Domestic Workers Organizing in the United States

Published as part of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)'s Building Feminist Movements and Organisations (BFEMO) initiative, this 11-page paper examines the rise of domestic worker organising in the United States. The case study of 2 domestic workers' organisations - Domestic Workers United (DWU) and Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) - and the new National Alliance of Domestic Workers that they recently helped form, highlight some lessons from this growing movement.

The authors begin by tracing the history of domestic work and domestic worker organising the United States. As shape of this type of labour has evolved, it remains clear to the authors that "[d]espite the critical role that domestic workers play in the current global political economy, in the United States they have remained excluded from most basic labour protections and live and work essentially at the whim of their employer. Domestic workers in the United States are predominantly immigrants and women of colour who work long hours for low-wages, without overtime pay, and under extremely isolated conditions....The vast majority of domestic workers struggle to defend their most basic human rights."

In this context, domestic workers in that country have joined together in various ways to resist oppression and exploitation, the authors explain. Since the 1980s, immigrant community organisations, independent workers organisations, or "workers' centres" have emerged, but they do not necessarily always focus their organising on their members' experiences as workers. Organising tactics have included direct action campaigns, legislative initiatives, lawsuits, and other creative tactics to mobilize and win justice for their members. In the last 10 years, DWU and MUA have been created with the shared commitment to seeing and analysing the "intersectional", root causes of the oppression facing their members. This perspective has led them to take on and prioritise building relationships - coalitions - that broaden the base and power of the movement as a whole.

In the authors' assessment, domestic workers today are poised to pick up where past efforts left off, fighting to gain respect and power nationally. "As a growing force whose experiences point to a long history of systemic inequality for women, workers, immigrants and people of colour, there is tremendous potential for rejuvenating the many segments of the grassroots movements that it intersects with, including the feminist, labour, immigrant rights and racial justice sectors." To that end, in June 2007, over 50 domestic workers from countries of the Global South, now working in U.S. cities, met as part of the United States Social Forum (USSF) for a National Domestic Worker Gathering; on the final day of the gathering these household workers decided to form a National Domestic Worker Alliance. Its goals are to: collectively bring public attention to the plight of domestic/household workers; bring respect and recognition to the workforce; improve workplace conditions; and consolidate the voice and power of domestic workers as a workforce.

To understand how the new Alliance is working toward these goals, the authors explore the strategies of each of the 2 organisations that pushed for its formation. First, MUA, which was formed by immigrant women in 1990 to provide a support group setting where Latina immigrants working in California could share their experiences, find their voice, make links between personal problems and broader social and economic injustices, and build community and collective power. MUA has participated in campaigns to save prenatal care services for undocumented immigrant women from budget cuts; address the lack of adequate interpretation services in the public healthcare system; create immigrant women's provisions in the national Violence Against Women Act (VAWA); and mobilised vigils, marches, and community forums to protest the war in Iraq and anti-immigrant attacks.

Domestic worker leadership development and democratic decision-making processes characterise the communication strategies informing MUA's activities. MUA draws on the strengths of Latina immigrant women as peer mentors, group facilitators, community educators, and organisers. Women approaching MUA for support are encouraged to become a member and attend weekly group meetings. After 3 to 6 months of participation, members have the opportunity to take part in MUA's Meeting Facilitator and Peer Counselling training. The Caring Hands Workers' Association offers members job skills training in the childcare and home health care sectors, combined with workers' rights courses that prepare Latina immigrants to defend their rights and obtain greater economic independence and security. New and emerging leaders are encouraged to take part in MUA's annual 8 week leadership course and 4 month training, "Leadership and Unity for Community Power," which provides political theory and organising skills to prepare MUA members to participate in the Comité Corazon. At the centre of MUA's political work, this Campaign Coordinating "Heart" Committee is tasked with leading participatory processes to identify campaigns and is responsible for making key decisions on how to advance the work.

In the winter of 2003, MUA decided to shift towards more strategic community organising involving longer-term campaigns conceived, designed, and led by the MUA membership. The next section of the report provides several examples of MUA joining forces with various like-minded organisations to undertake participatory research projects - for instance, to assess conditions in the domestic/household work industry. By the culmination of the process detailed here, a statewide Household Worker Rights Coalition was formed to strategise and work together to improve conditions in the industry. Throughout the 2006 grassroots legislative campaign, more than 500 domestic worker leaders participated in education, outreach, and advocacy activities. Support was built for the campaign through presentations and one-on-one meetings with over 75 community organisations, and hundreds of domestic workers travelled to the state capitol each month to meet with legislators, lobby for their bill, and hold press conferences and rallies.

Around this time, MUA began connecting with an organisation in New York called DWU, which had also begun a parallel process of member-led research on industry working conditions, to share lessons and information about organising domestic workers. In short, DWU "seeks to forge a vision that links the struggle to change conditions for domestic workers to building a broad-based movement for fundamental social transformation." DWU's organising model has 5 components:

1. Membership base-building to build an engaged membership base to scale. This includes street outreach, park outreach, church outreach, word of mouth, follow-up phone-banking, and programmes that bring workers into the organisation such as computer classes and language classes.
2. Leadership development that supports the political leadership of domestic workers in the organisation and the broader movement. This includes an annual Leadership Training Program, and ongoing exchange and exposure with other movement building organisations.
3. Grassroots campaigns to improve the living and working conditions of domestic workers, including campaigns for justice for exploited domestic workers and the overarching policy campaigns for labour standards. Strategic communications and media work is a critical part of these campaigns.
4. Building alliances that strengthen the movement.
5. Organisational development, which includes volunteer development, grassroots fundraising, and multi-lingual organising capacity building, among other things.

Amongst the accomplishments described in this section of the paper is this one: "DWU members have been able push the feminist movement to see the relationship between the exploitation of women's invisible labour in the home and labour rights for women, women of colour in particular."

Reflecting on this history, the authors conclude that domestic worker organising in the US has impacted the broader social justice movement politically, practically, and culturally. Specifically,

• Politically, the analysis of the impact of neo-liberal globalisation on women in the global South, and migrant women in the North, "has helped many to understand the more invisible effects of the brutal economic system we live under. In addition, the analysis of domestic workers' necessary labour, and its role and value in the global economy, is helping bring about an understanding of the strategic importance of the leadership of this sector of workers..."
• Practically, the social justice movement "has opened the door for hundreds of working-class immigrant women of colour to exercise leadership - organize, inspire and mobilize entire communities for a better future - thus proving that they are precisely the leadership that the social justice movement in the United States has been waiting for....Significantly, the first United States Social Forum was organized and heavily attended by member-based 'movement' organizations, rooted in working class communities of colour - many of which are led by women....[T]he formation of a National Domestic Worker Alliance is lauded as one of the gathering's major successes....In addition, domestic worker organizations have proven that there's no such thing as 'unorganizable' people, communities, or workforces....On a daily basis they are demanding that 'women's' work be recognized and valued, and they are practicing women's self-determination, asserting their right to make their own decisions and live with respect and dignity. They challenge the replication of capitalist patriarchy within social justice movements, and are at the forefront of cutting edge organizing in the United States."
• Culturally, "domestic workers...have forced people to think more about the invisible labour that makes other work possible, and the importance of recognizing, respecting, and protecting this work under basic human rights principles."