Fighting for Nurseries

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OUR NURSERYS AYSIOK.

Dartmouth Park Hill, Londo VW5 1HR Printed by An Printers L Lona Equal Pay Act, Sex Discrimination Act, Employment Protection Act, better democratic rights which remain paper thin while the facilities women need are not only thinly provided but are even being cut back by successive government cuts programmes.+ A woman with children cannot begin to take up her rights for a job, decent wages and working conditions until her children are cared for.

School for most children does not start until the age of 5 and even then the school hours are shorter than most working hours.

State nursery facilities exist for the very few and these are being reduced year by year.

In 1978 a TUC working party produced an important document on the Under Fives which was later adopted in a limited form by the TUC Congress and reprinted as the "TUC charter on Facilities for the Under 5's"

The original report took a principled stand on the question of women's right to work, as well as children's and parents' rights to state-provided nursery education and care.

It quoted a 1974 survey showing that 72% of parents of 2 year olds wanted state day care and 91% wanted facilities for 4 year olds.

Against this the Report examines the meagre actual facilities which exist and looks in detail at day nurseries, child minders, nursery schools and classes, work place nurseries as well as playgroups and mother and toddler clubs.

66% of women have children aged between 0-15 and the vast majority are forced to remain in the role of wife and mother, denied financial independence and social status and contact with the organisations of the working class.

Lack of child care provision forces may women to seek individual stop-gap solutions which conceal the real problem and often impede the social and educational development of the child.

These solutions include child minding and home workingboth types • of work being usually non-unionised and uninsured.

Over 250,000 women are forced in this way to work alone and paying the costs of using their own homes as business premises.

Where social services departments do provide day nurseries these are means-tested and usually only available for single parents or in cases of some sort of severe deprivation.

The Report shows how the problems women face due to lack of childcare has driven them into shift working in low paid, ill-organised industries.

In 1967 the Plowden report recommended a policy of universal provision of nursery education as a major educational and social priority.

In 1972 the Tory government White Paper "Education, a Framework for Expansion" proposed massive expansion of the 'nursery education service through to the 1980s'.

Yet over the last ten years the nursery service has declined and children now have a smaller chance of preschool education than in 1900.

This is because successive government cuts, begun by the Tories in 1973, have cut the nursery budget more savagely than in any other area of public spending.

Many local authorities now do not even take up the meagre government grants for nursery building because they refuse to face the expenses of running and staffing them themselves.

CLOSURES In many counties newly built classes are lying empty and unused and some councils, such as Oxford, are even closing their existing nursery classes.

The TUC Charter has no recommendations on how these cuts should be fought or on how the trade union movement will bring about the massive expansion in the under 5's service which it correctly recommends.

We say that threatened closures must be met with occupations by the teachers, ancillary staff and parents and supported by the local trade union movement.

This is how the closure of the South Oxford Nursery Class was challenged in March and April 1978-a six-week occupation which attracted immense support throughout the whole county of Oxford.

But occupations are doomed to failure if the parents and workers are left to fight alone. The leaders of the trade unions directly involved in the jobs lost-such as NUPE, NALGO and the NUT must call supporting strike action to force the local council to change its plans and lift the axe.

It was the failure on the part of these union leaders in Oxford to support the occupation in this way that allowed the county council to send in the bailiffs and evict the occupation.

Time after time we have seen cuts carried out in the health, education and social services against the wishes of all concerned simply by the collaboration of these union leaders whose biggest fear is to lose control of a determined campaign by their membership to stop the cuts.

Woman Worker welcomes the TUC Charter on the Under Fives and is urging all trade unions to take up an active campaign on the question.

We welcome the initiatives taken by the South East Region TUC, Oxford Trades Council and Leicester Trades Council (see details below) in holding XFORD TRADES COUNCIL CONFERENCE TUC Under-fi' Charter Sunday July 8 OCCR Hall Princes Street and the NUT among others day conferences on the Report. We urge these conferences to adopt the following points of programme:

1) All cuts and closures must be opposed-if necessary by occupations and strike action.

2) All new nursery schools and classes must be opened.

3) The books of local authorities must be opened to elected committees from the labour movement including nursery campaigns, etc to expose the profiteering of private firms and banks.

4) No, use by the private sector of public funds, premises or equipment.

5) An inquiry by the local labour and trade union movement, together with parents, into the facilities and the needs of parents and children.

6) Unions particularly involved in the service for the Under Fives such as NUPE, NALGO, NUT, etc., be effectively organised and committed to the above policies.

SERTUC

CONFERENCE "Care of the Under Fives"

Saturday 30 June 1979 Congress House, Great Russell St, London WCI Credentials (50p) from Jim Watson, 106 Mount View Road, London N4 Speakers:

Arthur Latham, Chairman, London Labour Party Reg Race, NUPE Margaret Cohen, National Campaign for Nursery Education Chair: Tess Gill, NCCL

----- pull-quotes -----

maternity leave conditions etc., are all fine words giving

DONT CUT US

occupation of the South Oxford nursery class, April 1978

Speakers from Oxfor City Nursery Campaig