[ Domestic workers make all other work possible – yet have been
excluded from crucial federal labor protections for over 80 years. In
a historic first, Congress held a hearing on policy that would finally
change that.]
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AT LONG LAST, CONGRESS CONSIDERS A NATIONAL DOMESTIC WORKERS BILL OF
RIGHTS  
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Bella DeVaan
August 22, 2022
Inequality.org
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_ Domestic workers make all other work possible – yet have been
excluded from crucial federal labor protections for over 80 years. In
a historic first, Congress held a hearing on policy that would finally
change that. _

image credit: WNYC News,

 

$71,610.03: the back wages, interest, and civil penalties paid to a
live-in domestic worker by their negligent employer in Seattle. In
July, King5 News reported
[[link removed]],
the city’s Office of Labor Standards orchestrated the employer’s
settlement – redress for their failure to pay minimum wage, provide
overtime pay, and track payment. 

“I would encourage other domestic workers to come forward and not to
be afraid if they believe that the contracts and the form of payment
are not being fulfilled according to the work that is done,” the
anonymous domestic worker shared in the wake of her repayment. 

In 2018, exactly three years prior, Seattle was the first city in the
nation to pass a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The ordinance
[[link removed]] instated
a host of protections for domestic workers (defined as both employees
and independent contractors, “who provide paid services to an
individual or household in a private home as a nanny, house cleaner,
home care worker, gardener, cook, and/or household manager”):
entitlement to Seattle’s minimum wage, fair breaks during the
workday, and written agreements outlining their employment. 

Seattle also created a Domestic Workers Standards Board – composed
of employees, employers, and community representatives – with
investigatory and recommendation power through the city’s Office of
Labor Standards. Because of the bill, that $71,610.03 ended up in the
right hands.  

Throughout the last decade, Domestic Bill of Rights legislation has
proliferated in capitals and city halls – 10 states (mostly governed
by Democrats) and 2 municipalities (Seattle and Philadelphia) boast
these more robust worker protections. And they’ve paid off: a 2021
National Domestic Workers Alliance survey
[[link removed]] revealed
that workers in states with Bill of Rights protections “report
overall working conditions that are better than those reported by
workers who live in states without a Bill of Rights.” 

Still, the vast majority of domestic workers are under-protected.
The 2.2 million estimated domestic workers in this country
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90 percent of whom are women and a strong majority of whom are women
of color [[link removed]] –
earned an unlivable median hourly wage
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$12.01 in 2019.

While earning far too little, unconscionable percentages of these
workers reported
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unsafe at work (25 percent), did not receive breaks during working
hours (36 percent), did not receive sick days (82 percent), did not
have written agreements from their employers (84 percent), did not
receive partial pay for late cancellation (81 percent), and did not
receive pay for employers’ cancellations after arriving to work (76
percent). 

The numbers speak for themselves: domestic workers deserve sweeping
protections beyond uneven state-level policies. As such, legislators
recently revitalized their push for a National Domestic Workers Bill
of Rights. Originally introduced in 2019 by then-Senator Kamala Harris
(D-CA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) along with Representative Jayapal
(D-WA) in the House, Gillibrand and Jayapal reintroduced the bill with
Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) in 2021 as Democrats lead across
government. 

On July 28th, 2022, the House Education and Labor Committee held a
historic hearing on the legislation: “Essential but Undervalued:
Examining Workplace Protections for Domestic Workers.”

The event, said [[link removed]] National
Domestic Workers Alliance Executive Director Jenn Stowe, was the
“culmination of years of organizing and fighting for domestic
workers and women of color across the country, for the last 15
years.” 

The National Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights consists of three key
components
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including domestic workers in commonplace labor rights and
protections, from which they’ve been long excluded; codifying new
workplace rights and benefits, specific to domestic work; and
bolstering capacity to enforce and implement the new law.

In other words, a Bill of Rights would not just rightfully classify
care work as valued work, worthy of protection – it would recognize
caregivers’ distinctive policy needs across state borders. 

Through the legislation, domestic workers would gain access to paid
overtime and sick days. They could expect a fair, safe standard of
working conditions, or recourse for poor ones. They could expect
written agreements and fair scheduling to guarantee and stabilize
their access to work. And the Department of Labor, along with a newly
commissioned national Standards Board – composed in part by domestic
workers themselves – would provide oversight and avenues for public
accountability.

Bill of Rights-favoring panelists at the hearing included National
Domestic Workers Alliance’s president, Ai-jen Poo, along with C.
Nicole Mason of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research
[[link removed]] (IWPR) and a member
of Seattle’s Domestic Workers Standards Board, Dana Barnett. 

A former employer of domestic labor, Barnett advocates
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Bill of Rights legislation “to recognize the clear stake that I
have in creating a fair and dignified system of care.” Fair
workplace standards and wages, Barnett argued
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establish fair and reasonable employment relationships” by
eliminating ambiguity. “Just bringing recognition to employers that
home is a workplace helps create a better one.”

Panelists adamantly emphasized that racism and marginalization created
domestic workers’ present precarity.

Domestic workers have borne “a long history of exclusion from
foundational labor laws, rooted in the legacy of slavery in
America,” testified Ai-jen Poo. “This workplace is hidden,
isolated behind closed doors and in private homes.”

While hammering out the details of the New Deal’s signature
inequality-alleviating legislation, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act,
Southern lawmakers fought for the exclusion of workers in the domestic
and agricultural sectors – overwhelmingly people of color. These
labor reforms, and others throughout the mid-20th century, directly
catalyzed America’s lowest rates of inequality – yet persistently
left millions of working Americans out in the cold.  

In a rapidly aging nation
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the demand for care work is skyrocketing, and cannot be “automated
or outsourced,” said Poo in Congress. Higher workplace standards and
protections, she argued, will bolster quality of care and “help
secure and also attract a strong workforce for the future.” 

This Bill of Rights could be a similar kind of forward-looking liberty
document for millions of American women of color as our first,
supposedly universal version. “We see it as a statement of our
collective values as Americans, a statement on how we respect all
working people, regardless of whether they work in an office or in a
home,” wrote Harris, Jayapal, and Poo in a 2018 op-ed for CNN
[[link removed]]. 

Of course, the Bill of Rights is one way to invest in care. In
the _New York Times_
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Poo explained how workforce support is just one element of solving our
caring crisis: the country should “holistically” invest in care at
a scale akin to infrastructure
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We need to raise workers’ wages and strengthen their protections –
while also investing in Medicaid home and community-based services,
child care subsidies, affordable healthcare, retirement benefits, and
paid leave.

This legislative session, it’s unlikely that Bill of Rights-style
protections and pursuant budget appropriations will make their way to
President Biden’s desk – investments in care were all too absent
from this summer’s Inflation Reduction Act
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and Republican Committee members spent the hearing fear mongering
about inflation, debt, religious descrimination, and how the
legislation might undermine the ability to “make employees part of
the family.” [[link removed]] 

But state by state, the tide is turning. Bills of Rights are up for
passage in New Jersey and Washington, DC. And Seattle is
going further
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its commitment to domestic workers, allocating a quarter of a million
dollars for outreach to inform workers of their rights –
facilitating justice as delivered by the settlement this summer. 

“Firstly, it was my ignorance of the laws and rights that I had,”
said the domestic worker in Seattle. “But through friends who
supported me to do it, I lost my fear and filed the complaint. It was
worth the risk and a favorable result was given.”

_[Bella DeVaan is the Research and Editorial Assistant for
Inequality.org. You can follow her on Twitter @bdevaan.]_

_Inequality.org [[link removed]] is a project of the Institute
for Policy Studies [[link removed]]_

* domestic workers
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* Labor
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* labor protections
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* Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights
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* National Domestic Workers Alliance
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* Ai-Jen Poo
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