Sian Davis thinks that parliamentary candidates are evading their responsibilities by not talking about childcare costs.
Together with housing, across Greater East London the biggest problem for working class parents is paying for childcare. With nurseries costing around £50 a day, on a standard eight hour working day the first £6.25 you earn every hour goes on childcare. This means even on a £13 per hour wage you are in effect still earning just over the minimum wage, once you have taken care of childcare costs. For many parents it’s simply not worth working unless there are friends or family who can look after their children whilst they are at work.
In this context, many parents will be reading party manifestos and basing who they vote for in the general election on the party that promises to do most to lower childcare costs. But they may have to look long and hard to find anything solid on which to base their decision: the cost of childcare is yet to make an appearance on the main stage of the election.
To illustrate the scale of the problem, I spoke to a young woman from South Woodham Ferrers, Essex. (Yes, Essex, where supposedly everyone is prosperous enough to lounge around getting a tan and having their hair done.) She is a single mum of two boys under 10, who works for her local ASDA. She reported that working was fine during term time but that the nursery fees during half term cost more than she earns. However, she has no choice but to pay to work during half-term, since the company does not allow her to take enough holidays during school holidays, nor is she allowed to take unpaid leave at this time, it being one of the busiest times of the year for supermarkets. This means she must choose to pay to work, or lose her job completely.
But the problems don’t end there. Childcare is expensive for good reason. A nursery must have numerous facilities for children; not to mention the rent to be paid on the building, and (relatively high) wages for (high quality) staff. Lowering the price of childcare in order to make working worthwhile for parents is no good if it compromises the wages of the people looking after their children, which in turn would only compromise the quality and qualifications of the people doing the looking after. In order to be employed at a nursery you need qualifications and must be CRB checked; many are also first aid trained. None of this is cheap.
So the call is for the government to subsidise nurseries, in order to make it worthwhile for both the nurseries and working parents. But the underlying issue is that the only way government will be able to pay for this would be out of taxes, which then would come out of both the nursery workers and the working parents’ wages. Overall, it’s a difficult situation, bordering on a vicious circle.
If the politicians can’t break it (and there’s little sign of them even trying to), maybe it’s time for the private sector to step in and take some responsibility for the welfare of female employees and their families.