User:Cam Hist/Domestic worker

Modern Examples:

ILO estimates in 2015, based on national surveys and/or censuses of 232 countries and territories, place the number of domestic workers at around 67.1 million. But the ILO itself states that "experts say that due to the fact that this kind of work is often hidden and unregistered, the total number of domestic workers could be as high as 100 million". The ILO also states that 83% of domestic workers are women and many are migrant workers.

In Guatemala, it is estimated that eight percent of all women work as domestic workers. They hardly have any legal protection. According to Guatemalan labor law, domestic work is "subject neither to a working time statute nor to regulations on the maximum number of working hours in a day".[contradictory] Legally, domestic workers are only entitled to ten hours of free time in 24 hours, and one day off per week. But very often, these minimal employment laws are disregarded, and so are basic civil liberties.

In Brazil, domestic workers must be hired under a registered contract and have many of the rights of any other workers, which includes a minimum wage, remunerated vacations and a remunerated weekly day off. It is not uncommon, however, for employers to hire servants illegally and fail to offer a work contract. Since domestic staff predominantly come from disadvantaged groups with less access to education, they are often vulnerable and uninformed of their rights, especially in rural areas. Nevertheless, domestics employed without a proper contract can successfully sue their employers and be compensated for abuse committed. It is common in Brazil for domestic staff, including childcare staff, to be required to wear uniforms, while this requirement has fallen out of use in other countries.

In the United States, domestic workers are generally excluded from many of the legal protections afforded to other classes of worker, including the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. However, in recent years, advocacy groups like the National Domestic Workers' Alliance have succeeded in passing a Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights into state law in New York, Hawaii, and California.

Traditionally domestic workers have mostly been women and are likely to be immigrants. Currently, there are 1.8 million domestic workers, and tens of thousands of people are believed to be in forced labor in the United States. America's domestic home help workers, most of them female members of minority groups, earn low wages and often receive no retirement or health benefits because the lack of basic labor protections.

Domestic workers are also excluded from vacation time, sick time, and overtime, and only thirteen percent of domestic workers get health insurance provided by their employers. A report from the National Domestic Workers Alliance and affiliated groups found that nearly a quarter of nannies, caregivers, and home health workers make less than the minimum wage in the states in which they work, and nearly half – 48 percent – are paid less than needed to adequately support a family. Many of these workers are subjected to abuse, sexual harassment, and social inequality. However, because domestic workers work in the home, their struggles are hidden in the home and out of the public spotlight. Nowadays with an increase of power, the domestic workers' community has formed many organizations, such as the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Domestic Workers United, and The South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union.

The domestic work industry is dominated throughout the world by women. While the domestic work industry is advantageous for women in that it provides them a sector that they have substantial access to, it can also prove to be disadvantageous by reinforcing gender inequality through the idea that domestic work is an industry that should be dominated by women. Within the domestic work industry, the much smaller proportion of jobs that is occupied by men are not the same jobs that are typically occupied by women. Within the childcare industry, men make up only about 3–6% of all workers. Additionally, in the child care industry men, are more likely to fill roles that are not domestic in nature but administrative such as a managerial role in a daycare center.

While the domestic work industry was once believed to be an industry that belonged to a past type of society and did not belong in a modern world, trends are showing that although elements of the domestic work industry have been changing the industry itself has shown no signs of fading away, but only signs of transformation. There are several specific causes that are credited to continuing the cycle of the demand for domestic work. One of these causes is that with more women taking up full-time jobs, a dually employed household with children places a heavy burden on parents. It is argued however that this burden wouldn't result in the demand for outside domestic work if men and women were providing equal levels of effort in domestic work and child-rearing within their own home.

The demand for domestic workers has also become primarily fulfilled by migrant domestic workers from other countries who flock to wealthier nations to fulfill the demand for help at home. This trend of domestic workers flowing from poorer nations to richer nations creates a relationship that on some levels encourages the liberation of one group of people at the expense of the exploitation of another. Although domestic work has far from begun to fade from society, the demand for it and the people who fill that demand has changed drastically over time.

The so-called "servant problem" in such countries as the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada was the problem that middle-class families had with cleaning, cooking, and especially entertaining at the level that was socially expected. It was too much work for any one person to do herself, but middle-class families, unlike wealthy families, could not afford to pay the wages necessary to attract and retain skilled household employees.

United States section:

Colonial Indentured Servitude:

Most of the women who came to the North American continent during the 1600's came as indentured servants. During the early years of indentured servitude these women would face hard roles that did not comply with the gender roles that they were used to. Since the early labor and economic needs of the Chesapeake colonies relied mostly on Tobacco and other major crops women in the indentured service were expected to do both domestic work as well as field work until enslaved African women and men became a bigger source of labor. Indentured servants were not allowed to marry until after their service had ended and since women were at a high risk of sexual assault if they became pregnant while unmarried and in servitude then they would be punished with a fine and a whipping, if they could not afford to pay the fine then the length of service got extended. If the women claimed that the baby's father was the master then she could be transferred to work in another house under a different master. As the number of slaves grew indentured white servants were no longer needed for agricultural work and so many low class women moved to domestic work or skilled labor.

Common problems:

For domestic workers in the United States, there have been some common problems that have been documented and can be seen in multiple different situations. One common problem that Domestic Workers faced throughout the 19th and 20th century was the wage that the women had earned was normally low and that it was also common to not be paid. Depending on when this happed and what the workers race was, domestic workers might have been able to turn to the authorities, such as Native American women and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but this option was not always helpful. Domestic workers have had a higher vulnerability to sexual abuse and assault from their employers. Domestic work has been generally considered feminized work, overwhelmingly performed by women, but also by men of color who experienced limited employment opportunities. Particularly for women who experienced severe employment discrimination, such as African Americans and Native Americans as well as newly arrived immigrant groups being a domestic worker was some of the only employment opportunities during the 20th century.

Domestic Workers in the Early 20th Century:

One example of what domestic work was like during the early 20th century that offers first-hand experience is an 1912 magazine called "The Outlook" in which an anonymous women wrote of her experiences, troubles, and solutions. The author includes some of the common problems that are listed already, but she also talks about how unorganized her work felt and had written suggestions for white middle and upper class women who employed domestic workers on how to possibly fix some issues. The author says that if these women were to treat the house and the domestic workers as a business a lot of problems would be cleared up since there would be a system in place for the workers to follow. This system should include all of the work that the women would like the domestic workers to do and have the whole day planed out. One example that the author uses is meals for the day, by having the meals planned out for the domestic worker to do one could ensure that all the ingredients that were needed. She also talks about how having proper tools to help do tasks and having extra domestic workers to help so that all the jobs could get done in a timely manner. The author believes that having the housewives run the household and it's workers similar to that of a business would help work happen more smoothly and have clearer expectations. The author also thinks that having a legal contract would help domestic workers not be abused and taken advantaged of.

During the twentieth century, it was common among the middle and upper classes to joke about the lack of good domestic servants and the Native American women were not exempt from those taunts. In the late 1800s to the middle of the 1900s many Native American children were put into the Carlisle Indian Industrial School where young indigenous children would be assimilated into the new American culture, these were known as American Indian boarding schools. Many of these schools made programs that were called "Outing Programs" in which the young indigenous women would be taught how to be domestic workers and then placed inside white women's households to help assimilate the young indigenous women into the new American society. These schools forced apart families, did not allow the children to speak their native language or practice their religions. While this offered a form of employment for Native American women, they stayed within the low income class that most domestic workers were at. The Bureau of Indian Affairs used this partnership between Native American women and White women as part of their assimilation program from the late nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth century. These children were placed into a white family's household to learn trade skills that included how to be a domestic worker for the young Native American women. The white women that had indigenous young women placed into their households were meant to help teach and guide these young women to become productive citizens. These programs also had what was called an "Outing Matron" that worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs who would oversee that the young indigenous women was following the rules and make sure that the household was helping in teaching the young indigenous women

African Americans post-Civil War to World War I[edit]
In the United States, slavery legally ended in 1865, however, the Freedmen's Bureau informed the former slaves now classified as freedmen and women that they could either sign labor contracts with white planters or be evicted from the land that they had lived on. Most freedmen in the South signed labor contracts with their former white slave owners because that was the only work experience they had. With limited skills and illiteracy, many men turned to become sharecroppers, whereas the majority of women participated in domestic work. Not only were they not qualified for other jobs, but they were denied other jobs and segregated from American society purely based on the color of their skin. The South wanted to keep segregation alive and hence passed legislation such as the Jim Crow Laws post-Civil war which denied African Americans of legal equality and political rights. These laws kept many African Americans as a second-class status up until new laws ended segregation in the 1960s.

Up until the mid-twentieth century, domestic work was a prominent source of income for many women of different ethnic backgrounds. Many of these women were either African American or immigrants. More specifically, the post-civil war South had a high concentration of African Americans working as domestic workers. At the turn of the nineteenth century, there was also a high concentration of African Americans working as domestic workers in the North. Many African American women migrated to the North for better work opportunities and higher wages compared to their employment options in the South. The African American women who worked as domestic workers were generally treated as poor, childlike beings that were seen as victims of their own ignorance of living in communities of crime and other societal infringements. However, despite the stereotypes labeled upon domestic workers, these women still settled for these positions because the only occupations that were open to African American women before World War I were domestic services. It was necessary they worked along with their husbands in order to keep their families financially supported.

Frequently underpaid, African American servants commonly took food scraps and discarded clothing from their employers in a practice known as “pan toting” or the “service pan”. The service pan augmented wages in almost two-thirds of the employers’ households in Athens, Georgia, in 1913. The pan system was used by employers to justify paying a lower wage, and used by domestic workers to counter their employers’ dishonesty. Whites also pointed to the practice of pan toting as proof that “a Negro could not help but steal”, thereby reinforcing stereotypes of “black inferiority and dependency” and rationalizing racist paternalism.

African Americans in the Great Depression[edit]
During the Great Depression, many domestic workers lost their jobs. This is because many white families lost their source of income and were not able to pay domestic workers to work in their home. At this time, many domestic workers relied on asking strangers on the street for housework such as cleaning. They house jumped, looking for any job that they could get. The domestic workforce was significantly impacted by the Great Depression which caused a decrease in their wages and an intolerable 18 hour workday. Also, agricultural workers and the African American women working as domestic workers at this time were explicitly excluded from Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act in the New Deal legislation; domestic workers of all races were excluded from Social Security until 1950. (Household employees working at least two days a week for the same person were added to Social Security coverage in 1950, along with nonprofit workers and the self-employed. Hotel workers, laundry workers, all agricultural workers, and state and local government employees were added in 1954.) This is because the New Dealer politicians were more worried about losing support from the Southern Democrats in Congress who supported segregation rather than refusing coverage for many African Americans. Unlike their white counterparts, African Americans did not form labor unions because they lacked the resources, consciousness, and the access to networks used for union recruiting. On top of that, the domestic workers would not typically have earned enough money to be able to afford being a part of a union. Even if the African American domestic workers wanted to advance in society, it was nearly impossible because the racial structures in the United States rarely allowed them class mobility. However, domestic workers that were white such as the Irish and the Germans utilized working in middle-class homes to their advantage. Working in the middle-class homes served to Americanize, allowing the workers to identify more with their employers than women of their own class and instilled an aspiration to become middle-class status.

African Americans in 1960s America[edit]
Nearly ninety percent of African American women worked as domestic workers during the Civil Rights Movement era. Their participation in the Civil Rights Movement went fairly undocumented, and despite their low-status career in the United States, they were beneficial for the betterment of society and the status of the African American race. It has been noted that the southern African American women were the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement.

Since many white households relied on the African American domestic workers for housework, the workers were able to have a direct impact on the white race when rebelling for their civil rights. The African American domestic workers boycotted buses and tried to register to vote, and many were denied and imprisoned. However, the domestic workers utilized imprisonment to educate other African American women on the Civil Rights Movement and what to do to contribute. Additionally, the domestic workers frequently rebelled in an informal manner, such as resisting to live in the same home in which they worked. By doing this, the African American domestic workers transformed the domestic services, and collective organizations came about promoting a better work environment for African American domestic workers. Their act of rebellion gave way for a change of how they were treated, how they were paid, and how they were respected.