Child Care Workers at The Leaguers Need Your Support!

 Tell Veronica Ray to NEGOTIATE!

My name is Marlon and I am a teacher at The Leaguers, New Jersey's oldest, African-American, social-service agency. In June, more than 200 of my colleagues at The Leaguers voted overwhelmingly to join CWA Local 1037. When we voted to build our union, we joined more than 200 other child care center workers in Newark who have organized to improve working conditions and the learning conditions for the children we educate daily.

But to uplift our children and improve our jobs, we need your support! Please sign our petition to demand that Veronica Ray, the Executive Director of The Leaguers, sit down and negotiate with us in good faith!

Our Sisters and Brothers who work at child care centers run by La Casa de Don Pedro and the Unified Vailsburg Services Organization have started negotiating their first contract. But our boss, Veronica Ray, has not offered any dates to sit down and negotiate with us.

Instead Veronica Ray has refused to pay us our annual cost of living increase. She has increased the cost of our health insurance coverage. She has altered our retirement plan, and she failed to pay us properly for the hours we work. Since our union election, 54 of my colleagues have filed Wage & Hour violation complaints against her. And just today, we filed an Unfair Labor Practice with the National Labor Relations Board.

SIGN OUR PETITION and support our efforts to improve our working conditions AND to improve the learning the conditions for the more than 1,000 children we care for in Newark, Elizabeth, Roselle, and Irvington! TELL VERONICA RAY TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND NEGOTIATE A CONTRACT WITH US!

As members of CWA 1037, we are fighters! And we need YOU - the community – to stand alongside us! SIGN THE PETITION and tell Veronica Ray that you stand with us, the children we serve and the thousands of working parents who rely on us!

Child care workers are organizing all across the country. From California to New Mexico and in  the Garden State, we are building a movement to demand dignity, respect and living wages for the important work we do. As our movement grows, we have built alliances with parents, teachers, and early childhood education advocates to demand more resources for affordable, quality child care programs for working families. When we win, so do our children!