Parents, reclaim the Kita fees!
Kita-strike - why pay the parents?
Following failed collective bargaining for educators and social workers in municipal facilities, the unions have voted in favor of indefinite strikes in the daycare centers. From Friday on, many kindergartens in Germany will be closed.
This puts pressure on the parents who are in need of childcare. The municipalities, on the other hand, even save money through the strike, as lawyer and blogger Nina Straßner explains in an interview with ChroniquesDuVasteMonde MOM. She therefore calls on the parents to defend themselves - in their own interest and in support of the educators.
Nina Straßner is a lawyer and mediator. On her blog Juramama she writes about legal topics that are interesting for families.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde MOM: With a strike employers should come under pressure. Why does not the bill at the Kita strikes on?
Nina Straßner: A strike is usually a very effective and important means of combating employers for putting them in an economic predicament. But this only works where the employer is also a business enterprise and has to think in these structures in order to survive.
But the municipal bearers of kindergartens are not just commercial enterprises. They are tax-financed, have no clients, contractors or customers who want their money back or compensation and thus threaten to place their orders elsewhere. They do not even have a reputation to lose that would be relevant to their economic survival. If the employer, as in the case of the stricken kindergartens, is the so-called public sector, such a strike day is "business as usual" without economic consequences. A stark contrast to a strike day for Lufthansa, for example.
You say that the educators' employers even benefit from the strikes - how can that be?
In connection with the day-care centers, the actual direction of a strike is turned into an absurd direction, since in most communities the day-care centers cost (much) money. On each day of the strike, the municipalities retain the wages of the striking educators. That's legally legitimate.
The fees of the parents but keep the municipalities but in most cases, too. That's not always legally legitimate. This creates a situation for the person who is supposed to come under pressure from the strike, which puts him financially better rather than worse: no reward for the educators. No costs for the food of hundreds of children. Nevertheless, the full fees for these days from the parents.
So every strike day is a nice day for the city treasury and a bad day for the paying parents, who stand for nothing and often have additional expenses for alternative care or a day less vacation or salary.
What can parents do for the strike to strike the right people?
I'll say it with a slightly flat example: If a parking garage in which one has rented a long-term parking space for expensive money, because of disputes between the operator and the car park guards closed individual days or even weeks, everyone would immediately realize what they would do: you would be mad, would demand their money back from the operator, in case of doubt charge the fees and the additional parking costs and finally terminate the parking.
It would be written in the terms and conditions of the parking garage: 'The parking garage may keep the rent, even if it is closed', we would find that scandalous. But if the community support of the day-care centers does the same thing in their statutes, we just take it that way.
My appeal to the parents is therefore: Demands the fees for the closing days back and sometimes even the statute in question or thinks about a claim of additional costs.
Are we parents so far too "nationally"?
Yes, just imagine that the train would not refund the tickets during the strike. There would be a lot of mood in the booth. If the city does the same thing, everyone submits, 'because it's there'.
But just because something is in a statute - for example, that special closing times of the day-care centers are unlimited fee - it is not automatically legally durable or court-proof. This is ultimately decided by the courts, not the municipalities, who have written it in their own favor.
But a court can only decide something if asked. We have to do that.
Do we even help the educators when we parents interfere?
The kindergarten teachers that I know have been grateful for every engagement of their parents.Because it is the only chance to build the pressure where the educators need him to achieve their goals.
This not only increases the financial pressure on the municipalities, it also creates a heavy workload for the clerks, who then complain to the decision-makers. Only in this way will a chain be set in motion so that these kindergarten strikes actually lead to a wage increase and better conditions.
Read more about Kita-strike on Nina Straßner's blog juramama.de.
