Getting the Word Out: NY's Domestic Workers Now Have Rights!

by: Regina Weiss

Fri Apr 15, 2011 at 13:40:12 PM EDT

JFSJ partner Domestic Workers United (DWU) has taken the lead in making sure that New York State’s historic bill – signed into law last August – is understood and implemented. 

After years of organizing, passage of the law, which spells out legal rights and labor protections for domestic workers, was a huge legislative victory.  Now DWU is partnering with the Labor Department to make sure it actually helps the workers it was intended to protect.  Worker-employee workshops are planned, and DWU organizers are pounding the pavement and seeking out child care providers to educate them about the law, the first in the nation to set time and hour requirements for in-home care-givers and housekeepers, including mandated overtime pay, vacation pay and a 40 hour standard workweek.  The law also provides for temporary disability benefits and spells out protections for domestic workers facing discrimination or harassment.

How well and how quickly the domestic workers law is understood and implemented in New York will provide a model for other states and organizing efforts, as similar bills move to the forefront nationwide. On Wednesday, while hundreds of domestic workers and their supporters packed a Sacramento hearing room, a bill modeled on New York’s law passed out of the California Assembly’s Labor Committee by a 5 to 1 vote. Here’s more on DWU’s implementation campaign from today’s New York Times.