Washington § 49.98.010 - Findings.

(1) The legislature finds and declares the following:

(a) High quality child care and early learning enable parents to go to work, keeping the economy going at all levels and returning six dollars in value for every one dollar invested. High quality early learning services help prepare children for success in school and in life. A high quality child care and early learning system depends on a thriving, healthy, and competitively compensated workforce. Current conditions for child care workers have resulted in lack of access, unaffordable prices, and poorer outcomes for children and families;

(b) Low compensation and poor working conditions impair the health, efficiency, and well-being of persons employed to provide child care, constitute unfair competition against other employers and their employees, threaten the stability of the child care market, create economic instability for providers, and result in a provider workforce that must rely in public and private assistance to support their own families;

(c) The fissured nature of child care workplaces exacerbates these conditions and create barriers preventing workers from being able to address these problems on their own; and

(d) Employment under these conditions threatens the health and well-being of the people of Washington and injures the overall economy.

(2) Therefore, it is the declared policy of the state that such working conditions for child care workers be eliminated as rapidly as practicable through establishment of a workforce standards board comprised of employer and worker representatives and state agency representatives to recommend minimum compensation and other employment standards.