Domestic Workers Rising Up

[dcsmart]

Four days in June 2008 marked an unforgettable challenge to those conditions: the first National Domestic Workers Congress, held in New York City. Over 100 workers representing 17 organizations from 11 cities shared stories of abuse and struggle in various meetings and workshops. The women spoke 6 different languages and had emigrated from more than 15 different countries—primarily Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and India.
Staggeringly difficult to organize? It must have seemed so, at first, in the face of such a splintered workforce with no legal protection. To work a 14-hour day for less than minimum wage and be slapped or thrown against a wall for not wanting to work another 2 hours—as more than a few women recounted. No benefits and very low wages. They are hardly ever allowed to go out and if they do, someone is always "vigilando" (watching).
Domestic workers had first come together in numbers across the U.S at the 2007 U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, forming the National Domestic Workers Alliance. It included Domestic Workers United in New York, Casa de Maryland, Damayan in Washington state, Filipino Workers Center and CHIRLA from Los Angeles, Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), POWER (People Organizing to Win Employment Rights), the Women's Collective of the Day Labor Program at La Raza Centro Legal, and others in the Bay Area. Its goal: to build power as a workforce nationally. A work plan was adopted and a committee selected.
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"We had a march with 500 people to press for passage of the New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. In November 2008 a Democratic majority was elected to Congress in New York for the first time in 40 years, which changed the landscape of the campaign, observers said, and hopefully promised change in that state. This summer, workers from Casa Maryland scored an important victory in Montgomery County with the passage of the Household Workers Bill of Rights. It requires written contracts that spell out wages and benefits for nannies, housekeepers, and cooks working at least 20 hours a week, standards for living quarters for live-in employees, and fines for employers who violate the law."
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Maria, an older Mexican woman I interviewed, added a comment about the significance of that victory. "Because Casa Maryland is near Washington, DC, they have dealt with many women who work for diplomats in their homes. These women can be terribly abused, locked up like slaves. The diplomats have special legal status, outside the law—no one will investigate these cases."
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"One of the most exciting pieces of all this," Ai-jen continued, "is the idea that we can create a whole layer of working women of color that goes back to slavery and the exclusion of farmworkers. We are part of the labor movement, of the women's movement, of the immigrant rights movement. We can be a bridge across those different sectors and strengthen them. And especially, we can revive the labor movement."
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FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/20128



Founded in 2000, Domestic Workers United is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in New York, organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build a movement to end exploitation and oppression for all.
http://www.domesticworkersunited.org/

THE SITE ABOVE HAS LINKS TO ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE

[silverojo]

1. More evidence as to why illegal immigration hurts society

Legal immigrants have legal rights, and don't have to risk such abuse, because they're free to go to the authorities and report these monstrous "employers".