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In 2025, SMART launched its partnership with TOOTRiS, offering United States sheet metal members at participating local unions access to affordable, on-demand child care options that match their schedules, locations and other needs.

SMART has continued working with TOOTRiS and other organizations in the months since, aiming to bolster the support that members can receive. And now, Local 85 (Atlanta, Ga.) has an expanded partnership with TOOTRiS, offering members the existing benefit and providing apprentices monthly child care subsidies — delivering added support during the years when new members of our union are just starting their careers.

Local 85 apprentice Kristopher Baxter is currently in the second year of his apprenticeship. He and his wife, Brittany, are parents of three young children — raising a family as costs rise across the country. Local 85’s new child care benefit is helping them manage the long commutes, demanding schedules and increasing costs of providing for a young family in 2026.

Because the stipend is applied per child, the impact for their family is multiplied.

“It’s truly been an amazing experience,” said Brittany Baxter. “Child care is extremely expensive, tutoring is expensive, and to have a benefit that not only helps us pay for it, but also helps us search and choose providers on an easy-to-use platform takes away so much stress.”

“It helps us catch up on bills, save money, and not feel like you’re suffocating because bills don’t stop,” Kristopher added.

Under the program, Local 85 is providing graduated monthly child care stipends based on year of apprenticeship, applied per child:

  • Year one: $400 per month
  • Year two: $300 per month
  • Year three: $200 per month
  • Year four: $100 per month

“We see how hard our apprentices are working to build a life and a career at the same time,” said Steve Langley, Local 85 business manager and SMART general vice president. “If we can ease even one of the pressures they’re carrying, especially for working parents, that’s worth doing. This is about standing behind our members when it matters most.”

Expanding on a groundbreaking benefit

Local 85’s benefit is an expansion of SMART and TOOTRiS’s groundbreaking partnership, which is available to SMART sheet metal members at participating U.S. locals.

Ordinarily, access to TOOTRiS’s program costs $24.99 per month. For SMART sheet metal members at participating local unions, the program cost is covered by funding from the SMART International, giving them real-time access to licensed child care providers in urban and rural areas; search features tailored for special needs care and flexible scheduling; and multilingual support through TOOTRiS’s app and website.

In addition to the platform, TOOTRiS’s concierge service offers members personalized assistance in helping to locate providers that meet their needs and work schedules, including very early hours, swing shifts and more. Providers are licensed and regularly reevaluated utilizing state licensing data to ensure they meet stringent quality standards, giving members peace of mind when searching for care.

In the months since, SMART and TOOTRiS have worked together to identify opportunities to improve that benefit offering, from potential grant opportunities to local market potential.

Local 85’s partnership with TOOTRiS is just one example.

“We’re in it to help people,” Langley concluded. “We’re in it to make our communities better, and to help the people that need help.”

Across the United States, working parents — includ­ing SMART members — are facing a child care crisis. Whether from the cost or the lack of avail­ability, trying to find child care can put working Americans’ lives on hold, impacting their ability to pursue their career, grow their family and more.

That’s why SMART partnered with TOOTRiS to offer members at participating U.S. sheet metal locals access to wraparound child care benefits. And for Local 3 (Omaha, Neb.) member Tanner Tieken, that benefit has already made a difference.

“It [TOOTRiS] was probably one of the best customer experi­ences I’ve had, working with any company,” he said.

Local 3 member Tanner Tieken

With the TOOTRiS child care benefit, members can access more than 200,000 licensed child care providers nationwide via TOOTRiS’s state-of-the-art plat­form, including programs offering non-traditional hours, drop-in care and 24/7 availability. TOOTRiS technology — accessible to members for free via the TOOTRiS app or online — allows parents to search, compare and enroll in care based on real-time availability tailored to their needs, making it easier to find affordable options that work for them.

Perhaps most importantly, as Tieken pointed out, the TOOTRiS concierge service offers prompt, personalized assistance, whether trying to find summer camp a year in advance or dealing with a child care need at an unex­pected time. That means that members who prefer not to use technology have a dedicated service that has their backs: real people helping them find the care they need.

“It was timely,” Tieken said. “It wasn’t like I waited, asked a question and waited three hours. It was at most maybe 30 minutes.”

Child care crisis hits home across the U.S.

In a 2024 report, the advocacy group Kids Count in Nebraska revealed that “a full year of tuition and fees… at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln was cheaper than sending an infant to center-based care in 2021.”

Meanwhile, Nebraska Extension and We Care for Kids reported that 31% of parents with children five and under said that they left the workforce because they couldn’t find affordable child care; 34% of parents with children five and under said they refused a job opportunity, promotion or change because it would increase child care expenses; and that inadequate access to child care and early learning costs Nebraska families, businesses and state tax revenues nearly $745 million annually in direct losses.

Before making use of his child care benefit, Tieken said he and his family had experiences that backed up those reports.

“You almost feel like you want to wait until preschool before you try to go to another [kid,] number two. I’m just working to pay for daycare at that point,” he explained, adding: “I think that that’s kind of the contributor to the rise of a single-income household with a stay-at-home mom or dad. Because if you run the numbers sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense to be away from your kid that long, and you’re not really financially benefiting from [both parents working].”

TOOTRiS benefit makes a difference

Tieken was the first member at Local 3 to sign up for the TOOTRiS benefit. Not only is it making a difference for him and his family; he said it shows SMART’s commit­ment to helping members in any way possible.

“[SMART] sees where the struggle is,” Tieken noted. “Obviously, with today’s market and inflation and all that, everything’s going up in price. So obviously [SMART] can’t do too much about that; can’t pay everyone $100 an hour, it’s not feasible, not possible — the world would shut down, businesses would close — but [SMART is saying] we can help you out with something like child care.”