Labor Notes

Compiled by Jeff Burman

Growing Need For Childcare

Childcare is becoming an urgent issue for American families. As many as 12 million children under the age of six are in the care of someone other than their parents for at least part of the day. That's half of all infants and 60% of all pre-schoolers. And with welfare reform forcing more single parents into the workforce, the need for childcare will only grow.

Clinton Proposes $21.7 Billion For Childcare

President Clinton called the package "the single largest national commitment to childcare" in American history. He offered financial assistance to as many as two million children, and a five-year scholarship plan to improve the skills of childcare workers, providing they agree to stay in the field for at least a year after the training. If the proposal goes into effect, it would benefit twice the number now served by federal programs.

Annual stipends of up to $1,500 would be made available to as many as 50,000 child care providers, he announced at a White House conference on child care on January 7th. The initiative is part of the President's proposed 1999 budget.

The president also included three related initiatives designed to improve the affordability, safety and quality of childcare. One of these proposals calls for easier background checks on prospective childcare workers.

"No government can love a child, and no policy can substitute for a family's care," said Clinton, "But there is much that we can do to help parents do their duty to their children."

The Working Women's Department of the AFL-CIO is organizing a "Working for Kids Day" on May 1st to support childcare legislation. In California only 2% of childcare centers and less than a third of licensed family childcare homes provide care during evenings, weekends and overnight. People who work hours other than 9 to 5 have great difficulty finding childcare.

GOP Opposition

Republican lawmakers object to Clinton's "discrimination" against families in which one parent decides to forgo a career and stay at home with the kids. California Representative Frank Riggs (R-Windsor) said he is "concerned the President's proposal reflects a bias against the more traditional American family, where one spouse remains at home for child-care purposes."

Write Your Congressman

Since this was floated as both an official federal budget item and as a trial balloon, it needs your support. Phone or write your congressman to let him or her know what you think. To find out who your congressperson is, phone Voter Registration at (562)462-2375 or look in the phone book under "U.S. Government Offices."

Former Labor Organizer Becomes
Speaker Of State Assembly

Antonio Villaraigosa, 44, an East L.A. Democrat, has been named speaker of the California State Assembly. He succeeded Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) on February 26th. Villaraigosa is the first Speaker from Los Angeles since 1974.

From "East Los" To Sacramento

Villaraigosa is very open about his roots. As a preschooler, he says, he watched his alcoholic father "beat my mother to a pulp, a bloody pulp. You never ever forget that." Villaraigosa was five when his father walked away from their two-room apartment in the City Terrace section of East L.A. He and his dad have had little contact since.

As a boy, Villaraigosa shined shoes, sold newspapers, boxed groceries. His mom, a secretary for a state agency, encouraged him to read. And read he did. "Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, 'Moby Dick', all that stuff," Villaraigosa points out. "I was a very well-read kid. I was just alienated, just lost. I got horrible grades."

He dropped out of Cathedral High School, "angry, hurt, disillusioned." He cruised Whittier Boulevard in a '66 low-rider Chevy Malibu with his friend Gil Cedillo. Cedillo was playing varsity football, but on Saturdays he was in a War on Poverty program called Upward Bound at UCLA. Villaraigosa drove him to UCLA and waited in the library, reading Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley.

Villaraigosa found his stride and went back to school - first Roosevelt High, graduating in 1971, then East L.A. Community College; then he ended up as Cedillo's roommate at UCLA where both graduated. Villaraigosa's degree was in history.

A Labor Organizer

Villaraigosa went on to become a labor organizer for United Teachers Los Angeles and for government workers. He was also president of the L.A. chapter of the ACLU before being elected to the State Assembly in 1994. His pal Gil Cedillo is now a fellow elected member of the State Assembly.

Three of Villaraigosa's Assembly bills have been widely reported. One provides health care for children of low-income workers, another gives women the right to breast-feed in public. A bill to strengthen state law barring discrimination of gays and lesbians failed to win approval.

Hi, Mom!

Given a turbulent youth, "I never in my grandest imagination could have believed that I'd be sitting here on the precipice of being the next Speaker of the state of California. But my mother did. She was -- what do you call it - the wind beneath my wings."