Kathleen Wynne announces pay raise for early childhood educators

Posted on January 19, 2015 in Equality Debates

TheStar.com – news/Queen’s Park – Premier Kathleen Wynne announced Monday that early childhood educators working at licensed centres are getting a $1-an-hour increase this month.
Jan 19 2015.   By: Richard J. Brennan, Provincial Politics

Premier Kathleen Wynne announced Monday that early childhood educators working at licensed centres are getting a $1-an-hour increase this month and another dollar hike next year.

“Let’s not pretend that your work has always been valued as it should be. We know that it has not so today I am very proud to announce we have taken action to increase wages for early childhood educators and front line child care professionals in licensed child care setting,” Wynne said speaking in Kingston, Ont.

The wage increases were outlined in last year’s budget in an effort to close the gap between early childhood educators working in the publicly-funded education system and those in the licensed child care sector.

“It’s time to bridge that gap,” she said.

However, it is up to the licensed child care centre operators to apply for the provincial funding. Only workers making less than $26.27 an hour will be eligible for the bump up. The budget set aside $269 million in funding over three years.

“Closing the wage gap means that licensed child care operators can hire and keep the best early childhood educators possible. It means more parents will have the confidence that they are getting high quality child care,” Wynne said.

There are more than 5,000 licensed child care centres across Ontario. And according to the education ministry, since 2003 access to licensed child care has grown by more than 130,000 spaces.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2015/01/19/kathleen-wynne-announces-pay-raise-for-early-childhood-educators.html >

Tags: , , ,

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2015 at 11:59 am and is filed under Equality Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply