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Jews for Racial and Economic Justice,
"Employer Testimonials"
(page 2 of 3)
Gayle Kirshenbaum
Gayle Kirshenbaum is a long-time member of
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice's Employers for Justice Network, a
former board member of JFREJ, and a leader in the social justice working
group, Kolot Chayeinu, the first synagogue to take on the domestic
workers' justice campaign as a congregation. She gave this speech at
several press conferences in 2009.
My name is Gayle Kirshenbaum and I'm a member of the New York
City-based Employers for Justice Network, a project of Jews for Racial
and Economic Justice. We are current and former employers of nannies,
housekeepers, and caregivers of the ill and elderly who have come to
Albany to say now is the moment for lawmakers to recognize this
industry by passing the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights. We are here to
ask legislators to recognize the hidden workforce that holds together
our households—and contributes mightily to our state's economy—everyday.
We are here to ask for clear standards for the many families who want to
be good employers but do not know what that looks like. What they do
know is that they want their loved ones cared for with love; what they
need to learn is how to care for the caregivers.
Our current laws fail to see domestic workers as deserving of basic
labor standards or even the right to form a union. In my neighborhood of
Park Slope, Brooklyn, and in other upper-income communities in our city
and state, domestic employers take advantage of their workers' statutory
neglect every day. Among many families in my community, there is
widespread resignation—or outright indifference—to balancing the issues
of work and family on the backs of a vulnerable immigrant class.
Many domestic employers simply fail to recognize that their homes are
workplaces, resulting in ill-defined or changing job descriptions and
minimal benefits. Workers are suddenly asked to clean the house and do
laundry when they were originally hired only for child care; they're
expected to work hours of overtime with little notice and no extra pay;
they're asked to postpone urgent medical appointments because the time
was inconvenient for the employer; they're never considered for a raise
or severance after multiple years on the job.
The Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights would serve as a wake up call to
many of these employers, establishing long overdue standards for workers
who make it possible for the rest of New York to go to work every day.
State standards would create the conditions for better communication,
accountability, and mutual respect between domestic employers and
employees. State standards would create the conditions for justice in
our homes.
I hope to one day tell my adult son about Debbie, the domestic worker
who cared for him when he was a baby. Debbie, the woman from Jamaica who
succeeded in getting him to take a nap, who carried his stroller up four
flights of stairs, who was the first to make him laugh from his belly,
who labored in our small apartment for a paycheck to take home to her
own children and to contribute to her son's college education, harboring
the same aspirations for her life and her children as those held by the
first generation of his family who came from Eastern Europe to the U.S.
I hope to one day tell him that the value of Debbie's work to our
family was, at long last, honored by New York State in the form of a
Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights.
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