On Wednesday our Child Care Workers are Worth More! campaign won the 2025 Good Fight Prize, a $50,000 award for “fearless campaigns for decent work” from the Atkinson Foundation.
The campaign was a collaboration between the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and all of our members, partners and allies. By engaging thousands of Ontarians, our campaign helped boost the wage floor for RECEs from $18 per hour, to the current floor of $24.86, while advancing our calls for a wage grid, benefits and pension plans.
The prize’s jury noted the campaign’s “perseverance, creativity and breadth of organizing.”
On accepting the award, OCBCC’s Policy Coordinator, Carolyn Ferns, said, “We made a choice to build a campaign that treated early childhood educators’ talents that are often overlooked and undervalued — care, connection, play and parachute games, silliness and storytime — as important skills in political advocacy,”
This prize money is going straight into launching a new campaign that keeps fighting for a wage grid, benefits and pensions in child care. We need the Ontario and federal governments to commit to an early learning and child care system that’s affordable for families and ensures decent work for the people that make that care happen. $10aDay and decent pay for all!
A huge THANK YOU to all of our members, supporters, and folks that took part in the campaign! We are honoured to fight the good fight alongside all of you.