The Paradox of Skills: Using Training to Build Worker Power for Home-Based Child Care Providers
Access to this document is restricted. Some items have been embargoed at the request of the author, but will be made publicly available after the "No Access Until" date.
During the embargo period, you may request access to the item by clicking the link to the restricted file(s) and completing the request form. If we have contact information for a Cornell author, we will contact the author and request permission to provide access. If we do not have contact information for a Cornell author, or the author denies or does not respond to our inquiry, we will not be able to provide access. For more information, review our policies for restricted content.
This paper uses qualitative research to examine the appeal of labor-aligned workforce development as a strategy for child care workers to build power. It considers two paradoxes related to skills and work. First, the labor movement has embraced a skills agenda, even though training has historically benefited employers and individualized responsibility for improving working conditions. Second, skills have been central to an effort to professionalize child care, reinforcing care work as less valuable. Unions have bargained for funds for home-based child care providers to take classes and gain credentials in topics like early childhood education and business management. I argue that through training, home-based child care providers attempt to construct symbolic power that responds to the gendered and racialized devaluation of their labor. Training spaces allow unions to reach, recruit, and develop members, mobilizing them around the narrative that their labor is, in fact, skilled education. Skills are also leveraged externally to influence parents of young children and the state to treat child care providers with more respect and dignity. However, professionalization may paradoxically demobilize some bargaining unit members and undermine coalitional power with other workers in the care economy. This paper explores the tensions inherent in appeals to a hierarchy of skills, suggesting that training can play a supplemental role in union strategy by gathering child care workers, promoting solidarity, and uplifting the value of care.