Dr. Justine Modica discusses the Worthy Wages movement centered in Seattle from the 1980s through the 2000s. Affiliated with SEIU, daycare directors and childcare workers in childcare centers and home-based daycares joined together to raise public awareness of the underfunding of daycare and lobby for increased state childcare subsidies, hoping to increase the wages and retention of skilled workers in a lowly-paid but critical field.

Modica is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Cornell University. She authored the article, “Worthy Wages in the Emerald City: Worker- and Director-Led Childcare Movements in Seattle, 1984–2006,” and is writing a book examining how the government, employers, and families have shaped childcare as wage labor.

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