Brisas Larios and her mother, a domestic worker
Earlier this evening, 11-year-old Abigail Drach told a packed room
at St. Philips Episcopal Church in Harlem what she thought about the fact that domestic workers don’t have basic labor protections.
“I don’t think it’s fair that some babysitters are not treated fairly,” said Drach, who is cared for by a nanny.
A minute later, Brisas Larios, the daughter of a domestic worker and probably a year younger than Abigail, took the mike. “I hope they win a bill of rights so they can be respected,” she said of workers like her mother.
The wisdom of these young girls should be a lesson for Albany lawmakers. A bill in the NY state legislature would provide domestic workers with the basic rights that too many other workers take for granted. But there are only two weeks left before this legislative session closes.
Domestic Workers United, the chief organizing vehicle by and for these caregivers, has strategically brought together a range of stakeholders—nannies, employers and labor activists—to push a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in New York.
This legislation has been in the pipeline for five years. It’s time—overtime—for Albany legislators to deliver basic worker rights to the thousands of women who take care of families throughout New York.
Domestic workers are not protected under state and federal labor laws. Their work is not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or civil rights laws. This leaves them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
This unacceptable inequity is historically rooted in the racist and sexist treatment of African-American women, who for centuries performed the drudgery of domestic work. In the 1930s, when labor rights were being written into laws, these women and their long, honest days of work were excluded.
Poet Kim McCrae of the Poverty Initiative spoke these verses to the audience rallying for the legislation: Modern day slavery dressed up in working-class clothes…Invisible chains have a strange weight to them.
What can you do, you ask? Or what should you do? Contact your Assemblymember and State Senator and tell them they are not getting your vote until they approve the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights THIS legislative session.
Abigail and Brisas get it. So should the so-called adults in Albany.