WAUWATOSA – At the NECA-IBEW training facility in Wauwatosa, the North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) as well as a number of Wisconsin leaders were in town on Wednesday, September 7, speaking about the next generation of skilled laborers in Wisconsin But beyond pipes and wiring, there was one thing on nearly every speaker’s minds: childcare.
It was at the forefront of governor Tony Evers’ mind especially, with the governor reiterating his call for a special session of the Wisconsin legislature to address a number of workforce challenges including childcare. With Wisconsin Republicans in control of both houses, that’s unlikely to lead anywhere, but in Milwaukee, NABTU is running a pilot program aimed at helping building tradespeople with childcare.
“These pilot programs provide subsidies for childcare services that work for working families,” said NABTU president Sean McGarvey.
The program is called Building Blocks, a collaboration between NABTU, the Milwaukee Building-Construction Trades Council, and EmpowHer Wisconsin. It’s one of only two pilot programs that NABTU is sponsoring in the country.
“I’m so proud that the building trades is trying to lead that way,” said President of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council Pam Fendt.
Lack of childcare for women in the workforce has been a problem in Wisconsin for decades .. Longtime U.S. Representative Gwen Moore shared her experience of begging to not get a raise at her first job in state government in Madison. – because she would lose the benefits that allowed her to send her kids to a childcare place she trusted back in Milwaukee where she lived.
Moore said even though the challenges women are facing today are similar, it’s a different time.
“It’s not like it used to be where you can just put your babies in your grandma’s house and she’d just rock your baby while you go to work,” she said. “Because Grandma is working!”
Both Evers and the NABTU leaders are emphasizing the importance of workforce development .. and including diverse types of people. They’re looking especially to increase the number of women in the workforce like Ashley Sueda. Sueda is a journeywoman laborer for Local 113. She’s struggled to balance her early morning start time and the need for childcare for her two-year-old son.
“I start at 6 a.m. and my day care will not open the doors a minute before 6,” she said. “So, I am stuck with being late every day.”
Molly Daly is a current apprentice sprinkler fitter with Local 183. She says both her and her husband are in the building trades and they’re facing problems too
“Some of the places that we had looked at that had early start times were further away which added more chaos to our morning routine,” she said. “Trying to wake up a six-year-old and take him to that is beyond difficult.”
Both Sueda and Daly are helped by the Building Blocks program … but that’s just one small program in the face of a looming crisis. The federally funded Child Care Counts, a pandemic era program, will run out of funds by January 2024, and there’s a lot of partisan disagreement on the way forward in WI
But whether it’s Governor Evers and the GOP in the legislature, Congresswoman Moore in the halls of the US Capitol, or NABTU working on their program in Milwaukee, childcare is a problem that leaders across the state country are trying to figure out the solution for.
