The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the Vancouver Columbian.

Foster parents save kids when other families fail them. They give them shelter. They feed them when they are hungry. They are companions to the lonely.

For all these reasons, citizens should speak out against the move to make foster parenting a formal profession with union representation.

A full-time foster parent in Olympia, whose business card carries the title “professional parent,” is trying to recruit her foster parent peers to join a labor union. That would win foster parents the right to bargain with the state over pay, rules, etc. The effort is unprecedented and is being watched by other states’ foster parents and labor organizations that always welcome more numbers. But Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, a former foster parent himself, is right when he says that unionizing foster parents runs contrary to the volunteer nature of caring for children.

“From my perspective, the whole idea of opening your home to children that need parental role models is one of volunteerism and not one of employment,” Zarelli told Associated Press reporter Curt Woodward. He added, “You don’t do it for what you get, other than directly from the kids in the form of appreciation.”

Even still, taxpayers do give these caring people something for their massive effort. Kathy Spears with the Department of Social and Health Services told us recently that the pay for taking on a foster child runs from $369 per month to $1,300 per month based on a child’s age and level of need. (Younger kids receive less per month. Older children and those with high level needs come with greater financial assistance.) That’s not a windfall. Caring for kids costs money. But parenting foster children full time can rival the pay of a job outside the home, given the number of children allowed in a foster home at a time.

DSHS allows a two-parent home to care for six children at any one time; a one-parent foster home is usually limited to four children. There are some exceptions. No foster family is licensed to care for six infants at a time, for example. Medically fragile children also go to homes with fewer than the maximum number of children.

The work adds up, but so does the money. With the added job security and power a union can bring, what if people started seeing foster parenting more as employment than a good deed? That would be a disaster for children who have already been treated as a burden rather than a gift.

If foster parents in our state have needs that are going unmet, they should not unionize, they should continue to express ideas to lawmakers about how to make the system better.

Zarelli, having been a foster parent himself, would be a good candidate to hold a symposium for foster parents in this end of the state. Legislators should continue to seek out foster parents’ concerns and evaluate whether the state could do things better.