Julián Castro has long invoked his immigrant grandmother’s story as a maid, cook, and babysitter, “barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.” A new policy proposal unveiled by the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign this week seeks to honor—and protect—domestic workers like her.
”Domestic labor has been excluded from national labor protections for too long, and that will end now,” Castro says in the proposal. “Listening to domestic workers like my grandmother, understanding their hardships, and valuing them in our society will be a priority as president, and that begins with rewriting our labor laws.”
More than two million people in the U.S. work as nannies, housekeepers, and home health aides, the vast majority of them women of color. Many most likely assume domestic workers already have important workplace protections afforded to workers in different settings, “but they were deliberately excluded from many foundational labor laws made during the New Deal era,” said Domestic Workers Alliance leader Ai-jen Poo, who has been instrumental in championing the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act.
As president, Castro pledges to pass that landmark legislation in order to “strengthen labor protections for domestic workers, including eligibility under overtime protections, ending exclusion from anti-harassment and anti-discrimination laws, strong health and safety protections such as required breaks, and establishing tools for effective enforcement.”
The policy calls for a need to “establish portable benefits, including for paid family and medical leave and health care,” as well as vital protections for domestic workers vulnerable to certain abuse due to their legal status. “This includes expanded use of the U and T-visas, visa programs for victims of crimes including workplace-related crimes and human trafficking,” Castro says, “to ensure non-citizens are allowed to continue to reside in the United States after being victims of criminal activity.”
“Being a nanny takes so much hard work,” said Thaty Oliveira, a Domestic Workers Alliance member who has lobbied members of Congress to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act. “We need to bring our work out of the shadows—so everyone can know what we do and how hard we work.” Rebecca Sandoval, a home health aide, said, “It should not matter that our workplace is in people’s homes, our work caring for others deserves dignity and respect.”
There’s a mantra among domestic workers, and it’s a true one: "Domestic workers do the work that makes all other work possible.” As Sandoval said, they’re deserving of dignity and respect—and protections. “My grandmother cleaned houses to provide for our family,” Castro continued. “My mother, like so many organizers in the Chicano movement, was inspired by the activism of the farmworker movement. I learned from a young age that the people who pick our food or clean homes do hard jobs and deserve respect.”