In what was a pivotal moment in its two-year organizing drive, the UFT on May 17, 2007, handed in more than 12,000 cards signed by home-based child care providers indicating these workers wanted the union to represent them. 

Then-UFT President Randi Weingarten, along with elected officials and labor leaders, delivered the cards to the State Employment Relations Board in red wagons.

The action came six days after then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer signed an executive order permitting the providers to unionize.

Three months later, in August, the state board announced it had certified the cards. And following an intense door-knocking campaign, phone banks and get-out-the-vote rallies, the city’s 28,000 providers voted overwhelmingly in October to join the UFT.