Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Household Workers Unite 20151221

Hello. Thank you all for coming to the culture. We are so excited to be hosting a launch of the build movement. Today she will be joined by Alice Guthrie harris affiliated with the studies abroad college. Shes at Queens College and a longtime scholar with Community Organization and has written policy briefs and served as a witness and speaks on issues of labor and poverty and is a progressive media outlets. Harris is the r. Gordon huxley professor of american history. She specializes in the history of labor labor and the comparative disciplinary rations and received her ba from rockers joining us later in the program is the representative from the National Domestic Workers Alliance the nations leading nations leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of Domestic Workers many of whom are women and working with respect for the inclusion of the Labor Protections in the Domestic National alliance powered by the organizations and the first local chapter in atlanta over 20,000. Thank you so much and i will turn it over to the speakers. [applause] i want to start by saying saying what an enormous pleasure it is to be here and to be celebrating this book. Its a book that crosses so many of the field that ive written about and i am interested in that i am completely amazed to see how it moves not just one field forward with several forward in the fields of labor history. I want to start out by asking you how did you come to write a book on Domestic Workers after all, we all know that Domestic Workers are at the edge of our intellectual consciousness, not at the center and you managed not only to put them at the center of its best to think about how the center affects all of american history. This book is very deeply personal to the dot also grew out of my scholarly research. My grandmother worked as a Domestic Worker for most of her life and my mother worked as a Domestic Worker for a short period in africa as well. I started to read about and observed a mystic worker organizing by an Organization Called Domestic Workers organization which was mostly of immigrant women from all around the world who began to raise awareness about the plight of Domestic Workers and the exploitation and i was enormously inspired by their ability to speak out and challenge this occupation that plays such a central role in their lives and then of course is the question of the academic imperative. We have a lot of research and writing about womens labor history and of course foundational to defining the field of womens labor history and there have been some important monographs about Domestic Work and organizing but if you look at the importance of this occupation and womens history for both workers and employers, we dont have enough information especially told from the perspective of workers. You mentioned that there isnt a lot of work done and i agree. Weve always said they were not good sources. When you wake up for and working class women who dont leave the same documents we tend not to do as much public writing as other activists do. We begin to think about the way they built their movement and crafted their movement and the kind of stories in particular. In the history of the occupation it was their way of bringing other women into the movement and their way of thinking about how to reform the occupation. Tell us more about that and what do you mean by storytelling what kind of stories did they tell and who told them . The they told stories about the labor and about the way they were hired and about the kind of treatment that they got from their employers and they told stories of history. The stories of history. One woman i write about is named Geraldine Miller who lived in the bronx as an organizer here who lived in the bronx and she told stories about something called the bronx slave market. Women were waiting on the street corners they would come up and work out and work with the most scarred knees and she told the story because women would look for their needs because those were the women who scrubbed floors. It also became a platform for the reforms of as she told the story she told the women we are never, ever again going to scrub floors down on all fours. It is a shape up of hiring the skilled men to do manual labor. It looks like a gender difference for a lot of years and turned out not to be one. It was given on the street corners by the two africanamerican women. Its stock for the Women Organizers in the 1960s who have never read anything about the slave markets of the 30s but it certainly heard those stories and the stories came part of their organizing toolbox. How does it happened happen this is one of the things that really puzzles me still even after reading your book ive written a lot about organizing working women. And where i come from, the capacity to organize often adheres in the scale of the work and the community the worker creates that we always imagined Domestic Work as an isolated kind of job so how do you organize Domestic Workers and how they overcame what looks like the relative isolation. Most labor leaders during the century had been Domestic Work on organized and the women who i write about use public spaces like organizing and its true of the Domestic Worker organizing today so the public parks and buses become a part of the organizing and the laundry rooms in the apartment buildings. There was one woman in atlanta who rode every bus in the city of atlanta and she encouraged them to come out to a meeting so it is an interesting way to think about how the labor organizing is transformed when you are looking. It moves away from the workplace and into the public sphere. It is amazing especially when you consider that most were excluded from that vast panoply of legislation from the 1930s so even earlier they were not protected by the legislation and they were not in the Social Security act of 1935. They were excluded from the fair standard labor act. How did they manage to get themselves covered . The exclusion is interesting because it sort of reveals the way that the Domestic Work was considered different from other kind of work because it was worth it because the workforce was largely africanamerican so it becomes a different kind of labor to this end recognized in the same way that other kinds of work is valued. Women organized to fight for those rights and protections. The women in the buck lobbied for and eventually one in 1974 the minimum wage protection in the first time nearly 50 years after the new deal justly should was passed and that was an enormous victory they testified before congress and the storytelling actually became a part of that of their efforts as well so going before congress and talking to the leaders of that kind of work they did for part of how they made that claim for the minimum wage. Wasnt there a conflict between those who were presumably hiring and those that were trying to get right for the feminist leaders . Scenic the feminist leaders were mostly middleclass and were women who relied on and deployed a Domestic Workers. It was a conflict but there was also an important sector of the feminist movement that was very supportive of the Domestic Worker organizing and you were a part of the feminist movement because ibb that you were at the Sarah Lawrence college in the 1970s and the Sarah Lawrence had a very important contingents of those that actually are to build bridges. They went to several meetings and instituted. So its important to think about the feminist community. Its not a Single Community but there were very important people in the feminist community that were supportive of and i think worked on behalf of the Domestic Workers as well. Youre right, i remember quite well it was a formidable very powerful presence. Were there other Domestic Workers out of the Domestic Work that were equally formidable . Absolutely there was a woman named josephine from Youngstown Ohio who served as a field director for the household technicians of america. She was a single mother and she raised her child and served as a fulltime organizer with. Trying to raise her child and live off of the wages of Domestic Labor. Geraldine miller was another one in who was enormously power and confident and brilliant they have to think about intellectualism and the labor history i see these women as putting forth really complicated powerful theories about gender inequality and racial inequality and about social transformation. Tell us about your own research with these women, do they tell you a story and do they repeat the stories they told each other. It was mostly secondhand. Most passed away by the time. I didnt have a chance to meet any of them. I had the chance to have a number of phone conversations with the Domestic Worker organizer in the drive although she had just had a stroke and didnt want to be interviewed in person and she sadly passed away just as the book was being published. I was fortunate that there were a number of librarians and historians around the country that had the foresight to interview these women. Can you give us a sense of what the timeline is and when did they organize and push and take place, can you give us a sense of what proportion of the workers are now organized . The i begin my story with the montgomery bus boycott and i think that was an enormously important moment for Domestic Workers because the majority of the women that supported and participated in the boycott were Domestic Workers and had it not been for them to boycott wouldnt have been successful. It was in montgomery. She decided to cook food and began to bake pies and and make chicken dinners and to sell fees as a way to raise money for the boycott. And she organized other Domestic Workers to do the same thing and they ended up throughout the course of the year raising an enormous amount to support the boycott as we saw a number of them emerging around the country in Cleveland Ohio and detroit and atlanta and new york. The groups come together in 1971 from the National Organization and have a membership of 25,000 which is a pretty large number. Its a very large number of women around the country that have come together and their biggest entry with the passage of the act in 1974. So to put that in context, 25,000 Domestic Workers are now organized out of the total of how many Domestic Workers in the country as a whole . Maybe 1. 5 million. So it is a small minority that are organized but social change always happens with a very small minority of people. Its always a small number that are at the forefront of any movement if you look at the Civil Rights Movement the vast majority of people in the country were not engaged until the social change happen and that is the model of this case as well. I would like to push you just a little bit further and ask which i do think in terms of what generalizations we can make from the individual stories or the Small Businesses data that we gather. Do you have any generalizations that you could make from the 25,000 workers were that dozens or so who will be featured in your buck . Spinet its hard to make a generalizations generalizations and i dont know that id want to make generalizations about the masses of African American Domestic Workers at the time. I can talk about the women that were organized into the women that were a part of this movement and they might reflect something broad and the occupation. One of the reason for resignation as those that were not organized with the racial politics of the occupation at the time. For much of the 20th century africanamerican women have been the primary domestic force and its a culture of servitude that faced occupation. The stereotype is popularized. Most notably gone with the wind and a framed the occupation. When the women began to organize in the 1960s i think part of what they were hoping to do was to transform the racial politics of the occupation and i think they did so fairly successfully. You havent talked about race at all and we showed shut and we should also talk about immigration and the way that affects the politics of organizing Domestic Workers. Can you say anything about that . The the women that organized were actually organizing a moment when the at a moment when the occupation was transforming. So, the removal of jim crow legislation meant that africanamerican women now have other kinds of Job Opportunities open to them. For the vast majority of the workers were leaving the occupation. These women who buy feature love their work and they wanted to remain Domestic Worker but they wanted to be valued. For the africanamerican women that left the occupation of large numbers of immigrant women were coming into the occupation and immigrant women from all over the country. What i found most interesting in my research was how the africanamerican organizers didnt succumb to the xenophobia or hostility towards immigrant workers but in fact their approach is how do we bring these women into the basement and work with them, how can we organize alongside of them . So they tried to find a place to work out the immigrant workers they were not always successful at it but they are intention to do so is actually admirable. It sounds as if what youre saying is the supply and demand influence and how they could organize. That is at the moment that they were very much more in demand because middleclass women were going out into the labor force. And when the numbers of the black and white but mostly black Domestic Workers were designing it was hard to make a push for immigrant workers but wouldnt have been possible in the 30s or 40s. Supply and demand have a lot to do with it and i think that also shaped by many middleclass women were willing to support the Domestic Worker organizing because they had inadequate supply of Domestic Workers who were wellpaid workers with benefits. But yes, definitely supply and demand played a role in why some of this organizing took place. I think the context of the Civil Rights Movement was also important and the social movements generally gave emphasis. I want to agree with you there i also want to ask that the feminist movement because there is another place where middleclass women could come together around this issue and their interests were the same. It might cost a little more that happy people taking care of children no matter who they were was much better than unhappy people. There was a very material interest white middleclass feminists id want to support the domestic organizing so they have good people taking care of their children but there was also an intellectual connection as well. Many middleclass feminists have done Domestic Work. So there was a recognition on their part about the devaluation of housework whether it was from their perspective are the perspective of the paid Domestic Labor and that was the connection that was made between middleclass feminists and the Domestic Workers who were organizing. It is completely fascinating because one of the ways we started up out the movement in the early part of the 1970s was by asking for pay per housework. No matter who does that we want good pay for housework. Absolutely and the big lesson we could take away from this is the importance and the value of the work that takes place in the home and in the way in which anybody that doesnt needs to be respected for that work. Lets me ask you the last question before we talk to some actual Domestic Worker organizers. Lets talk a little bit about how the organization of the Domestic Workers will enhance the lives of all women which is the way that i want to put it in this moment of fierce transition and gender roles. In the 60s and 70s . I mean now when so many are involved in the two income families were supporting children and elderly care and someone. Do you think the Domestic Worker organizing will enhance and encourage the stability of the people that do Domestic Work we have no alternative as they talked about we have in the country the crisis of social reproduction and a crisis of who is taking care of the sick and the elderly and the children and those that are unable to take care of themselves. We have a crisis about how things are taken care of in the home when you have two parents that are employed sometimes with more than one job. We need people to do the care and cleaning work in our everyday lives so i think Domestic Work is more important than it has ever been in the past and its absolutely imperative that we have a moment to make a movement of women and men that are facing awareness about the value and as well as the lives of Domestic Workers themselves and what their needs are in terms of their own care and their own families. I completely agree and i hope that everybody will read the book and will recognize when they read the book but this is the beginning of the story and not the end of one by any means. That is actually a great segue to our representatives of the National Dust thick Workers Alliance who will actually talk a little bit about some of the campaigns and organizing thats going on right now. And good good evening, everyone. Im a democracy worker organizer passionate about my work and i love my job im raising two kids a second mother, teacher, nurse, friend and much more. Im a part of a parenting team. Apart from being a democracy worker on the human rights and social justice organizer working with the Community Since 2005 working especially in tibet and burma. This is organized to give temporary protective and we also got the part in new york state. Also a supporter of the Domestic Alliance and alongside other grassroots organizations for the bill of rights in new york state in 2010. They have a movement for the democracy workers. Do we know why some such as overtime pay and protection but theres still so much to be done they constantly work to calculate the hours they worked the democracy worker is delivered in new york city possible. They deserve to be treated with respect. This is the reason that i decided to not only organize the filipinos and all other workers from many corners of the world. Today and in the days across new york have the rights and dignity. We have been working with much more in the industry with traffic survival and weve been educating workers about the rights of the the coaching them to negotiate better standards and cornering the legal and social service. To offer the training for the caregivers. As a proud graduate in this moment they are fighting to end the inclusion in the new york city human rights and we are helping to develop the Community Led implementing democracy human rights. This is a big issue that we are trying to address in the current this led to Domestic Workers accepting lower standards and we should wish to also brought them unfairly from opportunities. I want to share how excited we are to sponsor this event and the important early history of the democracy worker is movement that shares a strategy and techniques that me and other organizers can learn from overtime. Thank you very much. [applause] you will be asked questions and i dont think i will be. I was interested geographical places that you mentioned are east of the mississippi and i wondered whether there is an additional story or a different story that takes place. Those were the narratives that i found. It was in the number of the Domestic Worker organizations of the west coast but they do have slightly different stories was other worthy organizations especially in the later period on the west coast was one in topeka kansas and there was one in seattle washington. When you were saying there were stories there are very few of Domestic Service that you have accomplished and speak of [inaudible] you are still in the period that a number of africanamericans speak [inaudible] in the 50s, 60s and 70s and then it was mostly through the constraints. Now that is the question that i have which is there are very few examples of the organizations of Domestic Service historically and the few that there are function more as mutual exercises than the ethnic component, servants in chicago. [inaudible] absolutely. Nearly all of the women i write about were involved in the Civil Rights Movement that they were deeply involved. In atlanta they worked closely with Martin Luther king to desegregate the system in atlanta and actually it was a conversation where she talked about the plight of and she said someone needs to organize these workers and they said you need to do it so thats why she decided to start this organization as a plan so i think the question of being africanamerican was absolutely central to the policies of the occupation at the center of the movement. Their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement was the basis for how and why they began to organize, so absolutely in terms of your other point about how the occupation was declining its absolutely true and that is the backdrop for how and why they were able to be successful because the number of women that were leading in the occupation was increasing over the course of the 1960s and the 1970s. There were many predictions that this occupation would disappear into the fact Domestic Workers would be replaced by appliances and Day Care Centers and things like that about we know for a fact that proved not to be true perhaps because of changes in the work force and the number of immigrant workers that provided supplies of labor. I also want to congratulate you on this wonderful book. I was moved to think about how this question is for either of you actually. I was wondering if there was kind of a feedback transfer where the Domestic Workers organized traveling to different parts of the world but are they see the emergence of the Domestic Worker organizing and other places as well and whether it was kind of diffusing. Im only asking because i also know a lot of Domestic Workers most of whom are nigerian. I dont see that kind of diffusion of the kind of organizing politics but i wonder if it is happening in other parts of the world. We have been participating in the workers for for. And they want to know that we are all on the same page, we are just trying to get our dignity and respect. It goes on not only from this country with where they have the land of opportunity, i myself in the country i think im coming with a big dream study. I am proud and i want to know that we are not only raising the kids but raising families into giving good education to them. Maybe she can highlight some more. We work with the federation helped form the federation and also help fight for the convention that was passed in 2011 in their recommendations for the countries to ratify but also talking about what we are doing there is a lot of strategies about how we organized a mystic workers so sometimes we are looking at bangladesh and comparing it to what we are doing here and its been exciting. We actually because we have figured out how to move the resources to the Domestic Worker organizing we are able to have them travel across the country, travel around the world to talk to each other about how they are leading and organizing. We have to workers go to bangkok and they are part of these international convening that also one was featured in the film that was prettier as the Coffee Exchange for other leaders but how do we really implement policy changes and to be able to do things on the ground but also think about Global Culture change. So shes been a part of that and has been able to do the strategizing on the ground in the u. S. And around the world. My question is for those of you that organized and it may not be the most politically correct question but to use to work in thailand with the sex trafficking organizations to rehabilitate and help women in the sex trafficking industry. If a woman is trafficked she needs to get out and often times she would actually want to continue the work she was doing but didnt have any protections and there is not much conversation around it but i know that there is overlap between the Domestic Work and sex trafficking so i was wondering how that enters into door sphere and what protections if any you are able to help in this country. Talking about the trafficking is a big issue and also the diplomatic people they bring people to this country so the Filipino Organization and even the help we are helping them get rid of the victim and a its like a tradition for them. They are belong belonged by law because there are different rights. It is a starting point to go there. We havent written many cases about it. It isnt easy but still it will end one day we have the hope. I really appreciate your questions and became a similar route. I used to work with women in miami who were considered being commercially they