Part of the Family?: Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and the Battle for Domestic Workers' Rights

by Sheila Bapat

Love and compassion are at the heart of domestic labor, yet historically, domestic workers have been rendered invisible—by society and in the eyes of the law. Mostly foreign-born women, these workers have been excluded from labor protections that workers in the rest of the economy take for granted. However, in the past decade, a growing movement has emerged calling for domestic workers to share in the same rights guaranteed other workers, which is likely to lead to one of the most critical and encompassing labor battles of the twenty-first century.

Part of the Family? Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and the Battle for Domestic Workers' Rights chronicles the rising political and social movement to secure labor protections for domestic workers who toil in our homes cleaning, cooking, and caring for our children and elders. Through interviews with the leaders and activists who are forging new and unlikely political alliances among workers, employers, policymakers and other social justice movements, as well as analysis of the historical underpinnings of the current fight for improved conditions and protections for domestic workers, this important and timely book will shine an overdue light on the invisible laborers who are so critical to our economy (and our families).

Genres: Nonfiction, Labor

216 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2014

Reviews

[Adam]

Domestic workers—nannies, elder care givers, house cleaners—are organizing. They, along with farmworkers, are two workforces that were excluded from most employment laws that were passed in the early 20th century. Being both predominantly African-American workforces at the time, their exclusion is due to legislators too willing to capitulate to racism. Almost a century later, these workers are organizing, largely as part of worker centers, to pass state “bills of rights” to gain basic labor protections that other workers have, and, in some cases, to even win benefits beyond what other laborers enjoy.

Domestic workers have succeeded with these legislative campaigns in 4 states, and are gaining ground in several more. A national network, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), is coordinating these efforts. Besides moving policy, domestic workers—mostly women of color; many immigrant—are also contributing to other social movements, like #BlackLivesMatter.

People are beginning to notice. Ai-jen Poo, NDWA executive director, just won a MacArthur Genius Grant. And attorney and writer, Sheila Bapat wrote this book (For the best article-length argument for the importance of this movement in context, see Sarah Jaffe’s 2013 Trickle Down Feminism in Dissent www.dissentmagazine.org/article/trick...).

Domestic worker organizing is remarkable in part because of the extremely marginal position that these workers occupy. Their position as workers, women, immigrants, and people of color mean that they labor at the intersection of many systems of oppression. Because their workplace is the home, they are even less visible than their near-invisible peers laboring in other low-wage service sectors. It also makes organizing them more difficult—and necessarily different than organizing other service workers.

Innovative organizing strategies are another remarkable feature of the domestic worker movement. The employers of domestic workers are unlike other employers who are the targets of other worker organizing campaigns: they’re homeowners, not capitalists. Organizing around broadly-defined themes of care change the way employers are engaged in these campaigns. The movement is also notable for its long-term outlook and corresponding focus on deep empowerment and culture change.

Bapat pays respect and tribute to the movement with this passionate account of its rise. It is evident that Bapat admires domestic worker organizing and she lends her sharp mind and easy-going writing style to the cause. Bapat packs her book with social history, feminist theory, legal analysis, immigration policy, individual worker stories of transformation, and recommendations.

While showing an vast knowledge of the topic, this breadth constitutes the book’s greatest weakness. Bapat touches on all of these themes to illuminate domestic worker organizing from different angles. But she doesn’t go into sufficient depth into any of them to yield particularly new insight. The resulting survey-like format makes it difficult to decide for which audience the book would hold the most interest. As someone participating in the movement, the theory is already understood, the history known, the stories familiar. I imagine the book may be overwhelming to readers entirely unfamiliar with the movement, with its coverage of so many actors, presentation of so many facts, and description of so many campaigns. Reading this, I often wished that the book were just a legal analysis, or just a history, or just a compilation of workers’ stories. The book is perhaps best suited for students, who can read the book by chapters, corresponding to other course texts in order to deepen their understanding.

[Lauren]

Full disclosure that I'm friends with the author, but regardless of that it really is a tour de force! I have little personal connection to domestic workers and I learned a ton.