With a lot of luck, we may finally take decisive action to guarantee decent treatment for the world's highly exploited housekeepers, maids, nannies, and other domestic workers. There are an estimated 100 million of them, working in more than 180 countries.
Their pay is generally at the poverty level, and very few have fringe benefits such as pensions and employer-paid health care. Few have the protection of unions or labor laws, and they're often at the mercy of unscrupulous labor contractors.
Almost half of them are not entitled to even one day off per week. About a third of the female workers are denied maternity leave.
The hope for improving the domestics 'slavery-like conditions has arisen from action taken in Geneva this month at the annual meeting of the United Nation's International Labor Organization – the ILO.
Delegates representing unions, employers and governments voted 396 to 16 for what's called a “Convention on Domestic Workers.” The nonbinding convention spells out how domestics should be treated in UN member countries – most importantly in the pace-setting United States.
In the US, as in most other countries, an estimated 80 percent of the domestics are women of color, subject to racial discrimination and physical and sexual abuse. In the United States, most of them are immigrants as well . They're easy targets for exploitation, especially since, as elsewhere, domestics mainly work in private, unregulated households, usually alone.
What's more, US domestics lack most of the protections of state and federal labor laws that are granted most US workers outside of agriculture. Most other non-agricultural workers at least have the right to unionize. But domestics don't even have that basic right.
The National Labor Relations Act specifically denies union rights to anyone “in the domestic service of any family or person.” That's right. The Depression-era law that was designed to pull poverty-stricken workers out of poverty and build a middle class does indeed prohibit an entire group of exceptionally needy workers from taking a major step to improve their extremely poor working conditions. The word for that is “un-American.”
That outrageous legal prohibition has its roots in racism. Pressures from southern states, which objected to granting union rights to the mainly black domestics, was the main reason domestics were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.
Some domestics have nevertheless formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment. But they need the force of law behind them.
The ILO convention calls for guaranteeing domestic workers in the United States and everywhere else some of the key rights that unionized workers invariably have, among them, regular working hours, vacations, maternity leaves and Social Security benefits.
Domestics would be promised what amount to contracts with employers that would make clear just what they would be expected to do, for how long and for how much pay. Their working conditions would have to include time off of at least 24 hours a week.
Migrant workers would have to be provided with a written job offer of employment or a contract before crossing the border into another country to work.
It took several years for ILO representatives to adopt the domestic workers convention. It was finally adopted as a direct result of campaigning here and aboard by groups of activists from unions and other organizations. They will be working for the next few years to get as many nations as possible to implement the ILO convention with their help.
The effort in this country is being led by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, with major support from the AFL-CIO, which has arranged to have some domestic workers represent themselves in ILO meetings and voting.
Among other things, proponents hope to make it clear that “domestic workers are real workers, NOT powerless individuals who are expected to remain in quiet servitude and endure long hours without overtime pay, along with hazardous working conditions without access to health and safety protections.”
Proponents also hope to end the “cultural relativity excuse that sleeping on a mattress in an unheated garage is better than he or she would get in their home country, or that the poor treatment of domestics is a tradition.” The ILO convention says otherwise and workers in the United States and other countries where it is adopted “will be armed with the knowledge that there is an international standard that protects them.”
Domestics already are granted labor rights in New York State, and California legislators are considering a proposal to bring them under that state's labor laws. But winning basic rights for the badly exploited domestic workers elsewhere will be very difficult. But so was convincing ILO representatives to take on the task, the long needed task of granting domestic workers union rights and, with them, the decent wages, hours and working conditions that come with unionization.
Yes, winning the union rights for domestics worldwide will be very difficult. But we know it can be done. And certainly we know that it should be done.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy