While I'm not personally on board with the book and movie
The Help, for reasons that have been widely
articulated, if it helps draw attention to the campaign for workplace rights and protections for domestic workers, that's a good thing. Domestic workers lack the legal rights accorded almost all other workers in the United States, and being mostly poor women of color, many of them immigrants, they haven't had a lot of political or social leverage to improve the situation.
But last year, New York passed a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which:
extends the most far-reaching workplace protections in the nation to New York’s nannies and in-home workers. Those protections include a guarantee of overtime pay, three days of rest a year and the extension of disability benefits to domestic workers.
However, the bill does not include other basic employment benefits, such as paid sick and vacation days, and does not require employers to offer notice of termination or severance pay to their workers.
Now, domestic workers in California are fighting for a similar bill, which would provide overtime pay and workers compensation coverage, along with provisions including regular breaks, the right to eight hours a night of uninterrupted sleep, and the right to cook their own food. The bill has passed the Assembly and is in the Senate.
Read more about the bill and about workers' stories.