Report: Business could do more for children

Thursday, Feb. 18, 1999 | 11:12 a.m.

Businesses could do more to provide child care for employees, says the head of the Nevada Institute for Children.

What those options are will be the focus of the fifth and final report in a series of studies by the UNLV-based institute in late March.

Executive Director Vince Juaristi said the report will look at "various incentives that will help businesses provide on-site child care."

It also will examine the possibility of providing child-care vouchers for employees and look at things small businesses can do to help solve the child-care problems that face their employees.

Information in the five reports is being used as a basis for testimony by child-care officials speaking before the state Legislature and by legislators drafting child-care legislation. The reports were produced at the request of the state Department of Human Resources.

The institute's comprehensive study began in September.

The first two reports, released in early January, focused on quality of child care and the effects of child-care subsidies.

The second two reports, released Tuesday, focused on the low incomes of child-care workers -- an average of $6.46 an hour.

At those wages, a child-care worker earns $13,440 a year, which is below the federal poverty level for a family of three, Juaristi said.

He said it would cost Nevada $33.5 million a year to increase the wages of the workers to $12 an hour, "a level commensurate with the skills and educational levels needed to do the job well."

The report also notes the lack of health care benefits, vacation time and sick leave for many child-care workers, and it proposes ways to increase their income.

"It really comes down to a question of priorities," Juaristi said. "If we want competent, qualified people to seek those child-care jobs and then stay in those jobs so that our children are receiving some continuity of care, we clearly are going to have to improve their pay and benefits."

Though the costs are high, Juaristi said the institute suggests ways to raise the money, including:

* Earmark money from existing cigarette, tobacco, liquor and property taxes.

* Establish a Business-Child Care Board that would help create employer-based child-care opportunities.

* Allow businesses the option of setting aside a designated percentage of their business tax.

* Shift state budget priorities through a state ballot initiative.

Providing health care benefits for Nevada child-care workers would cost $1.4 million a year, according to the reports, which are based in part on a survey conducted by UNLV's Cannon Center for Survey Research.

The Cannon survey revealed that 65 percent of child-care workers have no health benefits, 55.7 percent have no sick leave, 30.5 percent have no paid vacation and 82 percent have no retirement benefits.

James Frey, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, which houses the Cannon Center, said the research confirms the obvious -- "that a group of very important workers, child-care employees, is inadequately compensated."

"It shows that we are taking chances with a segment of Nevada's children by not doing all we can to ensure that these children are in the care of the most qualified people," Frey said.