Certified teachers, teacher’s assistants, health aides, social service aides, cooks, and more across five Ada McKinley Head Start sites have voted to join together in the Child Care and Early Learning division of SEIU HCII!

Teacher's Assistant Denetia Daniels

Teacher’s Assistant Denetia Daniels helped to educate and motivate her coworkers to win.

“I knocked on doors with organizers and helped get meetings together to educate my team about what they could expect,” said Denetia. “I knew the change was important and that we needed to stand up, not just for ourselves, but for each other.”

An organized workforce will help improve the quality of Head Start and Child Care by expanding the number of voices calling for more investments in the programs, and that will ultimately lead to more resources for parents and children. Workers realize that they’re part of the fight to attract more funding to the programs in the long run. And in the short run, organizing allows them to address workforce inequities that should be fixed today.

“Having a network definitely made us stronger. It was easy to get distracted when bosses tried to stand in our way, like by telling us to take off our SEIU shirts on t-shirt day, but being able to look across the room and see our coworkers wearing SEIU shirts helped us to stick together,” Denetia said.

Now that Ada McKinley workers have won their union, they’ll have the power to fight for higher standards for workers, better child-teacher ratios, dignity and respect, and more.

“I’m excited to be able to hold management accountable and to make things fair for everyone across the board,” Denetia said.

Please welcome our newest members!