Organizing for Dignified Work
Since 2000, Domestic Workers United (DWU) has organized Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in New York. They are fighting for power, respect and fair labor standards, and their work helps to build a broader movement for social change. DWU helped organize public pressure for justice for workers like Maria who have been mistreated by their employers. DWU organized demonstrations at Maria’s employer’s businesses and worked with the CUNY Immigrant and Refugee Rights Clinic to file a successful lawsuit against her employer for unpaid wages. Using this combination of legal pressure and direct action, DWU has helped to recover over $450,000 in stolen wages for workers like Maria.
For the past 5 years, DWU has been waging a campaign to pass the “Domestic Workers Bill of Rights,” statewide legislation that would establish basic labor standards for more than 200,000 domestic workers in New York State. These standards would include: notice of termination, a minimum of one day off per week, paid holidays, vacation and sick days and protection from discrimination. The coalition of domestic workers organizations led by DWU has gained tremendous support from labor unions, progressive employers, clergy, academics, student, community and women’s organizations. The effort has raised the profile of the workforce considerably. However, the challenges to legislative change are great.
Some legislators have argued, in order to achieve days off and benefits domestic workers must form a union and collectively bargain “like other workers have to do.” A few legislators have claimed that they cannot enact a law with these types of provisions because it would provide “special protections” for domestic workers that other workers do not receive by law. However, DWU has argued that the decentralized nature of this industry “wires” it for abuse, and makes it impossible to engage in collective bargaining. There is no collective workforce because workers are isolated as individuals in scattered, unmarked separate homes; and there isn’t a central employer with whom to bargain. When one worker bargains with her employer, termination is the standard result. Employers simply seek to hire someone else. In the context of such intensified inequality and the nature of the industry itself, the National Labor Relations Act (the New Deal policy that provides the current framework for collective bargaining in the U.S.) would fail domestic workers, even if they were not excluded. These dynamics make every domestic worker vulnerable to conditions of indentured servitude.
But the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is not just a campaign to address the impracticality of collective bargaining for the domestic work labor force. The Bill of Rights exposes our moral responsibility to value their work because it makes all other work possible, and it calls for an expansion of the practical role of the government in establishing and enforcing labor standards for all workers. Domestic workers have always been treated as a “special class” of workers; they have been “specially” excluded and undervalued as workers. What does it say about this nation that this workforce—that provides such a crucial type of care—is the least valued and most invisible?
In fact, the work that has historically been associated with women has made it possible for us to be where we are today. Challenging the government to account for this work and to provide appropriate protections points to the necessity for a feminist lens. It is only with this lens that we adequately account for the full reality of our economic system. Everyone needs the care of others at one point or another in their lives. We rely on others to care for us when we are children, in times of need and when we age. Even while institutional sexism devalues this work and tries to render these workers invisible, we all have a relationship to this kind of care-giving labor.
Our common experiences—in giving and receiving care—gives us an opportunity to take action in our common interest towards institutional change. As we emerge from one of the greatest economic crises of our time, we will need models that help us redefine the role of government, and its relationship to the economy. The Bill of Rights points to a new relationship between government and this industry—a relationship that is more proactive and reflective of the economic realities and needs we all face.
