This post originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine blog, and is re-posted here with the author’s permission.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) has a big decision to make for the cause of women’s rights. On his desk at the moment is a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that recently passed both houses of the California legislature. The bill only needs Gov. Brown’s signature to become law; if he doesn’t sign it before September 30, it automatically becomes law.
The Bill of Rights–Assembly Bill 889 [PDF]–guarantees domestic workers overtime pay and lunch and rest breaks, and assures live-in workers that will be allowed sufficient sleep in adequate conditions. The Bill covers nannies, housekeepers and caregivers employed by private agencies, as well as those hired by individual families.
The provisions of the bill are hardly radical. They are rights that many of us wouldn’t think twice about. Of course, people deserve the right to eat lunch and should have the right to a full night’s rest. Why are we even talking about this?
Because these basic rights are routinely denied to household workers.
Domestic work, an occupation historically made up of African American and immigrant women, was excluded from the labor protections afforded to most workers in the 1930s: Social Security, unemployment, a minimum wage and the right to organize and bargain collectively. Although they now have access to Social security and minimum wage, domestic workers are still a vulnerable workforce.
Today, there are overwhelmingly poor immigrant women of color who engage in the devalued work of cooking, cleaning and caring that enables households to function. Many don’t think of that as “real” work. Moreover, domestics work in the privacy of the home, are sometimes undocumented, aren’t always aware of their rights and are subject to the whims of their employers. It is particularly difficult for household workers to organize because they are isolated from each other, and it is very easy for employers to replace them if they express even an ounce of dissatisfaction.