Shame in New York

When I talk to someone about LABOR JUSTICE, and about the farm workers and domestics who are being abused by the current system, I tend to think about growers and farm workers in Southern California. Although I want to help, it often seems like a faraway battle, in which I can only play a remote role from my Brooklyn apartment. This idea, however, that I am so far removed from the struggle, could not be more wrong. The nannies, housekeepers, maids, care-givers and other domestic workers, who can be found throughout the city, but are especially prevalent in the wealthy enclaves of the Upper East and Upper West sides of Manhattan, are another abused minority that society has ignored for far too long.

The Nation has a great read by Lizzy Ratner documenting a disturbing sampling of the abuse these workers endure. Even though I understand these things happen, I was shocked when I read of workers being beaten, ashamed when I read of their pay being withheld, and sickened when I read of some being held against their will. Ratner tells one story of “a Jamaican housekeeper and nanny who was brought to this country by an electronics executive and his family at age 15 and held in latter-day servitude. For fifteen years, she raised their three kids and never received a salary because she was told that her mother was getting her checks. But the checks were never sent, and her employers gradually cut off her communication with her family.” This is certainly not the “average” situation, but it is also not an isolated occurrence.

Although Ratner’s focus is on the plight of domestic workers in New York, and their fight to push the State Legislature to pass a Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights, the abuse documented in this article is symptomatic of a larger, shaming, nation-wide problem. The abuse of these workers is not a simple case of a few bad employers. This is what Leroy calls the “Last vestige of Slavery.” This is systematic and institutionalized abuse, that has been sanctioned by the Government and by society through years of neglect and ambivalence. It is great that the New York Senate is poised to make the changes outlined by Ratner. But until we make them on a national level, for all farm workers and domestics, we can not have an honest discussion about equality and justice in this county. As State Senator Diane Savino said in Ratner’s article, we are simply fighting to give these workers “….some dignity in their work life, a real degree of enforcement for them, and a change in the discussion of how domestic workers should be treated.” This isn’t rocket science.

Letter to Labor Sec. Hilda Solis

Letter from Jerry Cohen, Co-founder, LABOR JUSTICE, to Hilda Solis, United States Secretary of Labor

Secretary of Labor Hilda SolisMarch 8, 2009

United States Department of Labor

200 Constitution Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20210

Secretary Solis:

In 1935 when Congress passed the Wagner Act, it specifically excluded “agricultural laborers” and “domestics.” Isn’t it time for the Obama administration to reverse this injustice and include farmworkers and domestics as an integral part of any reform of the National Labor Relations Act?

To address this question honestly, the best place to start is South Africa, which in 1924 solidified the foundation of apartheid when an alliance of white workers and Afrikaner nationalists formed a Nationalist Labor Pact government. That year the Industrial Conciliation Act was passed, setting up the legal machinery for collective bargaining. “Blacks” were specifically excluded from the definition of “employees” who were to receive the protections of the act.

Now while Congress was not so blunt as to deal out “blacks” and “browns” specifically in their New Deal labor legislation, most farm workers and domestics are in fact black or brown. For 73 years our sleight of hand has been more subtle but no less damaging because race, powerlessness and economic injustice are inextricably intertwined.

Despite the fact that farmworkers were operating in this legal wilderness, Cesar Chavez led an extraordinary organizational effort in the 60’s and 70’s when the United Farm Workers won contracts and passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. I represented the union from 1967 until 1981 and have always hoped that some day farmworkers throughout the country would have the same protections as farmworkers covered by the California Act. Any just national labor law reform must include farmworkers and domestics. If not now, when?

Yours truly,
Jerry Cohen
(831) 659-5562

Copies to Congressman Howard Berman
LeRoy Chatfield, Director, Farmworker
Movement Documentation Project

Photo of the day (9/21/09)

photo by Jon Lewis (c.1966).
This woman has worked in the fields since she was a child, this is how she supports herself. Dressed for protection from wasps and spiders, and the pesticide and sulfur residues on the vines, she harvests table grapes all day in the blazing summer sun – hard physical work at any age. She looks exhausted. When old age prevents her from field work, she will rely on family members and welfare for financial support. She receives no retirement or medical benefits, no unemployment, no disability, no workers compensation – she receives nothing but a life of hard physical work to eke out a living. This farmworker – this working woman – has spent her life subsidizing a $3 billion dollar industry. Social justice? What meaning can these words have for farmworkers who have no labor rights and endure a life of exploitation?