Statewide Campaign to Respect All Workers

By Natalicia Tracy & Lydia Edwards

The Brazilian Immigrant Center (BIC) is a grassroots membership organization whose mission centers on training, advocacy and organizing of immigrant workers. The BIC’s goal is to address the root causes of abuse and discrimination, defend and advance labor, civil, and human rights of immigrants, and promote their empowerment as workers and civic participants.

Board Members of the Domestic Worker Campaign coalition.

Historically, the majority of the workers that came to the Center concerning their rights came from the construction and restaurant industries. Domestic workers are usually women of color who face multiple levels of oppression that traditional labor movements either have not or are not willing to address. Domestic workers also must face the current anti-immigrant xenophobia that prevents many from speaking up for fear of being deported. At BIC, it became increasingly clear that protecting domestic workers was not only a necessary action, considering how vulnerable many are legally, but also that a domestic workers rights initiative was a very natural extension of the already effective, long-standing workers’ rights organizing at BIC.

BIC is operating on two levels, first within our own Brazilian community of women domestic workers, and secondly in alliance with sister organizations representing other immigrant groups. As the largest workers’ center serving New England Brazilians, our constituents come to us from greater Boston, eastern Massachusetts in general, and the wider six-state New England region. Our domestic workers rights project is targeted mostly at immigrant women, for whom domestic work is a very common form of employment. For Brazilian women, whatever your class, when you first come to the US, if you can’t speak English well, your first job is usually as a domestic worker. Together with other women immigrant workers, this project will serve all of Massachusetts.

BIC launched its Domestic Service Worker Initiative during the summer of 2010 and began meeting and organizing domestic workers. The meetings were an eye opening view into the abuses many domestic workers face. Wage theft was by far the largest abuse. Housecleaners discussed their experiences that involved cleaning in small groups as many as 10 to15 houses a day and receiving $50 to $80 on average a day. Other women talked about hiding their pregnancies to prevent being fired, or to avoid being deliberately forced to work in an uncomfortable position until they had to quit. We also heard about experiences of isolation and having no idea where to turn when their employers (in many cases the landlord) began to make sexually suggestive overtures. BIC continues to hold worker organizing meetings and to document experiences. It has become clear that the experience of abuse is not limited to the Brazilian community. BIC understands that for systemic change to occur, all immigrant communities and women’s organizations must be united in this effort.

During the fall of 2010, representatives from the National Domestic Workers Alliance visited Massachu-setts and met with several representatives from various immigrant, workers’ and women’s rights organizations including the Brazilian Immigrant Center. Those organizations formed the Massa-chusetts Coalition for Domestic Workers, that now also includes Women’s Institute for Leadership Development (WILD), Dominican Development Center, Matahari, the Massachusetts Alliance of Professional Nannies, Brazilian Women’s Group, Vida Verde Housecleaners Cooperative, Jobs with Justice, the Chinese Progressive Association, Total Assistance, Metrowest Workers Center of Framingham/Casa do Trabalhador, Brazilian Workers Party, National Lawyers Guild, MassCOSH, and the UMass Labor Resource Center.

The Massachusetts Coalition for Domestic Workers was formed with several goals in mind, among them being to bring about a state Domestic Service Workers Bill of Rights, connect various communities whose members are engaged in domestic work, and win long withheld respect for domestic work and acknowledgement that domestic work is real WORK and should be treated under the law like any other job.

Engagement and leadership development among workers is foundational to this effort. The BIC expects increasing numbers of workers, mostly women, to become engaged in activist roles in the movement, attending meetings, contributing to decision-making, and participating in actions. In the longer term, a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights will advance rights for all workers. New rights will be especially important for women of color, as a remedy for the long history of their exclusion from labor law protection, a continuing legacy from the eras of slavery and Jim Crow. A Bill of Rights will also bring these women more into the mainstream of the labor movement and broader struggles for workers’ rights.

Natalicia M. Tracy is Executive Director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston; Lydia Edwards is a member of the BIC’s Board of Directors and a local attorney.