Montreal-area parents with children in home-based daycares had to make alternate arrangements Thursday morning.
Rotating half-day strikes by employees in a contract dispute with the provincial government are taking place across the province.
On Thursday Montreal, Laval and the South Shore were affected, as 400 home daycare operators protested in front of Family Minister Yolande James's Montreal offices.
Thousands of child care workers are in the middle of negotiating their first collective agreement with the provincial government.
Rosa Sabatelli says she and her fellow operators are stretched to the limit.
"I'm open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. I do ten hours a day," said Sabatelli. "I don't have any social protection and I have to do ten jobs at the same time."
In 2008 home daycare operators won the right to unionize, and have been trying to negotiate their first collective agreement since February 2010.
Currently they are paid $19/day per child on top of the $7/day they receive from parents.
They are asking for an additional $12/day to put them on an equal footing with the funding received by the larger centres de la petite enfance (CPE).
Gloria Upshaw estimates that when all is said and done, she gets paid about $2 an hour for every child under her care, while another home daycare operator, Anna Urbani, says many of her colleagues are considering a new career because of the low pay.
Thursday's demonstration was held outside the Montreal offices of Liberal Minister of Families Yolande James. She says she is sympathetic to the plight of the home daycare operators, but at the same time there are limits to what the government can do.
"We have to be able to always respect that we are dealing with tax dollars and there is a limited amount there," James said. "We have to find that balance."
If negotiations don't go anywhere, the home daycare operators will hold a day-long strike November 10.
