The next labor war in Massachusetts won't be fought over shop floors or hospital wards. This one is going to revolve around a place that has formerly seen only modest union participation : the day care center.

Advocates and critics crowded the state House Tuesday as the Legislature's public service council conducted a public hearing on a radical piece of legislation.

This bill would permit kid care employees at personal centers that accept state assistance to be represented by a new joint venture backed by the country's 2 big teachers unions. The new union, to be called the Massachusetts Infancy Educators Union, would barter incomes and benefits immediately with the state on behalf of as much as Ten thousand kid care employees.

Membership in this union wouldn't occur overnite. However it would still happen swiftly, at least as these things go. There would be no need to organise at every location. Instead, the bill permits union supporters to employ a card-check system created for public staff by a 2007 state law. The activists would just need signatures from a majority of all employees who could have eligibility for illustration to put the new union into effect.

The Massachusetts Teachers Organisation and the american Federation of Teachers ' Massachusetts chapter say the bill would provide badly-needed improvements to kid care workers ' pay levels, education and career ladders.

But a coalition of YMCAs, Boys