Domestic Workers Organize to End an 'Atmosphere of Violence' on the Job
Conference participants rallied in Manhattan on Saturday for the New York State Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.
The women’s stories seemed to come from a backward country, or from a shameful time in the United States that many would sooner forget.
Sharing stories from the workplace: Violet Anthony, top, was slammed against a wall and subjected to beatings after she arrived from India; Georgia Danan, middle, was paid just $70 for working a 24-hour shift; and Araceli Herrera, bottom, says employers searched her bags before they would allow her to leave for the day.
One woman, too scared to give her name, told of being struck by her employer in Bethesda, Md., as she scrubbed her hands raw polishing the floor. Another woman, Violet Anthony, who is 29 and from Mumbai, said her face became marbled with bruises after her employer in Queens slammed her into a wall and slapped her. Araceli Herrera said some of her employers inspected her bags before she left their homes and refused to drive her to or from the bus stop, a half-hour’s walk away. One employer, she said, fired her after she had a gallbladder operation and needed a month’s rest.
“With each job, I was exploited more. The thing is, the more you suffer, the harder it is to defend yourself,” said Ms. Herrera, 48, who trained to be an optometrist in her native Mexico and now works as a housekeeper in San Antonio. “We come from an atmosphere of violence, of blows, and we think we have to tolerate that.”
All three women were in Manhattan over the weekend for the first National Domestic Workers Congress, four days of workshops, meetings and a rally to demand rights for a work force that organizers describe as splintered, almost invisible, and staggeringly difficult to organize.
“Collective bargaining is not possible,” said Ai-jen Poo, an organizer with Domestic Workers United, an advocacy group for nannies, caregivers for the elderly, and housekeepers in New York. Workers usually achieve rights through strength in numbers, Ms. Poo said, banding together to pressure an individual employer to change. But in the New York City area, she estimated, there are 200,000 domestic workers working for perhaps as many employers.
“The power dynamics are different,” Ms. Poo said. “If you try to negotiate, you’re out.”
The conference drew about 100 women, most of them representatives from domestic workers’ groups in about 10 cities. Nearly all of them were immigrants, from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and India. They came together to build alliances and hone strategies to demand benefits that many of their employers almost assuredly take for granted: paid vacations and holidays, cost-of-living wage increases, health benefits and advance notice of termination. The workers threw their support behind a proposed New York State Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which, if passed, would be the first in the nation.
“Right now, it’s like the wild, wild West — anything goes,” Ms. Poo said. “Our point is that there needs to be a basic standard of protections, because the majority fall under employers who abuse, and everyone is vulnerable.”
Ms. Anthony said she was duped into working for next to nothing after responding to an ad in India that promised her $600 a month for baby-sitting in the United States. Instead, she said, her employer took away her passport after she arrived in 2004, paid her $100 a month for her first job, in New Jersey, and later forced her to work without pay from 7 a.m. to midnight at his home in Queens, cleaning, cooking and baby-sitting. The man also threatened to tie her up in the basement, she said. After his wife beat her, she said, she fled to a neighbor’s home. Ms. Anthony later learned of a group for South Asian workers that helped her move on to a better job as a mail clerk at a law firm.
The woman who said she was beaten by her employer in Maryland has been living at a shelter. At the conference, she drew small hearts on her name tag, but fearing repercussions from her former employer, asked that her name not be made public. She is 37, a slight woman with small hands and a stud adorning her nose. She is from Kanpur, India, and arrived in Bethesda in December 2007 to work, she said, for a man who worked at the Indian Embassy. Her days started at 6 a.m. and lasted well into the night, and she said she was paid $200 for three months’ work. Exhausted, sickened by the chemical cleaning solutions that seared her lungs and burned her hands, she ran away in April and was placed in a shelter. “At first I had many dreams,” she said. “But I have let go of so many dreams.”
Casa de Maryland, an immigrants’ advocacy group, and its Committee of Women Seeking Justice took on her case and sent her to the conference.
Other women told less harrowing tales that still evinced how little their work was valued, and how little recourse they felt they had. One woman, who wore a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Tell Dem Slavery’s Done,” said she used to baby-sit full time in New York City for $275 a week, and was pushed to work for less. Georgia Danan, a 76-year-old who works as a caregiver for the elderly, said an agency in California paid her $70 for working a 24-hour shift; she is fighting for several months of back wages. Martha Alvarado, who is 41 and from Peru, said that in her first housekeeping job in the United States, in 1994, she was forced to live in a basement and work six days a week, until 11 p.m. at night.
Ms. Alvarado, like many of the women at the conference, said she considered herself lucky to be there because untold thousands of domestic workers remained exploited and deeply isolated.
“Many women feel they are alone,” she said, “and don’t dare come out in the light and speak.”
