Domestic Workers Aren’t Members of the Family [View all]

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/21-1



GRITtv was in Los Angeles this month, at the AFL-CIO Convention. This year’s meeting of the Nation’s largest labor federation was hailed as historic for a lot of reasons. There were more women and people of color there than ever before, lots of first-of-a-kind resolutions on things like incarceration and immigration, and lots of welcoming of non-union workers like domestic workers to the big old labor family.

Domestic workers were also at the heart of the big leap for labor rights which came immediately after the convention, when the Obama administration announced it will finally extend minimum wage and overtime protections to domestic workers, a change labor and community groups have pushed for.

Domestics have worked for poverty wages in miserable conditions in Americans’ homes, for ever. The Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA, which big labor celebrates, excluded domestic workers, and retail and service workers, and farm laborers. They didn’t call it special rights for white men, but that’s what it amounted to. Even when FLSA was updated in the 70s, domestic workers were still excluded. They’re not workers, the lawmakers said, they’re “companions” -- members of the family.

In LA, Lourdes Belagot Pablo, a 61 year old Philipina told GRITtv about what it’s like to “companion” sick elderly clients in their homes, round the clock, 24 hours a day in four-day shifts. If she gets two hours of un-interupted sleep the whole time, she's lucky.