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In 2007, the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) published Getting Organized: Unionizing Home-Based Child Care Providers, a report on the growing movement to enable home-based child care providers-a poorly paid and overwhelmingly female workforce-to join unions and negotiate with the state for better compensation and working conditions.
It found that the unionization of home-based child care providers, while a relatively new development, was gaining ground-and that it was a promising strategy for improving the treatment of these providers and increasing support for child care more generally. As of February 2007, unions had secured the right to organize and negotiate on behalf of home-based child care providers in seven states: Illinois, Washington State, Oregon, Iowa, New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
In 2010, NWLC released an update to Getting Organized that documented the continued growth and impact of the movement. As of early 2010, the number of states authorizing unions to represent home-based child care providers had doubled, with seven additional states authorizing them to organize and negotiate with the state-New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Maryland, Ohio, Maine, and New Mexico.
This 2013 Update reports on legal developments between early 2010 and October 2013 that expanded-or limited-authority for home-based child care providers to organize and negotiate with the state. It analyzes executive orders issued or reversed, legislation enacted or repealed, legislation passed but not enacted, and court rulings. This was a period of intense debate in several states over broader collective bargaining rights,and there were both advances and setbacks in the movement to organize home-based child care providers.