UPDATE: End of Day; Still No Pay for Strikers

Picketers were expecting to get their paycheck this morning from the owner of a child-care center that closed on Tuesday in Urbandale, according to the center's two co-directors.

They still haven't been paid. 

Co-directors Jamie Schillinger and Allison Little received a text from a parent who told them that Imagination and Education Station owner Theresa Mulhern agreed in a shareholder meeting last night to pay the workers this morning. They declined to name the parent.

Parents shared their frustrations with Urbandale Patch about .

More than a dozen child-care workers huddled Wednesday morning under blankets and umbrellas as the rain ran the ink on their picket signs.

The women were in their third day of protesting for not getting paid at Imagination and Education Station, which closed its Urbandale location earlier this week because of the walkout.

"We have kids. We've got bills. We need our paychecks," said Patty Foley, a cook at the center.

A sign posted at the on Tuesday said that center would be closed indefinitely "due to the walkout" and directed parents to take their children to the West Des Moines center at 720 S. 68th Street, in the Jordan Creek Mall area.

Mulhern has not returned phone calls or e-mails from Patch.com. However, the sign posted on the Urbandale center door blamed low-reimbursement by the state of Iowa for families that receive child-care assistance.

Schillinger said workers have not been been notified that they are fired.

"We're still working. Out here on the curb every day," she said. "We've had paycheck after paycheck bounce."

Schillinger said a group of employees went to the center together at 6 a.m. Monday to get their paychecks, which were supposed to come out the previous Friday. She said if they had been paid, they would have worked. 

However, she said, although Mulhern had earlier blamed a computer glitch, saying there would be a one-day delay, they were not paid. She said Mulhern had called Urbandale police and workers were escorted off the property.

Schillinger said most workers are hoping to be paid and to go back to work. Not all employees feel that way, though. Some have simply quit, she said.

Little said the two centers had 78 full-time and part-time employees and 260 children in care.