Domestic Workers: An Ongoing Fight for Human Rights, Respect, and Dignity at the Workplace

by Kaite Mark

Domestic Workers Celebrate International Women's Day. Photograph by David Bacon http://dbacon.igc.org/

The word “domestic” can contain many different meanings to those who interpret it. Some may think of it as a positive word, one that denotes the respectable position of keeping a home well-kept and presentable, while others may think of it as a negative word, which implies the daily drudgery of household tasks that keep the performers of these tasks in a never-ending routine of work. Whatever “domestic” may mean to people, it more than often has a feminine connotation. “A woman’s place is in the home” is a colloquial saying that was hegemonic in the collective consciousness of American society in the past and still persists in the present times. But what is the nature of domestic work? What happens to domestic work and the people who perform it when it is converted from a kind of work that is not measured by monetary earnings and completed by the women who live in the private sphere of the home, to a service which is completed by a hired and paid worker?

From the time that Europeans colonized the United States, the idea of domestic indentured servitude and “help” has been in existence. Before the enslavement of African people, the system of indentured servitude was in place. But, as the United States transitioned from an agrarian society to an industrialized society, and abolished the slavery of African people in the mid/late 19th century, the nature of domestic work changed. In some spheres, the unpaid work which was once completed by indentured servants, African slaves and women was being hired out as a service which merited the “benefits” of monetary payment.

With the historical roots of domestic work intertwined with that of the institutionalized slavery of different oppressed peoples (most notably people of African descent) and the societal slavery of women, the nature of the work itself carries many social and political meanings and ramifications for those who perform it as a means of livelihood.

First and foremost, domestic work is a kind of work that is essential to the world that we live in. As Bridget Anderson asserts in her book, Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labor: “domestic work is necessary work in that without it humanity would not continue. We need to accommodate the raising of children, the distribution and preparation of food, basic cleanliness and hygiene in order to survive individually and as a species…” While this kind of work is indeed a basic staple of society, there is not a uniform job description for domestic work. It could include the cleaning and upkeep of a home and it could include child care and cooking- or all of the above. “The problem of the definition of domestic work is not simply a theoretical one. It is experienced by domestic workers as a lack of job description with serious implications for their working conditions”.

Taking into account the roots of domestic work and the lack of a uniform job description in an industrialized society where most jobs have a concrete description; the paid domestic worker is placed in limbo between the (assumed separate) private and public spheres of life, identity, and work. In reality there is no separation between these two “spheres” of life. The private influences and shapes the public and vice-versa. Yet the societal assumption of the separation of these spheres allows certain types of people to be caught in between the two: “The domestic worker, like the prostitute, occupies the imaginary space between the two worlds, symbolically ordered and imagined in very different ways. Female employers on the other hand, have their movement between the public and the private facilitated by the domestic worker; she is the bridge between the domains”.

Because of the ambiguity of the public/private place and identity of the domestic worker, the nature of the work itself is in conflict with industrialized capitalist society in that no concrete product is produced. Donna L. Raaphorst writes in her book, Union Maids Not Wanted: Organizing Domestic Workers 1870-1940 that: “In an increasingly industrial nation domestic service remained essentially non-industrial. Thus it was task-oriented rather than time-oriented. It was labor-intensive, and even when successfully completed, no product was produced. All such factors contributed to the workers’ loss of caste or social status”. Unlike a domestic job, most service jobs are performed for a corporate entity which is selling a service or product. A restaurant sells the service of being waited on and cooked for and the concrete product of food: “If a meal is cooked in a restaurant, it is reflected in the GDP; but if it is cooked at home, it is invisible”.
Unlike the domestic worker, the individual who works in the service industry as a waitress is expected to complete a relatively consistent set of tasks that are to be accomplished within the existing time table of the work day. “ Rather than a series of tasks, then, domestic work is better perceived as a series of processes, of tasks inextricably linked, often operating at the same time”. There is little confusion as to the position of the job of a waitress in regards to the assumed private spheres of the home and the public spheres of society as a whole. Her personal life and her work life can be separated by her place of work and personal space, whereas many domestic workers experience the intermingling of these two places.

The blurring of the private and public spheres that occurs with domestic work leads to the lack of the worker’s control over working conditions. This is true for many workers within industrialized, capitalist society. Yet, domestic workers experience an amplified lack of control. This work is done within the home, which more times than not, can be an isolating place and a place where the tasks are endless. These factors help amplify her lack of control over her work.

Domestic workers that “live-in” with their employers have even less control over their living quarters or their workday, since both of these conditions are dictated by the employer. There is no federal legal protection for domestic workers, and consistently throughout history, domestic workers have been left out of protective labor legislation: “Servants worked both longer days and weeks compared to other working women. Often when legislation limited the workday for women, it specifically excluded domestic servants…their exclusion from legislation meant that domestics were still working a seven-day week when other working women had their week limited to five and one half days. Throughout the nineteenth century most servants continued to work at least a ten hour day; the full working day averaged between ten to twelve hours”.

The domestic worker is not covered under the National Labor Relations Act of 1925 (legalizing the right for workers to organize unions, and collectively bargain with employers) nor under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which “establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments”. Therefore, the rights that these pieces of legislation guarantee workers do not apply to domestic workers. The lack of formal infrastructure by which a domestic worker can take some control over her work is one factor that reproduces the oppressive living and working situations that most domestic workers experience.

In addition to the above factors that comprise the nature of domestic work, there is a strong underlying notion that this kind of work is “women’s work”, and, in congruence with the dominant social views of patriarchal society, these terms lead to the idea that domestic work is inherently demeaning. The notions of class, race, and gender divisions also play a large role in the social status of a domestic worker. The social norms of what characteristics a “refined lady” was and is supposed to exhibit, inherently contradict the very nature of domestic work. A domestic worker does manual labor, she lifts, she scrubs and she cleans and washes dirtied household items. If a woman is supposed to be “pure” and “pristine” in a patriarchal society, the very nature of domestic work is in divergence with this image: “…workers proved their inferiority by their physicality and dirt, while female employers proved their superiority by their femininity, daintiness and managerial skills. Male employers proved their superiority by never having to consider domestic drudgery, while enjoying the home as a refuge, a well-deserved rest from the stresses and strains of productive work”.

The role of women belonging to the middle and upper classes (not including white women of the south) changed in the United States from being the predominant performers of domestic work to the managers of said work, to relegating some of that work to hired “help”. Because these women had and have the privilege to hire out housework, they also have the choice to perform more of the desirable and “lady-like” domestic work and relegate the “dirty” work to women who were of a lower social status than themselves. As illustrated in the above quote, women of “lower” social status in many instances have taken the domestic positions of women of a “higher” social status. This allows the woman of “higher” status to enter the public sphere of paid work. It is also apparent that within this societal hierarchy that men maintain the “highest” social status and most power in this situation because historically and many times in the present, they are not expected to even engage in such work that is inherently seen as demeaning.

The devaluation of domestic work can even be seen within the writings and beliefs of many second wave feminists. While an extremely important piece of work, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, helps reproduce the idea that domestic work is inherently degrading and is undesirable. Friedan writes in the Feminine Mystique: “This is the real mystery: why did so many American women, with the ability and education to discover and create, go back home again, to look for ‘something more’ in housework and rearing children?” She focuses on the isolation and oppression of middle to upper- class white women within the home and sphere of domestic work. While Friedan proposes that women leave the private sphere and find other work to liberate themselves, she fails to include the fact that when these privileged women leave the home they make space for other, less privileged women to work as domestics. In her book, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Bell Hooks critiques Friedan’s analysis of housework, writing: “She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions…she did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter…than to be a leisure-class housewife”. While these women are hired ( instead of performing unpaid work), the system of oppression that goes hand in hand with domestic work is many times reproduced by the more privileged women who have moved from living entirely in the private sphere to the public sphere of society.

The lack of value and respect in regard to domestic work is reproduced from almost every realm of society. Even many women who work as domestics do not see the value in their work: “Over and over again women, native and foreign-born, expressed their dislike of servant life. ‘ Society has no use for us, and we object to being patronized. If I could only make people understand that it is not being a servant that is hard, but being treated as an inferior’. Not only were the words ‘service’ and ‘servant’ disliked, they were hateful because the really unpleasant facet about domestic service was how it damaged self-respect”.

The brief exploration of the above societal factors and implications that pertain to hired domestic work make it logical to come to the conclusion that the women who make a living as domestic workers work and live under oppressive conditions that are perpetuated by a mixture of dominant societal views and practices that concern (but are not limited to): gender, race, class, labor, and place. With this being one of the conclusions that can be reached from the investigation of the realm of domestic work, the question of how these workers can and have organized to empower themselves arises. In an attempt to answer this question, we must first begin to examine the attempts to organize domestic workers through a historical lens.

Statistics found in Karen Adair’s Master’s thesis; Organizing Women Workers in Seattle: 1900-1918 show that in 1870, 901,954 women in the United States made a living in private or public housekeeping (47% of all employed women in the United States at the time). By 1900 the number of women in this occupation totaled 1,430,656 (26.9% of employed women), and by 1940 2,831,874 women were employed as domestic workers (21.8%). In Seattle in 1900, 90% to 95% of all Scandinavian-born women worked as domestic workers and “By 1910 52% of all Seattle’s female servants were ‘foreign-born white women’”. In 1920 in Philadelphia, African American women made up 53.8% of the domestic workforce.

These statistics show that the make-up of the domestic workforce was different in various geographical areas of the United States. As a whole, the domestic workforce of the United States has been predominantly occupied by women of color (notably African American women) and immigrants. The domestic workforce of the eastern and southern regions of the United States was predominantly comprised of African American women; 40% of all domestic workers in 1920 within the United States were African American women and “non-white” immigrant women. The connection of slavery and domestic work can be seen by the large numbers of African American women whose only job options throughout much of United States history were in the realm of domestic work. After the abolition of slavery African American women were economically pushed from the oppressive system of slavery where many African American women took care of the slaveholder’s home, to another extremely oppressive system of work that was, and still is quite similar in nature (much like the economic push that African Americans experienced with sharecropping).

Because of the economic history and place of the western regions of the United States, the domestic workforce was made up of mostly “white” and “non-white” immigrants. Before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited immigration of people from China to the United States, much of the domestic workforce of the Western regions of the United States was made up of Chinese immigrants- mostly Chinese men. With the original hired domestic workforce of this time diminished, and the demand for this kind of work still in place, many women came to fill the role of the domestic worker in the western regions of the United States.

In 1897, the average weekly wage for a female domestic worker was $3.23, while the average weekly wage for a male domestic worker was more than double this amount, averaging at $7.18 per week. Around the same time period, in 1902, women working as domestic workers reported to the Washington State Labor Bureau “that their average workday stretched a little past twelve hours; however, some employers required their servants to work up to sixteen hours per day…most reported in the 1902 survey that they received two afternoons off a week, but some reported receiving no regular time away from the job”. The pay difference between women and men during this time, and the reported long hours show that not only was women’s work deemed less valuable than men’s, but that she was working just as much ( if not more) than most workers during the beginning of the twentieth century.

Domestic workers worked long hours, and received little pay. It is not surprising then, that many women found themselves moving from job to job quite frequently: “A 1914 study showed that domestic workers in the United States stayed on the job for an average of one and a half years”. Because there has almost always been a demand for domestic services, women working as domestic laborers have not had a hard time finding work. This is one reason why this kind of work can be more easily seen as temporary.

The idea that domestic work is only temporary in nature was also adopted because it was looked down upon for married women to work for wages, much less be a sole bread-winner. As mentioned previously, domestic work is devalued on many levels- some of those levels include the societal idea that this kind of work is “women’s work”, that it is not valuable because it is “dirty” and produces no concrete product. “Their labor was priced independently and thus much lower than that of men. Such expressions as ‘only a girl’, ‘a very good wage for a girl’, and ‘she does good work for a woman,’ bore witness to the all too common acceptance of lower wage standards for women…most women had no conception of their place in the industrialized world, and they all too readily accepted their wage as an auxiliary wage- a wage that merely supplemented the wages of others”.

Many women considered themselves temporary workers doing work that did not supply a sole income, or if it did, they would only work a paid job until they got married. In many instances, the prevalent attitude of impermanence helped create a workforce without a deep-seeded identity or experience of working at one job long enough to have a true interest in the working conditions, because it was only “temporary”. Another factor that often added to the somewhat temporary nature of domestic work was isolation at the workplace. Even if the domestic worker did not work alone, many times she did not have as much opportunity to see what the work of other domestics entailed. As Ai Jen Poo, the co-founder of Domestic Workers United (DWU) writes in her article, A Twenty-First Century Organizing Model: Lessons from the New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Campaign; “…isolation and lack of regulation leave individuals with little recourse”. Without a substantial opportunity of comparison, it seems that the domestic worker would be more likely to believe that the working conditions she experienced were “normal” and that there was little that she could do about the conditions that she worked under.
As illustrated, the domestic labor force has historically been a workforce that is ever changing, seen as temporary and many times isolating by nature. These factors, along with the oppressive societal views and actions that have been reproduced in regards to women, race, and what is considered valuable work, have made it very hard for domestic workers to organize.

The labor movement has been historically notorious for its exclusion of women: “the hostility of these early unions to female membership was based on a variety of assumptions. One common belief was that women actually lowered the wage standard. In conjunction with this notion was the idea that for every woman who was employed, a man went without a job…many believed women were only transient workers and, consequently, poor union material”. In general, women found it very difficult to become union members, and if they did become union members, it was difficult to establish their voices within the union.

One of the first official unions in the United States; the Knights of Labor, established in 1869, was also the first union to include certain people of color and women. During the Knights of Labor’s 1878 and 1879 convention, an action advocating equal pay for equal work for women and men was taken by the members of the union, a radical act for the time. Soon thereafter twenty seven all-female locals joined the Knights of Labor. While the Knights of Labor’s inclusion of membership other than white males was truly revolutionary for its time, the inclusion of women was based upon the benefit of male workers, as exemplified in Union Maids Not Wanted: “perfected machinery persistently seeks cheap labor, and is supplied by women and children. Adult male labor is thus crowded out of employment and swells in the ranks of the unemployed or at least the underpaid”. Even under the pretenses of organizing people on the basis of what would benefit male workers, The Knights of Labor were among the few unions that were more inclined to organized women and unskilled workers in a relatively hostile climate towards these people.

Amidst general exclusion and discrimination from and within the labor movement, there are extraordinary historical examples of women working as domestic laborers organizing themselves without the influence of organized labor. In 1881, 98% of the domestic workforce in Atlanta, Georgia was comprised of African American women. As stated on the official website of American Postal Workers Union (APWU), many of these women “frequently found that the terms of their employment were strikingly similar to those they had faces as slaves: seven-day work weeks, low pay, and little respect on the job”. Fed up with jobs that were not far from slavery in their nature, a group of African American women working as out-of-home laundry workers came together to organize for better working conditions. They formed the Washing Society (1881) beginning with twenty women, and within three weeks they had 3,000 members.

Unlike other organizing attempts which found domestic workers largely dispersed and isolated, the African American laundry workers of Atlanta had the advantage of sharing a community. These women did not live in their employer’s home, and they many times worked from their own homes. Since some of the only jobs that were open to African American women were domestic jobs, many African American women in the segregated south shared the same occupation as the woman next door; “…laundry women labored in their own communities often working with their neighbors. The long hours and the wages of as little as four dollars a month were a shared burden, and eventually led to the creation of what Faust calls ‘ their own world of work, play, negotiation, resistance, and community organization’”.

With the power of a 3,000 woman membership and a monopoly on laundry in the city, the women demanded that they all receive a one dollar raise for every twelve pounds of laundry they cleaned- or they would strike. Employers did not meet this demand, so The Washing Society went on strike. The women encountered attacks from the Atlanta city council, the police and their employers. Striking women got arrested, and the city council proposed that any woman who was a member of the Washing Society be fined for her membership in the society. The women did not back down, and in turn the powers that be became worried that if they did not give in to the women’s demands that further organization would ensue within the African American communities of Atlanta. In the end, the women of the Washing Society won their strike, and received the raise that they had demanded. As the official AFL-CIO website states; “the strike not only raised wages, it established laundresses- and black women workers as instrumental to the new south’s economy” (ironically, the AFL-CIO took no part in this struggle at the time).

The most amazing aspect of this strike is that the women who organized and won their demands were amongst some of the most oppressed people in society. They were not affiliated with any union or organization other than the one that they had established for themselves from the ground-up. Their services were in high demand, and these women understood how to use this and the strength of their communities in order to create change. It is inspiring to know that even during a time when most of organized labor was indifferent, if not hostile to women (especially women of color); women came together and organized successfully.

When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was founded in 1886, its membership was open exclusively to skilled white male workers. In Raaphorst’s work, a writer for the American Federationist was quoted writing in 1910: “…we stand for the principle that it is wrong to permit any of the female sex of our country to be forced to work as we believe that the man should be provided with a fair wage in order to keep his female relatives from going to work”. When the AFL did open its doors to women, females faced discrimination within the union. Female leadership within the AFL was sparse and many times discouraged: “women are discouraged from taking an active part in the executive affairs of organization”. Not only were women discriminated against within the workings of the union itself, but also within the constructs of the workplace: “…virtually all AFL unions denied new employment opportunities to women. In this way females were confined to unskilled jobs”.

While the AFL was generally hostile towards women, there were instances where women fought for their right to be a real part of the union both on the international and local levels. Because of the push by women for more involvement in the union, Mary E. Kenny was hired by the AFL as an organizer in 1892. A year later when her term was expired she was not rehired nor replaced. Also, during the time period from 1903-1923 the AFL hired thirty temporary female organizers to help in the forced effort to begin organizing female union membership. Both of these actions reiterate the fact the AFL gave some “lip service” to the involvement of women in the labor movement, but the union did not have a true commitment to women.
The AFL’s general climate of hostility towards organizing women workers was especially apparent for female domestic workers. In 1900, the Western Central Labor Union attempted to organized female domestic workers in Seattle. The attempt quickly fell through due in large part to the AFL withholding “its support by refusing to grant charters. AFL craft unionists viewed the organization of domestic workers as in impossible task: ‘The association of a considerable number of persons under a single employer is necessary for successful organization’”.

Again in 1913, domestic workers in Seattle attempted and briefly succeeded in union organization. With the leadership of Alice Lord, the women sought to organize under an affiliation with the Seattle Central Labor Council (S.C.L.C). After organizing at least 150 women, the organization of women appealed to the S.C.L.C and were faced with little to no support. Without the hoped for support from the S.C.L.C, the women continued to meet as a club and discuss matters of rights at the workplace under the name; “Progressive Working Women’s Club”. This organization advocated an eight hour work day for domestic workers (who had been excluded from other eight hour laws pertaining to women workers), as well as advocating basic rights at the workplace for domestic workers.
The Progressive Working Women’s Club is an example of a successful small scale organization of domestic workers. It is also an example of how hard it was for women to make their voices included within organized labor. This organization’s goals transformed from aiming to become affiliated with organized labor, to becoming a women’s organization working outside of organized labor in order to advocate for the rights of domestic workers, and working women in general.

Some of the most viable historical examples of organization of domestic workers seem to come from the organizing efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). As Raaphorst confirms; “…the bulk of organization…was that which occurred inside the ranks of labor organization such as the Knights of Labor and the IWW. Unlike the AFL, these unions were industrial, not craft unions. Consequently they tended to be more receptive to unskilled workers such as domestics and women in general”.

One of the most noticeable domestic workers organization campaigns of the IWW was in Denver in 1916. IWW organizer Jane Street reached out and interviewed upwards of one thousand domestic workers in the city of Denver, with the goal of acquainting them with the union in order to make the possibility of further organization more feasible. While IWW local 113 was short lived (it was in existence a little over one year) and had less than one hundred dues paying members, the union is an example of a somewhat strong and viable force of power that domestic workers organized for themselves. Street not only helped organize these women, but also set up an employment office for domestic work in the city. Job opportunities in Denver were researched, and information was collected by union members. This information was then recorded on cards which were kept at the agency. The cards were used to help women who visited the agency to be placed into jobs. Within the first year of the opening, one thousand women were placed in jobs.

By establishing a hiring institution/employment agency through the IWW, Street created a way to control how domestic workers were hired in the city. Instead of seeking out “employment sharks” in order to be placed in a job, women would go to the IWW hiring office. This force made it harder for employers to hire domestic workers outside the venue of the IWW: “recalcitrant employers would have a difficult time securing help if they refused to meet union demands”. The employment office served not only as a place to find jobs, but as a place where women workers could meet and discuss how to enforce rights at the workplace. “Thus if the domestic decided to shorten hours or not clean the furnace or vacuum the house, she would be retained until a replacement was found. But how to find a replacement with the employment ‘sharks’ and while the union was carefully scanning newspaper ads? When the employer ran her ad, the union sent out a new girl who refused to perform the same tasks or work under the same conditions. As Jane Street wrote, ‘if you have a union of only four girls and you can get them consecutively on the same job you soon have job control’ ”.

This local was so successful that many other IWW domestic workers locals sprung up across the country in places like Seattle, Duluth, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Cleveland. Also because of its success, the union was met with much opposition, not only from outside sources, but from within the IWW itself. Jane Street claimed that IWW members such as Phil Engle worked against her in order to extinguish local 113: “…Engle warned her…that his objective was to see her outside the union”. Even within radical sects of organized labor, there were sexist ideologies that fueled opposition like that of Phil Engle towards the domestic workers local. With opposition from what seemed like all sides, and the brutal crackdown of the United States government against the IWW during the First World War, local 113 was forced out of existence along with most IWW locals throughout the United States.

Almost one hundred years later, domestic workers are still making an effort to organize for the basic rights that most workers are legally entitled to in the United States. The vast majority of domestic workers are still women, and the workforce is increasingly comprised of immigrants (documented and undocumented) from the global south. The structures of domestic work still remain different than most workplaces, adding to the ongoing historical struggle to organize this workforce under a conventional union organizing model.

There are currently an estimated 2.5 million people working as domestic workers throughout the United States. The working conditions, for the most part, still mimic the exploitative conditions that domestic workers have historically worked under. As Patricia Francois, a domestic worker and member of Domestic Workers United (DWU) was quoted saying in a DemocracyNow! news episode; “We work long hours, no overtime pay. My experience, after working six-and-a-half years, never had an increase in salary, as well as no overtime pay”. Not only can the poor conditions of pay and benefits be seen from Ms. Francois’ quote, but in statistics collected by the United States Department of Labor: “…the U.S Department of Labor, without data on undocumented workers, puts the median weekly wage for family child care workers at $265, for a 35-hour week. In New York, that sum would fall below the $5.15 hourly minimum, if a more typical 50-hour week and overtime were factored in”. According to these statistics, that would mean the average domestic worker makes only $12,720 a year. This income falls well below federal minimum wage standards, as well as the poverty line.

Again, the roots of slavery and devaluation of the work that women do can still be seen today within the sphere of domestic work. As one worker testified in Chisun Lee’s Breaking Their Silence: Profiles of a Hidden Workforce; “Every night before I went to bed, I had to go down on the floor and mop with a cloth, because she [ employer] said a mop just pushed the dirt around. I did it for two weeks, and then I told her slavery was over and done with 200 years ago.” In another article written about domestic workers in the Village Voice, Nahar Alam, a domestic worker, speaks of how her friend, who is also a domestic worker and an immigrant, has been exploited by her employer; “she lost one job because she was sick. She was sick because she was working 18 hours per day. [ Employers] are taking so much advantage. They hire, they fire. You cannot do anything. We get two, three dollars an hour. Immigrants in particular. Even if you have a green card it doesn’t matter”.

Ms. Alam brings up the fact that being an immigrant, whether documented or undocumented, is another societal factor that makes domestic workers easier to exploit in the current times. We have seen historically, that the majority of domestic workers in the United States were African American women. These women had extremely limited job opportunities after slavery was abolished in the last 19th century; and domestic work was some of the only work that was available to them. As time progressed, and social and economic justice movements like the civil rights movement helped shape society, African American women began to encounter more options open to them in the job force, in turn, creating space for other people to fill the majority of these job positions.

The new world order of globalization; the free movement of trade, and (to a much lesser extent) people has helped spur this change. Now, instead of seeing a majority of African American women in the domestic workforce, we see women who are immigrants as the majority of domestic workers throughout most of the United States. The article The Heart of Work: Professionals Navigating a Personal World, asserts this claim as well; “As other areas opened to them and to the European immigrants who also did the work, women from the Caribbean, Asia, and Latin America replaced them”. Many women who come to the United States, come from the global south, due to dire economic situations (often imposed by international forces such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) and find very few job options open to them; domestic work is one occupation that is always in demand for more workers.

As mentioned in Ai-Jen Poo’s article, A Twenty-First Century Organizing Model: Lessons From the New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Campaign; in places like New York City the majority of domestic workers are immigrants; “In a recent survey of domestic workers in New York, conducted by DataCenter and Domestic Workers United, researchers found that 98 percent of domestic workers are foreign-born”. The new immigrant majority ( in most places) of the domestic workforce can be seen in many ways as historically parallel to the job situation that African American women faced after slavery was abolished. The ugly practices of discrimination based on (but not limited to) race, sex, class, and place of origin have affected both African American women and women who are immigrants within the workplace in the past and present. Much like the majority of working African American women of the past, moving from one form of slavery to another; immigrant women of today are forced from one economically exploitative situation ( in their home countries) into another form of exploitation when they come to work in the United States.

Amidst the current oppressive conditions that domestic workers face on a daily basis, a large effort to organize domestic workers has presented itself. Domestic Workers United (DWU) is a not for profit organization based out of New York City. It was formed in 2000 when members and organizers of the Committee Against Anti Asian Violence ( CAAAV), Andolan: Organizing South Asian Workers, and Kalayaan/ Women Workers Project came together in order to advocate for the rights of domestic workers and immigrants. The mission statement that is found on the organization’s website reads; “ DWU 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”. DWU uses direct action, community organizing methods, political lobbying, and individual support campaigns to advocate their goals. The organization also utilizes community ties and legal support, like that of the Urban Justice Center in order to file lawsuits. As a co-founder of DWU , Ai-Jen Poo stated: “ we had to build: (1) our membership base of domestic workers; and (2) a broad-based coalition of support from a range of different allies- employers, students, communities of faith, and the labor movement”.

In 2003, DWU proposed legislation to the New York city council that targeted the employment agencies that many domestic workers use in order to find and be placed in work, in a very similar strain of thought as Jane Street followed in acquiring some power over hiring practices. The legislation, which was successfully passed, was formed in order “to compel domestic-worker employment agencies to educate workers and employers about basic labor rights and issue written statements regarding legally acceptable job conditions”.
Following the passage of the New York City legislation, DWU began a campaign to pass the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights through the state legislature. The organization staged many actions and lobbied at the state capitol in Albany, while accruing public and political support for their actions and demands. The bill finally passed through the New York state legislature after a multiple year long struggle for its passage. The bill legally allows domestic workers in New York state some of the basic rights that most workers have today in the United States:
Once the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights goes into effect on November 29, 2010, New York State’s domestic workers will be protected by new, basic labor standards, including a higher rate of overtime pay for live-in domestic workers and companions employed by private households, coverage of live-in companions under the New York State Minimum Wage Law, three paid days of rest after a year of employment, extension of temporary disability benefits to part-time employees, and inclusion of domestic workers under the New York State Human Rights Law.

The passage of the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights is the first legislation in the country that has been passed in order to protect domestic workers. The passage of this bill was a huge victory for domestic workers in New York and across the country, DWU acknowledges that the version of the bill that passed left out some critical demands: “while the Bill of Rights represents improved labor standards…the final version of the law did not include five critical benefits: 1) paid sick days; 2) paid personal days; 3) paid vacation days; 4) advance notice of termination; and 5) severance pay. These benefits, by conferring job security and stability, would better enable domestic workers to stand up for their rights to fair wages and workplaces free of harassment”. While this legislation may not be perfect, and is not the solution to all of issues that domestic workers face, it is a viable starting point for the ongoing struggle to ensure that domestic workers have the same human rights as other workers and are able work under similar protective labor legislation that has excluded this workforce for years.

After a brief exploration of the societal nature of paid domestic work, the historical place of women within organized labor and the history and present organizing actions domestic workers have taken, we come back to the question that has driven this article. What happens to domestic work and the people who perform it when it is converted from a kind of work that is not measured by monetary earnings and completed by the women who live in the private sphere of the home, to a service which is completed by a hired and paid worker? The hired and paid domestic worker has suffered many of the same issues of isolation and devaluation of her work as the unpaid housekeeper, or “housewife”. The domestic worker performs a job that is essential in our world. She ensures that living spaces and materials are livable; she takes care of children, and the elderly. She does the jobs that are necessary in order for her employers to make a living for themselves, hence acting as one of the backbones of our economy. Even though she is a worker who contributes greatly to the livelihood of others and to the economy of our country, she has been consistently exploited, devalued and disrespected by almost every aspect of dominant American society.

Amidst rampant oppression, discrimination, and abuse that society (for the most part) deems acceptable when aimed at women who fit into certain statuses of class, race, and immigration status; women have fought for their rights, and in some instances have made progress against all the odds. Throughout United States history, it has been almost impossible for domestic workers to organize successfully, but in a few instances they did. In the present, the situation is just as dire, yet domestic workers have formed organizations like Domestic Workers United from the ground- up in order to fight for justice, recognition, equality and respect for domestic workers. Not only have these forces fought for these demands, but they have made enormous gains for this historically oppressed group of people.
I will conclude this article with a hopeful frame of mind; knowing that the women who do some of the most necessary work in our society, who have been brutally and notoriously oppressed, have historically and in the present come together to take a stand for their rights as human beings, as women and as workers who contribute greatly to our society.

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