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TORONTO – With Ontario already facing a severe labour shortage, each and every barrier to entering the skilled trades must be examined closely.

One particular hurdle that is standing in the way is child care access, which has led one union to dive into the topic further with the launch of the

With support from Ontario’s Skills Development Fund, the union conducted research on specific barriers to child care access for tradespeople and consulted with more than 30 stakeholder organizations, partners and experts, including Local 506 members.

The report, entitled which was prepared by Medow Consulting, showed a number of factors that make accessing child care more of a challenge for tradespeople.

These include:

• Early start times.
• Overtime start and end times, which can be unpredictable.
• Regularly changing worksites with differing amounts of time needed to get to work.
• Time-limited projects for multiple contractors.
• Unexpected last-minute changes, including due to weather.
• Periods off work in-between jobs.
• Child care centres are generally designed to operate around the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday.

The report came up with 20 recommendations that were targeted to specific stakeholders, governments and partners, and were designed to help identify the options that will meet the needs of skilled tradespeople in different places and situations.

Some of those recommendations include:

• Extending hours at existing child care centres.
• Aligning licensed home-based care to skilled tradespeople’s needs and potentially recruiting providers from among building trades families.
• Developing new onsite child care centres at megaprojects.
• Founding union-owned child care provider organizations.
• Leveraging union properties to provide new location options.

“There is no one right direction, and, ultimately, a range of pathways will be required to meet the needs of skilled tradespeople, who themselves have diverse needs, depending on their trades, schedules, work patterns and family situations,” the report notes.

To read the report in its entirety