Home Not-So-Sweet Home

For most of the morning, Antoñia Peña sat quietly at the end of the table on a panel of speakers. Throughout the event, called "Voices from the Front Lines of the Economic Crisis," another panelist translated the proceedings into Spanish for her. When Peña finally spoke, in a halting but urgent English, I wasn't the only one to sit up and take notice.

"Most of us have been exploited or abused by our employers," she began. Peña came to the United States from Colombia in her youth, hoping to find a better life for herself and for her family back home. What she found instead was a life of isolation and abuse. Like many immigrants who come to the United States as young women, it took her years to become aware of her rights.

Young workers throughout the country, in a variety of industries, are facing a harsh economic climate as they enter the workforce. They worry about insufficient health insurance, not being paid for overtime work and potential abuse by employers. According to Carlos Jimenez, an organizer with Jobs with Justice and coordinator of the Young Worker Project, there has been a steady increase in wage theft and abuse of workers in recent years. Young workers are particularly vulnerable as they're less likely to know their rights. But help may be on the way for domestic workers in New York thanks to pending legislation.

Domestic workers -- mostly female nannies, maids, housecleaners and cooks -- tend to come from some of the most vulnerable populations, including immigrants, senior citizens and young people. These workers are often involved in the "informal economy" where work arrangements are made without contracts and employees are paid in cash. This often means they are not compensated adequately for their labor.

Other workers within the industry are usually unaware of the conditions that their fellow workers endure. Organizing factory workers is difficult enough when all of the workers are in the same workspace. Who is watching out for those whose work is unseen -- cloistered in the residences of the nation's elite?

In a hearing before the New York State Legislature, four women shared their stories of life in an invisible workforce.

"We give the best of ourselves, because they leave in our hands their most treasured loved ones," said Elizabeth, a New York City nanny. She, her daughter and niece were habitually abused by their employer before seeking out the services of Domestic Workers United (DWU), an advocacy group founded in 2000.

Thanks to the efforts of DWU and other groups around the country, the New York State Assembly passed a pioneering piece of progressive legislation: The Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights mandates that an employer provide medical coverage, wage standards, paid leave and severance pay. It also establishes penalties for non-compliance consistent with existing labor law provisions. For the roughly 200,000 domestic workers in the state of New York, 26 percent of whom live below the poverty line, this sends a powerful message that, at long last, they are not alone.

The bill was poised to sweep through the New York State Senate and it looked as though it would finally be signed into law. But on June 8, Republicans and a couple Democrats gained control of the New York State Senate, rolling much of the state legislative agenda over to the next session. The delay, though frustrating, has not discouraged the bill's champions.

There's been no organized opposition, according to Charlene Obernauer, lead organizer at Long Island Jobs with Justice. Obernauer has been working for the past two years to pass the Bill of Rights.

Though a few Republican state senators suggested that workers' immigration status should be taken into consideration, Obernauer says the bill had bipartisan support in both state houses. Of course, the easy support the bill has garnered may stem from the fact that at present, it would be very difficult to enforce.

But DWU says this is only the beginning; the first question any new client inevitably asks is, If I leave my post, will you be able to find me another job? In the current economic climate, DWU case managers can no longer answer that question with any certainty and many domestic workers choose to remain at their jobs rather than risk the alternatives.

An Informal Industry

Domestic workers were among the first to settle the United States. Some of the earliest immigrants came over as indentured servants, contracted to work for a predetermined time, after which they were free to carve out an existence against the unforgiving backdrop of a new and expanding colonial America.

Yet they have never enjoyed a position as equal members of a workforce with basic rights and benefits. Similar forces -- opportunity, poverty and ambition -- still draw young people across national and cultural borders, but very little progress has been made to improve their lot. Domestic workers are specifically excluded from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935.

Today, the industry is growing fast. According to Priscilla Gonzalez, an organizer for DWU, there has been a rise in women workers coming to the United States and entering the domestic work industry. "[Because of its] informal nature, [domestic work] ends up being the most accessible for new immigrants," says Gonzalez.

Though many come of their own accord, there are also numerous instances of trafficking or situations in which employers confiscate the papers of their employees. The recession has had a particularly devastating effect on this vulnerable employment field.

"We're the first to be let go," says a New York housekeeper named Angelica. "Workers being laid off from one day to the next [and] workers that are living in their employer's household find themselves both homeless and jobless at once," explains Gonzalez.

Workers also see their hours reduced by employers expecting them to do the same amount of work within a shorter time period. Gonzalez describes a phenomenon known as nanny-sharing where two families will hire the same worker -- it's basically a two-for-one deal because there is no safety net or protection.

These trends, however, rarely register in national studies of the recession and its effects. This leads Joycelyn Gill Campbell, an organizer for DWU, to wonder how we can understand the scope of the problem of unemployment caused by the recession when such large workforces go uncounted. Because of the industry's casual contracts there are very few statistics on domestic workers in the United States. "That's part of the problem," Gonzalez says.

DWU organizers estimate that one third of all domestic workers are under the age of 25. However, since domestic workers' issues -- when they're taken up at all -- are thought of as pertaining more to older women, the concerns of young domestic workers are rarely addressed. Younger workers often enter the country without other family members and are particularly vulnerable to abuse from their employers.

According to Gonzalez, younger workers have come to her organization reporting instances of sexual harassment on the job by their employers. "If you're the only person there, you're really vulnerable to lots of different forms of abuse," Gonzalez explains. "One third of all domestic workers report being subjected to one form of abuse or another."

The perception that domestic workers are part of the family makes them ripe for exploitation. The difficulty in coming forward is particularly acute for younger workers without the larger support systems of their own families. Expectations of domestic workers often extend far beyond the parameters of the normal work day: "Domestic workers are not supposed to get sick, you're not supposed to take time off," said Freda, a Manhattan nanny, in her testimony.

One worker described to the New York State Assembly the difficulty of leaving her post when she'd formed a bond with her charges. "I really became attached to the children," said Elizabeth, who left her employer because of sustained sexual harassment. "I've gone to see them two to three times now."

Outreach to Young Workers

Ai-Jen Poo, lead organizer for Domestic Workers United, explains that many of the younger workers DWU encounters are college students, working part-time to support themselves while getting an education. Some employers take advantage of this situation, withholding standard worker protections. Much of the organizing of domestic workers takes place in parks and public places where nannies tend to congregate with their charges. Younger women who work part-time are less likely to spend time in these places and are therefore even further cut off from other practitioners of their profession.

Even with the Bill of Rights in place and the Department of Labor on board with enforcement, Gonzalez says activists will have to come up with creative enforcement measures because the industry is "really decentralized." In the overwhelming majority of cases, there is only one worker in the workplace -- usually a private home.

The Bill of Rights is only a beginning and will require the marshaling of larger forces such as the enforcement of labor laws and comprehensive immigration reform to endow it with the teeth it so desperately needs. This bill is the first of its kind in this country and, if passed, will provide both precedent and platform from which to build other legislation and usher in the institutionalization of domestic worker protections.

Advocacy groups from Memphis to San Francisco will be looking to New York in the coming weeks as the outcome will have far-reaching effects on the kinds of reforms they can push for in their own state legislatures. There is also the potential for federal legislation down the line. But the fight, particularly for the rights of young workers, doesn't end there.

"There will need to be a major outreach campaign after the bill does pass," said Jimenez of the Youth Workers' Project. "There needs to be relational organizing where more young people talk to other young people -- peer-to-peer outreach."

Washington D.C.-based writer Laura Dean is a 2008 University of Chicago graduate who grew up in the Middle East.