As someone who works long, unpredictable shifts at a Toronto-area hospital, Clarisa Gallegos does not know what she will do for daycare for her three-year-old son if the strike at Ideal Child Services Group (ICSG) drags on. CUPE Local 2484, which represents more than 700 child-care workers in Toronto, says its ICSG members were locked out Monday morning. ICSG has five child-care centres in the city: Baycrest Child Care Centre at 50 Ameer Ave., BonAventure Child Care Centre at 295 Dufferin St., Children Are People Child Care Centre at 272 Codsell Ave., Pineway Childcare Learning Centre at 110 Pineway Blvd., and Tumpane Child Care Centre at 48 Tumpane St. The union says ICSG “refused to respond to the latest proposals” presented in September, and that it’s fighting for fair wages, protections when workers become sick or injured, and consistent staffing practices. The labour and employment counsel for ICSG, Madeleine Loewenberg, said in a statement to CTV News Toronto that the organization is confident it will reach a deal and have services resume. “ICSG’s sole priority is to ensure the care and support of the children and families it supports,” Loewenberg wrote in an email. But in the meantime the sudden closure of five child care centres has left many parents scrambling to find alternative care. ‘I’ve been stressed’ Gallegos, an X-ray technician, says she and her husband, who works in fire safety, can’t work from home and have fluctuating hours, so they rely on The Children Are People daycare centre. She says ICSG confirmed there would be a labour disruption around 10 p.m. on Sunday, with the centre closed the following morning. The panic then sunk in. “I’ve been stressed since hearing about it because we don’t have any options for care,” Gallegos said in an interview with CTV News Toronto. “Both our mothers have passed, and our dads are out of town, and then all our friends and family that are kind of close, they also work. You can’t ask them to take that time off.” Gallegos says she has some flexibility taking vacation days, but it is still hard to find colleagues to cover shifts at a hospital teemed with staffing shortages. She’s trying to see if she can swap into evening shifts for the time being but says it is not a simple process given that she’s a specialized technician in the mammography department. “So, I have to find somebody who does X-ray to switch with me, and then get into evening,” Gallegos said. Subodh Prabhu says his 13-month old son had only been attending BonAventure Child Care Centre on Dufferin Street for exactly a week after coming off the waitlist. He says when he dropped off signed forms on Sept. 23, he was told for the first time a strike could happen soon. “I have already … signed away all the documents, and obviously that was a big concern for me,” Prabhu said. “There’s no way for me to go back to the previous childcare even if I want to because they have already given the spot to someone else.” Prabhu and his wife have found an alternative centre but it will cost him $1,300 for the next two weeks, before that daycare swaps to a week-to-week basis. The father is concerned about how another change will impact his infant son, who will now have cycled through three child-care centres over the last month. “It’s gonna be hard, like now he’s again transitioning. He was transitioning last week, now he’s transitioning this week,” Prabhu said. “Now we are in this position where we really don’t know what to do because there are no clear timelines.” While Prabhu empathizes with the child-care workers, he says has been soured by ICSG. Arman Afkhami, whose 14-month-old daughter also attends BonAventure, has not. Even though Afkhami and his wife are shuffling their schedules and improvising child-care for now—a solution he says can only be temporary for them—they are in support of the union and its workers. “We are behind getting a resolution to hopefully be able to bring our children back to an awesome centre that provides awesome care and awesome education to our kids, they’re like part of our family,” Afkhami said, pointing to how the tears were flowing when their three-year-old son graduated from that same child-care centre. “Just walking a mile in their shows, I can’t handle my own two kids at six hours at a time—and they’re mine and I like them a lot—I can’t even imagine a group of 10, 20 toddlers running around, and they are miracle workers and deserve all the recognition.”
