outside City Hall, to “let decision makers know how parents, children, and child care workers feel about the threatened closures” (MFCC 2012). At the news conference, an MFCC spokesperson said, “With 20,000 children on the waiting list for a space at a child care center—not one space, not one subsidy can be lost. We need every Councilor to stand up for the city’s child care centers,” and then making direct mention of the three municipal centers slated for closure, “If these closures are happening in Wards 1, 14, and 20 you can be sure the Mayor will be planning on closing child care centers in every neighbourhood of the city” (MFCC 2012).

This was to be the final shot across the bow in what was ultimately a successful campaign. In mid-January 2012, Toronto City Council voted to reverse $20 million in proposed budget cuts, preserving child care funding and maintaining the three municipal child care centers. An alternative omnibus budget bill put forward by a centrist councilor narrowly passed, twenty-three votes to twenty-one (Ruiter and Kinch 2012). As participants in a broader mobilization against austerity, the city’s child care movement, with the child care workers’ union playing a supportive role, had pushed back against the mayor’s privatization agenda and won.

The Region of Peel: The “Save Peel Child Care” Campaign

Peel is a regional municipality consisting of two cities and a township situated directly to the west and northwest of Toronto. The region is part of the Greater Toronto Area and home to 1.2 million people, making it the second-largest municipality in the province of Ontario after Toronto. Peel experienced a period of rapid population growth and economic development in the 1990s, just as the neoliberal restructuring of Canada’s welfare state intensified, and upper levels of government offloaded some costs and responsibilities for social services onto municipalities. In Peel, the impact of this restructuring has been exacerbated by an outdated funding formula for calculating provincial–municipal transfers, leaving the region receiving less than its fair share of provincial dollars. According to one estimate, relative to other Ontario residents, those who live in Peel are underfunded by $350 million per year in per capita provincial funding (Mendelson 2012). This has limited the region’s capacity to meet pressing social needs typically associated with central cities rather than suburbs. For example, the combined factors of a growing youth population and rising poverty have put intense pressures on the region’s social services, particularly subsidized child care. As of 2010, there were nine low-income children in Peel for every subsidized child care space; the worst ratio among large and medium-size cities in Canada (Region of Peel 2010).

While Peel’s social realities reflect its status as a large, culturally diverse urban region, its politics are stuck in its conservative, suburban past, and the squeeze on municipal services is also the product of a conservative, homeowner politics and corporate influence on municipal government. These twin political forces have worked to keep residential and commercial property taxes, and development charges—the primary sources of municpal revenue in Ontario—at artificially low levels (MacDermid 2009). Furthermore, money from the development industry dominates municipal politics: corporate donations made up between 60 and 70 percent of contributions to candidates in recent municipal elections in Peel Region, compared with only 12 percent in Toronto (MacDermid 2009). This corporate influence is not counterbalanced by an active citizenry: voter turnout in municipal elections rarely breaks the 30 percent mark, compared with 40 percent in recent Toronto elections (MacDermid 2009).

Compared with Toronto’s political pluralism, all councilors on Regional Council in Peel are affiliated with either the hard right Conservative Party or center-right Liberal Party. And while nonpartisan, nonprofit social service agencies hold some sway in local decision making, small social justice organizations and the region’s labor movement, lacking a strong activist base, have relatively little influence in municipal politics. Finally, unlike Toronto, in Peel, there is no local child care coalition that brings together the interests of parents, daycare providers, and child care workers, nor are the region’s child care workers unionized. In sum, the campaign to save Peel’s municipally operated child centers faced a very different structure of political opportunities from that of its sister campaign in Toronto.

The Campaign

In late January 2012, just weeks after Toronto’s historic budget battle had concluded, Peel Region’s executive tabled a motion to close the region’s twelve municipal child care centers, known as Learn-Play-Care Centres (Brampton Guardian 2012). The motion was one in a series of recommendations contained in a report on the future of child care produced by KPMG, the same consulting firm behind Toronto’s core services review. The report recommended that subsequent child care savings be directed toward fee subsidies for close to a thousand children, including 582 new subsidized spaces, and increased support for children with special needs (Slack 2012). Yet overall, closing the Learn-Play-Care Centres was to result in the immediate removal of 859 spaces from the region’s child care system and the elimnation of nearly three hundred jobs, including those of 246 municipal child care workers (Slack 2012). In a marked difference from Toronto, the recommendations were publicly endorsed by the region’s commissioner of human services, the highest-ranking municipal civil servant with oversight of child care (see Slack 2012).

The KPMG report cited “unprecedented” and “growing” need for child care subsidy in Peel, with four thousand children on the region’s waiting list, leaving eligible families with a twelve-month wait for a subsidized space (Slack 2012). However, KPMG predicted that the demand for daycare spaces for children ages four and five would decline considerably upon full implementation of the provincial government’s full-day kindergarten program in 2014 (Slack 2012). Yet in the ensuing public debate over child care center closures, the issue of fluctuating demand became secondary to the question of cost. In defending the regional executive’s move to close the Learn-Play-Care Centres, the long-serving mayor of Peel’s largest city, Mississauga, referred to the centers as “gold-plated child care” that supported an “elitist group [of children and parents]” (as quoted in Grewal 2012a). The mayor cited statistics from the KPMG report that showed the cost of care for a single child in a Learn-Play-Care Centre was $83 per day, compared with an average of $40 per day at one of the region’s for-profit and community-based nonprofit centers (Grewal 2012a). While councilors in favor of the closures repeatedly stated that senior governments needed to provide the region with more funding for child care, they also argued that Peel’s money could be better spent in partnership with private daycare operators (Grewal 2012a). As this logic went, the private sector could “provide greater bang for the region’s buck,” serving more children for less money.

From the perspective of the child care movement, the move meant sacrificing both care quality (i.e., program standards and resources) and the quality of care work (i.e., the wages and working conditions of child care providers). Like Toronto’s city-run daycares, Peel’s Learn-Play-Care Centres were noted for the high quality of care they provided, including programming for children with special needs, and for providing hard-to-find evening care (Interview 1). Futhermore, activists recognized the region’s attempt to undermine “gold-plated child care” as a thinly veiled effort to slash the municipal payroll, despite the fact that the region had publicly acknowledged the link between decent wages for child care workers, the ability to attract and retain qualified staff, and child care quality in a 2010 report (see Region of Peel 2010, 6). While Peel’s municipal child care workers were nonunion, they received similar levels of compensation and benefits to their unionized counterparts in other cities in Ontario (Interview 1). As one organizer with the OCBCC put it, “this [the proposed closures] is totally about labour costs” (Interview 1). In fact, the region recommended that the $12.8 million saved in annual salaries and facility costs be redirected into subsidies for nonprofit and for-profit daycares (Grewal 2012a).

Regional councilors claimed to have broad community support for the closures, arguing that consultations with parents, providers, and other stakeholders—conducted by KPMG—had made clear that “Peel does not need to be in the business of direct delivery of child care” (as quoted in Grewal 2012a). But in the eyes of child care advocates, the consultation had been a sham: according to an organizer with the OCBCC,

[t]he interesting thing about the consultation is that they (Region of Peel) did not go out and ask the question “Should we close our municipal child care centers?” They went out and asked “What can the Region do better?” In my mind, they have not begun the consultation. (As quoted in Brampton Guardian 2012)

As organizers pointed out, questions about the future of the Learn-Play-Care Centres were not put to community stakeholders, including parents, during community consulations (Interview 1). And the guiding principles of the consulation said nothing of decent wages and working conditions for child care workers, instead asking community stakeholders how the region could “Optimize financial resources to maximize the investment in the early learning and child care system” (Region of Peel 2012).

In what organizers saw as an effort to catch parents and child care advocates off guard, the council decided to put KPMG’s recommendations to a vote less than a week after their tabling (Grewal 2012a). Opponents of the closures had only a few days to build opposition. As one concerned parent put it, the region’s move was designed “to short-circuit the democratic process and limit the mobilization of public support against these recommendations” (as quoted in Monsebraaten 2012). The OCBCC and CUPE’s provincial division, CUPE Ontario, quickly mobilized their resources to build community support to fight the closures (Interview 2). While child care workers and support staff at Peel’s centers were nonunion, CUPE on principle was committed to defending the direct delivery of child care by local government. Furthermore, if Peel closed its municipal centers, CUPE worried that cities with unionized centers could soon follow their lead (Interview 2). Hoping to build on their recent success in Toronto, CUPE devoted a full-time organizer to work alongside the OCBCC.

Not surprisingly, the campaign replicated many of the tactics employed in Toronto. Yet organizers had a much shorter period of time in which to work, and they did not have the benefit of an already established local child care coalition as in the TCBCC. They would have to build such a coalition from scratch. The first step was to notify parents of the proposed closures. As in Toronto, organizers did outreach to parents at drop-off and pick-up times. They also coordinated with the Learn-Play-Care parents’ councils, which consisted of a few parents at each of the twelve centers. Next, the OCBCC identified potential community allies—including a local antipoverty group and the local labor council—and also those few politicians on regional council deemed to be “politically friendly” (Interviews 1 and 2). At first, there was no concerted effort to bring the Learn-Play-Care Centre staff into the organizing fold; this was not because the workers were nonunion but because, as in Toronto, the voices of parents and advocates were to be front and center (Interviews 1 and 2).

In a remarkable feat of grassroots organizing, in the space of a week, the OCBCC held five well-attended parent information sessions (Interview 1). Given the stealth nature by which the region had pushed the proposed closures to a vote, such public education and outreach was vital if the OCBCC was to build a successful campaign. At these meetings, parents expressed shock and outrage at hearing of the region’s plans: parents said “they felt blindsided by their elected officials” (as quoted in Monsebraaten 2012). More than three hundred parents attended the first information session (Monsebraaten 2012). The coordinator of the OCBCC told parents, “Peel Region has been a leader in early learning and child care . . . Even considering closing 12 child cares is a reckless decision” (as quoted in Monsebraaten 2012). Parents lined up at microphones to express their frustration at the apparent haste with which the decision was being made and the region’s lack of transparency. The OCBCC directly confronted the region’s claim that full-day kindergarten would reduce the demand for child care, citing growing need across all age groups and a lengthy waiting list—evidence that the region was underserved and needed more, not less, high-quality child care. Out of these sessions, the OCBCC built an activist base from a group of parents new to advocacy and organizing (Interviews 1 and 2).

As in Toronto, the next step was a phone and email campaign. Parents and community allies were to bombard their councilor with phone calls and emails urging them to vote to keep the Learn-Play-Care Centres open. A CUPE local representing some of the region’s social service workers also lent its support, allowing the campaign to use its office space as a makeshift headquarters (Interview 1). Without the local resources of the Toronto campaign, the OCBCC requested support from the provincial and national federations of labor. The federations responded with some financial support and a commitment to send a representative to depute at regional council when the time came (Interviews 1 and 2).

The campaign received positive coverage in both the local press and Toronto’s major newspaper, putting pressure on the regional council (see Monsebraaten 2012; Slack 2012). An editorial in one local newspaper chided councilors for the “sneaky way in which they were going about their business” (Brampton Guardian 2012). The campaign was successful in conveying the message that the KPMG report was being used as a cover to privatize public child care, and that the implementation of its recommendations would reduce the supply of high-quality child care and would particularly impact access to services for families in high-needs neighborhoods, where the majority of Learn-Play-Care Centres were located. In addition, organizers pointed out that the most affected families would be those with children with special needs, as many community-based and for-profit daycares did not have staff with the expertise to provide appropriate care (CUPE 2012).

In its materials and outreach, the campaign raised the specter of poor-quality for-profit child care expanding to fill the void left by municipal center closures. Already, more than 54 percent of available child care for children under six in Peel was for-profit, compared with 25 percent province-wide (CUPE 2012). A for-profit, big-box child care company from the province of Alberta had recently announced the purchase of four local daycares and had plans for rapid expansion in Ontario. To bolster its argument, CUPE cited the example of the City of Windsor, where the city council’s decision to shutter its municipal centers had been followed by the same company’s purchase of three of those centers (CUPE 2012).

Decision Day

On the day of the vote, protestors gathered outside the regional council’s headquarters with picket signs reading “Cuts Hurt Kids” and “LPC Centers Provide Quality Care. Don’t Give It Up” (Brampton Guardian 2012). Over two-hundred parents and supporters packed the council chambers. Fifty-nine individuals collectively took five hours to make deputations to regional council—an unprecedented number according to the clerk’s office (Monsebraaten 2012). They urged politicians to keep the Learn-Play-Care Centres open and expressed how much they valued the high-quality child care services provided by the region (Region of Peel Council 2012a). Parents were joined by, among others, deputants from a local antipoverty organization, the Peel District Labour Council, the CLC, the Ontario Federation of Labour, and the CUPE local representing the region’s unionized social service workers. Two academics with expertise in child care development also made deputations on behalf of the campaign as did a number of child care workers employed at the Learn-Play-Care Centres. Finally, Regional Council recorded reciept of one hundred thirty-four emails and letters on the matter, the vast majority expressing opposition to the closures (Region of Peel Council 2012a).

In response to this mobilization, council voted fifteen to six in favor of a motion calling for greater public consultation and the formation of a Task Force on Early Learning and Child Care in Peel, putting off a final decision until September, nine months away (Region of Peel Council 2012a). The task force was to study alternatives to the KPMG recommendations, hear more from community stakeholders, and report back to council prior to the September vote. Yet the task force was to be made up of ten councilors, only one of whom was identfied by the OCBCC as being firmly opposed to the closures (Interview 1). All in all, the delay was an important, though partial, victory for parents and the OCBCC. While the campaign had failed to secure a commitment to keep the Learn-Play-Care Centres open, in a very short period of time, it had mobilized hundreds of supporters and pushed the council to reconsider the issue.

From Mobilization to Death by Delay

Between January and September, the OCBCC sought to sustain the campaign’s momentum. However, this proved difficult. Through their participation in the task force, the OCBCC had become convinced that the region would close the Learn-Play-Care Centres regardless of their recommendations (Interviews 1 and 2). Furthermore, fearful of being caught without secure child care, some parents had begun to make alternative arrangements for their children. A few parents who had played a vital role in advocacy and organizing in January had moved their children into alternative child care settings by September (Interview 1). Organizers attempted to do outreach to the parents of newly enrolled children, but with parents informed of the possibility of closures upon enrolling their children, these efforts produced mixed results (Interview 2). Perhaps, most importantly, the task force announced its intent to recommend a two-year phase-out of the centers, reflecting the time by which children who were “currently enrolled in the centers, will have aged out, naturally” (Region of Peel 2012). The activist base that had been so crucial to the January victory had dissipated by September. Six weeks prior to the vote, organizers ramped up their efforts, but the momentum had gone: according to one key organizer, “a near-year-long effort of endless meetings sucked all the energy out of the fight” (Interview 2).

On September 13, regional council met to vote on the recommendations of the task force, which included the closure of the Learn-Play-Care Centres. As evidence of lost momentum, in contrast to the moblization of parents and supporters in January, only fourteen public deputations were made at the September meeting, and regional council received just nineteen letters and emails opposing the closures (Region of Peel Council 2012b). Acting on the recommendations of the task force, council voted sixteen to five to close the centers gradually over the next two years and spend the $12 million saved on creating an extra 580 subsidized spots in private centers, both profit and nonprofit (Grewal 2012b). Reflecting the neoliberal logic guiding their decision, council’s executive argued, “money has to be spent more wisely by partnering with private daycare operators” (as quoted in Grewal 2012b). One distraught parent said she “could not bear the thought” of going back to a private daycare for her children: “Private centers are about profit; you get poorly trained, low-paid staff with high turnover” (as quoted in Grewal 2012b).

In subsequent months, Region of Peel Council voted to divest eleven of the twelve centers to the private sector, moving from outright closures to privatization. According to the OCBCC, child care workers at the privatized centers earn substantially less than those who were employed directly by the region (Interview 1). As one OCBCC organizer put it, “turns out, the high wages paid to child care workers is what the whole thing was about after all” (Interview 1).

Discussion

This comparative case study raises a number of questions: most obviously, why were unions and their community allies able to successfully defend municipal child care centers and public-sector jobs in Toronto and not in the neighboring suburb of Peel? And second, what might these differential outcomes tell us about the future of public-sector union strategy in a time of austerity, particularly as it relates to community unionism as a mode of union praxis? When asking why labor-community coalitions are more successful in some urban contexts than others, the literature on community unionism focuses our attention on both the internal institutional conditions that lead to successful outcomes and those exogenous factors that enhance or inhibit prospects for social movement mobilization and campaign success, that is, the structure of political opportunities (Marvin 2015, 298; see also Turner 2007). In conclusion, I attempt to address both internal and external factors.

Campaigners faced very different structures of political opportunities in Toronto and the Peel Region. In Peel, opponents of the closures found few allies on council. While not all regional councilors were ideologically predisposed to privatization, few had the history of defending quality public child care—and child care workers—that marked the record of progressives on Toronto City Council. Put differently, in the traditionally more conservative suburb, CUPE and the OCBCC lacked the “political insider status” that they enjoyed in Toronto. While progressives did not form the majority on Toronto council, they did play an important role in convincing their more moderate colleagues—council’s centrists—to vote against closures, cuts, and privatization. As one child care advocate puts it, the case of Peel shows the importance of “electing child care champions” (Interview 1). Yet electing such “champions” requires the type of progressive political base that was lacking in Peel. Rather than identify additional pressure points, organizers in the Peel case focused their efforts on parent moblization.

In relation, in Toronto, campaigners relied on what Sears (2011) has called an existing “infrastructure of dissent,” that is, the range of formal and informal community-based institutions through which activists develop their capacities to analyze, communicate, and take strategic action in solidarity. Such infrastructure nurtures collective action, and in the TCBCC, there was a well-established coalition of unions, students, women’s groups, social service agencies, antipoverty groups, child care centers, advocates, and activist parents with a tradition of mobilizing to defend public child care in the city. Beyond the TCBCC, MFCC, as an organization of activist parents independent of the coalition and CUPE, was an essential part of this infrastructure.

In Peel, the OCBCC did have some success in building a local child care coalition “from scratch.” The initial mobilization of parents and advocates, which resulted in regional council moving to delay their decision and strike a task force, illustrates that labor-community coalitions can effectively organize on the typically unfriendly terrain of the suburbs. Yet what the TCBCC had that Peel’s nascent child care coalition was missing was the broader network of organizations, permanent staff with deep knowledge of the community and local politics, and a seasoned group of child care activists and advocates that could sustain mobilization over the length of a campaign. In Peel, sustaining mobilization through established coalition actors became particularly necessary after parents were given a guarantee that center closures would not be immediate, and instead, the region would phase-out its role in the direct delivery of child care over two years, allowing enrolled children to “age out” of the system.

At a broader level, the Toronto campaign was part of a broad-based community mobilization against cuts to municipal services. In Peel, defenders of public child care were relatively isolated in their fight, waging a single-issue campaign in a hostile political climate. The question remains as to whether the Toronto campaign would have been successful if extracted from the larger political context. As one of the campaign organizers has said, “in Toronto, I cannot say we would have won if everyone else had lost. . . . Luckily we were part of that broader struggle; but if we were entirely on our own? I’m not sure” (Interview 1).

Finally, child care workers in Peel’s Learn-Play-Care Centres were not unionized. At first glance, given the emphasis on community-based mobilization in both campaigns, and the similar “unacknowleged legislator” role played by CUPE, this difference appears to be of less import than others. However, what the failure of the Peel campaign might tell us is that while the strategic tilt toward mobilizing service users and community allies in a political climate hostile to public-sector unionism is understandable, labor-community coalitions to protect public services and jobs require the full muscle of the labor movement in contexts in which community allies are weak or coalitions underdeveloped. It may be true that in the conservative-leaning suburbs, public-sector unions are even more likely to be the target of public hostility if they play a visible role in these campaigns. However, rather than retreat from these spaces, this points toward the necessity of a social unionism than can build more socially just suburbs through engagement with nascent but organizationally weak community allies and concerted union-led efforts to foster “infrastructures of dissent” in surburban space.

In other words, there can be no effective community unionism without community. If public-sector unions want to successfully defend public services and public-sector jobs, and stay behind the scenes while doing so, they must devote resources to long-term grassroots community organizing and coalition building. As parents across North America struggle to find quality, affordable child care, this crisis provides a strategic opportutinty for child care workers’ unions to do just this: sustained organizing with parents and child care advocates to build coalitions that demand universal child care programs that center the needs of parents, children, and the workers who provide the care.