In California, childcare workers, those who teach and care for the state’s youngest residents, earn a median wage of less than $16 an hour.
That’s half as much as elementary and middle school teachers’ median salaries, and $10 below the median wage for all workers in the state, according to the UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Childcare Employment.
Those low wages, for work that one advocate calls “the backbone of our country,” are just one concern childcare providers and advocates called attention to during a “Day Without Childcare” on Monday, when some childcare providers chose to shut their doors and participate in a one-day strike. The group gathered in downtown Oakland Monday morning for the fifth annual day of action, with signs and chants about issues such as the low wages for caregivers and high costs for parents and providers…