Demand passage of a bill of rights

At 6 a.m. on May 23, more than 80 New York City domestic workers and their supporters boarded buses and set out to Albany, the state capital, for the first Domestic Worker Advocacy Day.

Organized by Domestic Workers United, the vast majority of these activists are immigrant women of color—Caribbean, Asian, South Asian and Latina. DWU estimates that over 200,000 people work as nannies, housekeepers, elder companions, cleaners, babysitters, cooks and baby nurses inside private households in New York City.

The trip’s main objective was to fight for a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. This is the first statewide legislative proposal drafted by and for domestic workers. It lays out a comprehensive set of protections and rights based on the unique conditions workers in private homes face.

More important, Domestic Workers United and their allies are fighting to tear up, once and for all, the roots of the racist and sexist exploitation of unpaid labor for both domestic and farm work wielded against people of color in the United States since the days of slavery.

“We know that the first domestic workers of color in this country were African-American,” says Linda Abad, founder of Damayan Migrant Workers Association, which fights for the rights of Filipino/a domestic workers. “In the 1970s, women from the Third World began to fill those jobs. We know we aren’t just fighting for the rights of immigrant women now, but against the legacy of slavery, colonization and U.S. imperialism that forced us to migrate here, and centuries of profit that has been made.”

Workplace conditions of domestic workers in NYC

According to a 1999 study by the Urban Institute, the average working-class family pays $9,000 a year for child-care or day-care facilities that sometimes have several dozen children in their care. Families with less income generally seek out what is left of city-funded day-care facilities.

Only 4 percent of New York City children, generally from two-parent households, have nannies.

A study compiled by Domestic Workers United and Data Center, “Home is Where the Work Is: Inside New York’s Domestic Work Industry,” was released May 19. It is based on surveying 574 domestic workers and conducting interviews with both workers and employers.

According to this study, 93 percent of domestic workers in New York are women, 99 percent are immigrants, and 76 percent do not have U.S. citizenship.

Debunking a very popular myth in the media, only a small percentage of domestic workers are white. The overwhelming majority of the workers - 95 percent - are people of color.

Fifty-nine percent of New York’s domestic workers are the primary income earners for their own families. Like other workers, domestic workers see themselves as part of an industry, with 32 percent working within the field for over 10 years and 45 percent staying with the same employer for at least two to five years.

Generally, domestic workers work 40 to 60 hours a week. Ninety percent report they receive no health insurance from their employers.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed were not paid for overtime hours worked. Only 13 percent are paid a living wage of $13 or more an hour.

Eighteen percent make wages below the poverty line, ranging from the minimum wage of $5.16 to $8.97 per hour. Another 8 percent are paid less than the minimum wage. Twenty percent of those surveyed did not want to respond to the question of wages.

Along with low pay, many domestic workers endure humiliation and abuse at the hands of their employers.

In a radio interview with New York radio station WBAI, one DWU member shared bad memories about her first job in the United States. She worked for a couple who had one daughter and two dogs; one of the dogs had cancer. She was required to dress in a full white nurse’s uniform and was forced to push the child and the sick dog in a double stroller through the streets of New York.

While her employers threw lavish birthdays parties for the dogs and chauffeured the animals by limousines, they paid this worker only $271 every two weeks.

Many domestic workers reported in the DWU study that after working long hours, they could not afford to pay their own bills. Forty percent said that they could not pay their monthly phone bill, 37 percent said they were unable to pay rent or mortgage, and 21 percent reported they sometimes or often did not have enough food to eat.

Meeting with a state senator’s aide in Albany May 23, one woman shared a story of a domestic worker whose employer went away on vacation for two weeks, leaving her two small children at home. The employer left no food in the house nor money for food for the children, forcing the domestic worker to use her own meager wages to provide for the children. The domestic worker saved receipts but her employer refused to reimburse her.

U.S. legacy of racism towards domestic workers

“I compare the domestic industry to the legacy of the slavery because if you remember times before, when the slaves were brought to this country, women were placed in the house and men were placed to work in fields with the rest of the women. The women were physically, sexually and emotionally abused the by the masters. And that still exists to this day. And that’s why I am a member of DWU: because I see this as reparations [for] women’s visible labor, not only in the United States but around the world,” Joyce Campbell, a leader of DWU, told WBAI radio.

Historically, the labor and workers’ movements have been successful in wrangling concessions in the form of laws to obtain protections and standards in the work place. DWU’s study outlines provisions in U.S. labor laws that exclude both farm and domestic workers from federal rights and protections.

“The NLRA [National Labor Relations Act] guarantees U.S. employees the right to organize, but specifically excludes domestic workers from its definition of ‘employee.’

“The FLSA [Fair Labor Standards Act] sets a federal minimum wage rate, maximum hours, and overtime for employees in certain occupations. Until 1974, domestic workers were completely excluded, and today the Act still excludes from coverage ‘casual’ employees such as babysitters and ‘companions’ for the sick or elderly. Furthermore, live-in domestic workers, unlike most other employees in the U.S., cannot get overtime under FLSA.

“OSHA [Occupational Safety & Health Administration] regulations explicitly exclude domestic workers from the Act’s protections ‘[a]s a matter of policy.’”

Even civil rights laws have excluded domestic workers. The study reports that although Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” this only applies only to employers with 15 or more employees. Thus, virtually every domestic worker in the United States is excluded from Title VII’s protections.

The study also showed that because the industry’s work place is in private homes, physical, verbal and sexual abuse and other forms of degradations are rampant, with no way for workers to hold the employers accountable. One-third of domestic workers who face abuse identified race and immigration status as factors in the employers’ actions.

Domestic workers are fighting back!

In Caribbean patois, “Tell Dem Slavery Done!” is the slogan on the front of a Domestic Workers United T-shirt. Next to the slogan is the image of a Black woman with her fist in the air. On the back of the shirt, in big block letters, is a multinational list of organizations—Asian, Latina, South Asian, Caribbean, and more intertwined with words of multinational solidarity.

“When I came here and started to work and saw the great divide in terms of women of color, Third World women, whether we be Asian, whether we be Trini dadian, or whether we be Mexican, we are all women of color. We’re oppressed, we work long hours, we are afraid to speak up,“ says Joyce Campbell. “I always wanted to belong to something that could radically change the way we are viewed on our jobs, the ways we are looked at and perceived. When I found DWU, I knew that there ain’t no turning back for me. This is my struggle. This is my fight.”

Founded in 2000, Domestic Workers United was initiated by the Women Workers Project of CAAAV-Organizing Asian Communities and Andolan Organi zing South Asian Workers. Both are progressive grassroots groups based in New York. In the spring of 2000, domestic workers of each group began to reach out to workers throughout the industry.

Through a series of meetings, hundreds of domestic workers, predominantly from the Caribbean, came forward and DWU was founded. Affiliate organizations of DWU include Damayan Migrant Workers Association, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Unity Housecleaners, CAAAV-Organizing Asian Communities and Ando lan Organizing South Asian Workers.

An important allied organization has been Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which launched a Shalom Bayit: Justice for Domestic Workers campaign to reach out to Jewish employers of domestic workers. Close to 25 synagogues in Manhattan and Brooklyn have engaged in a process of education, outreach, fundraising and political action in solidarity with Domestic Workers United.

In 2003, the New York City Council passed the first bill in the country to expand protections for domestic workers by requiring employers to inform employees in writing about duties and wages. The current Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights (A2804) has been in the New York State Senate for one year, and in the House Assembly for two.

“While the Bush administration is trying to further criminalize immigrants and push forward his guest worker bill, here are immigrant women workers fighting for justice,” says Ai-jen Poo, an organizer for DWU and a staff member of CAAAV. “The winning of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights would mean a victory not just for domestic workers, but for all for workers fighting for a living wage and for dignity and respect on the job.”

To support the passing of the Domestic Workers Bills of Rights (A2804), see www.domesticworkersunited.org