Judith Trachtenberg
Judith Trachtenberg is an employer of a part-time housecleaner. She is a member of JFREJ’s Employers for Justice Network, and also a leader in Congregation B’nai Jeshurun’s Domestic Workers’ Justice “chevra,” or working group. This testimonial was read at the New York State Assembly Labor Committee Hearing on the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.
Good morning. My name is Judith Trachtenberg. My partner and I employ a housecleaner four hours every other week. Not a lot of time, really, but still enough to make this issue of the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights become central to my thinking. It addresses what is fair and proper and the rights and benefits all employees should have.
I’d like to tell you about my housecleaner, Nubia. Nubia has been in our employ for about 25 years and there is a group of friends—four other families—who also employ her, one for an even longer period than my family. She attended my mother’s funeral many years ago and she recently left me three quarters for my United States quarter collection saying she noticed that I was still missing those three states. So how do I define this relationship? It is clearly hard for me—employee, friend, worker? I have learned that when the relationship gets blurred—and after 25 years that is inevitable—it can prevent a working balance that gives employees the rights they deserve.
So that’s why I am here; because it has been difficult to give a name to a relationship like what I am describing. Thinking about Nubia as our “employee” is new for me. I was never clear what to think of our relationship, or how to talk about it, until I became a member of JFREJ, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. JFREJ is a membership-based organization that engages Jews to pursue and win racial and economic justice in partnership with Jewish and allied people of color, low-income, and immigrant communities in New York City. JFREJ’s Employers for Justice Network is a growing group, currently 100 strong, of employers of domestic workers who have improved their employment practices and spoken out for the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. I am one of the network’s newest members. Through this community, I have had the opportunity to learn about and explore some central issues in this employer-employee connection.
The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights seems to me to be critical, especially in the current moment, when the economy is not good and in such a state of flux. We have paid Nubia reasonably well—at least as compared to others with whom I have talked—but we missed some points. We never gave regular yearly raises. I suspect we were uncomfortable being employers. Somehow labeling the relationship as friendship seemed easier, but it clearly did not offer Nubia all the rights she should have had. What we used to do was to give her a raise just before it seemed as if she might ask for one. We were alleviating our guilt but not being consistent or dependable for her. And how much to give? Only recently did we begin to think about a percentage of her salary, a percentage based on consumer price index, and to initiate a conversation about the subject. It never before occurred to my partner and I, employees who, with our work outside the home, can trust in receiving regular salary increases.
Right now, benefits and rights, both tangible and relational, are hit or miss in this huge industry. What happens with vacation pay or sick leave? What about the raises I spoke about earlier? We, as employers, have only the practices of friends, neighbors, and co-workers to use as a model, and we only have access to that if we are smart enough to ask questions and seek advice. If we don’t, the inconsistency and sometimes awful treatment of domestic workers is left to chance, random efforts, and sometimes just down right bad practice. Standardized regulations will lessen the burden on employers to determine what is appropriate and fair. We rely on domestic workers, and we need standards to guide us, whether we are or are not necessarily conscientious about treating the people who work in our homes with respect.
Thank you for this opportunity.
