Domestic workers

Domestic workers, also known as domestic servants, are people who perform household work usually in a home setting for a person or a family. They include maids, butlers, nannies, caretakers, gardeners, and housekeepers. These workers usually perform chores such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, and errands, and they provide care for children, pets, or elderly people. They also may complete various other duties. Into the twenty-first century, domestic workers continue to perform valuable services and support families who need assistance with household chores; however, domestic workers continue to fight for fair wages and better working conditions as many experience low wages and work long hours, and have no legal protections or benefits such as health care. In the United States and other countries, domestic workers are excluded from various national labor laws, but many US states and other countries are working to pass legislation to protect domestic workers.

Brief History

In the United States, the original domestic workers were slaves and indentured servants who were brought to the former American colonies during the seventeenth century and forced to perform labor. Many women slaves worked as servants in homes. Although the United States abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, domestic service continued. By 1870, domestic work was the top profession for women in the country. The industry required a cheap labor supply and relatively no skills, so many workers—mostly women and children—were treated poorly, paid very low wages, and worked long hours in sometimes difficult conditions. They had no employment protections.

Many domestic workers were afraid to speak out in fear of losing their jobs or being mistreated. However, some began to denounce their poor treatment and low wages. In the 1870s and 1880s, a group of workers organized strikes to protest low wages in Jackson, Mississippi, and Galveston, Texas. In addition, a group of laundresses in Atlanta, Georgia, demanded better pay and control of the washing industry in the city in 1881. About this time, a Chicago news reporter worked undercover as a servant and exposed her experiences of mistreatment. This inspired a group of domestic workers to form a union in 1901, but the organization was short-lived.

In the years that followed, many workers continued to speak out about the plight of domestic workers, with several telling their sides of the story in books, magazines, and newspapers. Organizations and unions formed to fight for the rights of domestic workers. A domestic servant named Dora Lee Jones from Harlem, New York, organized the Domestic Workers Union in 1934. The union demanded that workers be paid fair wages and work fair hours; it lobbied the state and federal governments to have wage and hour laws included in the Social Security Act. The following year, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act to protect employees working in the private sector, but the bill excluded domestic and agricultural workers.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established work standards that included a set number of hours that could be worked each week, minimum wage rates, and overtime compensation rules. However, the act again excluded domestic workers. Other legislation passed in the years that followed, but many of these laws only applied to employers who had a minimum number of employees. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred employment discrimination, but it only applied to employers with more than fifteen employees—once again excluding domestic workers from these protections.

The Fair Labor Standards Act was amended in 1974, finally giving some domestic workers protection, but it excluded many workers such as babysitters and those who worked as companions of elderly people. In 1995, the Washington City Paper published the report "Capital Slaves," which revealed a system of modern slavery in the United States, in which people held domestic workers against their will and forced them to work without pay. Many organizations rushed to the aid of these workers, many who were woman from foreign countries.

Topic Today

Despite the passage of labor protections throughout the years, the unfair treatment of domestic workers persisted into the twenty-first century. Many domestic workers were female, uneducated, and undocumented, and many feared losing their jobs, so they did not report mistreatment. In some countries, children and others were trafficked and forced into working. Domestic workers faced abuse, harassment, and exploitation and did not have any legal recourse if employers fired, mistreated, or injured them.

In the United States, this began to change with the formation of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in 2007. The group worked on the establishment of a domestic workers' bill of rights in New York. In 2010, this became a reality when New York passed the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, which was the first of its kind in the country to give domestic workers legal protections when it came to paid vacation and sick days, overtime pay, disability benefits, and health insurance. It also protected workers from sexual harassment and racial discrimination.

Other states began to follow suit. Hawaii became the second US state to pass a similar law in 2013, and the following year, California passed its Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, which was updated to include permanent overtime protections in 2016. As of mid-2017, no federal labor laws in the United States or international labor laws worldwide fully protected domestic workers, although, several countries and many US states continued to work on legislation of their own.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2011 made the first move to protect domestic workers worldwide. It adopted the ILO Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers, also known as the Domestic Workers Convention, No. 189. With it, the ILO set global standards for domestic workers, giving them the same protections of other workers in their countries. About two dozen countries—excluding the United States—have ratified the convention, as of mid-2017.

Bibliography

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Bloom, Ester. "The Decline of Domestic Help." Atlantic, 23 Sept. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/decline-domestic-help-maid/406798. Accessed 30 June 2017.

Caldwell, Maggie. "Invisible Women: The Real History of Domestic Workers in America." Mother Jones, 7 Feb. 2013, www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/timeline-domestic-workers-invisible-history-america. Accessed 30 June 2017.

"Domestic Workers." Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), www.wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/domestic-workers. Accessed 30 June 2017.

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"The ILO Domestic Workers Convention." Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related‗material/2013ilo‗dw‗convention‗brochure.pdf. Accessed 30 June 2017.

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"Who Are Domestic Workers?" International Labour Organization (ILO), www.ilo.org/global/docs/WCMS‗209773/lang--en/index.htm. Accessed 30 June 2017.