Thread: More maids working in U.S. homes

Friday, Nov 2, 2007
Posted on Fri, Nov. 02, 2007
More maids working in U.S. homes
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
In the debate over immigration, they are virtually unheard, unseen: the hundreds of thousands of foreign-born women, many of them in the U.S. illegally, who toil in America's homes as nannies, cooks and housekeepers, changing diapers and scrubbing floors.

They are jobs of last resort for people whose other options are few.

The lucky ones earn decent wages, and build a promising future for their families.

The less fortunate, isolated and apprehensive, suffer a dismaying array of abuses - from exploitively low wages to sexual harassment. Some are forced to sleep in closets; others are threatened with deportation if they complain about overwork.

"These people can be very, very vulnerable, particularly if they're not documented," said Sam Dunning, who oversees social justice programs for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. "If there's any dispute over working conditions, they have very little recourse."

It is, in Dunning's words, a job sector in the shadows - generally excluded from state and federal labor protections.

Experts and activists agree the ranks of household workers are swelling - likely to more than 1 million - although tallying their exact numbers and regulating their workplaces is near-impossible. Employers commonly seek off-the-books arrangements, avoiding contributions toward Social Security or Medicare, and many undocumented women prefer working in the underground economy to minimize chances of deportation.

In one particularly grim case, a wealthy couple went on trial this week on New York's Long Island, on federal charges related to the alleged abuse of two Indonesian women brought to the United States as housekeepers. Prosecutors say the women were held as virtual slaves, beaten, and paid no wages except for $100 a month sent to relatives abroad.

In a few cities, activists have begun campaigns to organize domestic workers and raise awareness of their difficulties, but traditional labor tactics - collective bargaining, the threat of striking - are not feasible.

Working conditions were harsh enough to drive Tomasa Compean away from a housekeeping job in Houston that she'd held for 18 years. Over that span her pay edged up from $30 to $50 a day, but her assigned cleaning duties kept increasing and she felt pressured to work even when sick.

"They treated me poorly," Compean said of the couple who employed her. "They were always asking me to do more and more."

Compean, 58, quit and took up full-time work as an office janitor. Last year, she helped lead a strike by 5,300 newly unionized Houston janitors, mostly immigrant women, who won better wages and working conditions.

"Now, if any problem comes up, I can deal with it," said Compean, who came from Mexico 27 years ago. "But it would be very hard to organize domestic workers. People who work in the private houses are scared to even talk."

Hiring household help is no longer reserved for the rich. Many middle-class families now feel they can afford to tap the vast pool of immigrants willing to work for modest wages, and many career women rely on a housekeeper to do chores for which they no longer have the time or energy.

Many of the women filling the jobs are single mothers, supporting children they brought with them to the U.S. or left behind in their homeland. Those who work as nannies often devote more time to their employers' children than to their own.

Activists in Houston, just beginning efforts to assist domestic workers, face daunting challenges. Texas is considered relatively inhospitable to labor organizing, and there are no efficient ways to communicate with housekeepers and nannies scattered in homes across the sprawling city.

"The women who live in have the worst stories to tell, but they're the hardest to reach, working in those big houses all day," said Annica Gorham of Houston's Interfaith Worker Justice Center. "We need to spend time in the neighborhood, talk to them when they're out with the kids or walking the dogs."

Activists say some of the women were brought to the United States by traffickers and become virtual indentured servants, receiving room and board but little or no pay. Employers sometimes confiscate a maid's identity papers to maximize leverage over her.

Gorham's organization has launched a pilot program encouraging domestic workers to develop new skills so they could eventually consider different jobs.

For many newly arriving women, career choices are grimly limited, according to Louise Zwick, who with her husband runs Casa Juan Diego, a refuge for illegal immigrants. Often, she said, the options are a low-paying household job or work as a hostess at a bar - a step which frequently leads to prostitution.

"You make a lot more money in the cantinas, but you ruin your life, you get AIDS," Zwick said.

Some newcomers sign up with employment agencies, which assign temporary housekeeping jobs. But immigrants'-rights activist Maria Jimenez said some of these agencies routinely take a larger-than-promised share of the wages.

Still, at Jimenez' headquarters - the Central American Resource Center - several staff members offered upbeat anecdotes of housekeepers who'd been treated well.

Hamilton Gramajo said his mother, Erica, earned enough from housekeeping so he and his sister could concentrate on academics during high school rather than take after-school jobs.

"I graduated from the University of Houston because of her efforts," said Gramajo, whose family came from Guatemala in the mid-1990s.

Sometimes the employer-employee relationship blossoms into something deeply and mutually rewarding. In San Francisco, for example, Steve Goldberg and Sandee Blechman - both busy professionals - hired a Nicaraguan woman, Marta Castillo, in 1982. It was shortly after the birth of the first of their three children.

During more than two decades with the family, Castillo helped all three children learn Spanish, attended their bar and bat mitzvahs, attained U.S. citizenship and encouraged the Goldbergs to establish lasting bonds with her own children and grandchildren.

When the Goldberg children were young, Castillo accompanied the family on vacations as baby sitter. Later, she joined them as a guest - not an employee - on a trip to Rome and Israel, enabling her to realize her dream of seeing the Vatican and the Holy Land.

San Francisco is one of several cities - New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. are others - where campaigns to organize household workers are more advanced than in Houston.

However, Ai-Jen Poo, lead organizer of New York's 1,700-member Domestic Workers United, said housekeepers and nannies face unique hurdles in trying to collaborate.

"In other workplaces, you can get together with your co-workers to bargain collectively or to withhold labor," she said. "A domestic worker has no negotiating power - she can just be fired."

Domestic Workers United and its allies in New York are lobbying for state legislation to improve working conditions. The Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights would provide for paid sick days and vacation, advance notice of termination, and severance pay.

In California, a bill giving nannies the right to overtime pay cleared the legislature last year but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The bill resulted from years of work by groups like CHIRLA - the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. Its fieldworkers try to educate women on their rights before they start household jobs and conduct awareness campaigns aboard buses carrying housekeepers to work.

Angelica Salas, CHIRLA's executive director, estimates there are at least 90,000 domestic workers in greater Los Angeles, perhaps 70 percent of them illegal immigrants. Even those without legal residency are entitled to California's minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, but enforcement agencies are understaffed and exploited women are often too scared to report abuses, Salas said.

Among the women now working as CHIRLA organizers is Juana Nicolas, 49, who came to California eight years ago from Mexico, where she was a teacher. She worked as a housekeeper and nanny in five homes, and said she was routinely underpaid.

"Because of my background, I knew what my rights were," said Nicolas. "Can you imagine the people with no information, what they go through?"

Another CHIRLA organizer, Guatemala-born Telma Gutierrez, 44, worked for 16 years as a live-in housekeeper before wearying of abuse. She said her last job paid less than $50 a day for six days of work that included cleaning, baby-sitting, raising chickens, and gardening duties that left her back aching.

Her employers, she said, had two sides.

"In front of other people, they pretended to be nice - they'd say you're part of the family," she said. "But in the end they still abuse you."

For some women, however, domestic work is a path to self-sufficiency.

Esperanza Sanchez, 43, came to Houston from Monterrey, Mexico, 16 years ago and has worked in more than a dozen homes as a housekeeper. She now has two steady clients and can make up to $550 a week.

Her practice is to inspect a house firsthand before accepting a job, then negotiate wages.

"I prefer a businesslike relationship," she said. "When employers cross the line and try to be my friend, there's often an attempt to have more control over me."

Despite her success, Sanchez is frustrated, wishing she could go to college and find a more challenging career. In Mexico, she was an accountant - but says she earns more as a housekeeper than she would doing bookkeeping in Monterrey. And yet, as a non-citizen, she has no medical insurance and no prospect of Social Security.

"I don't know if I can save enough for retirement," she said. "There's no safety net at all."

© 2007 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com
http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/344178.html

Everyone paying them in cash is in violation of IRS regulations. These people are considered employees and they are hiring illegal aliens so they are also violating other fed. laws. These home owners are playing with fire. All it is going to take is one mad illegal telling on them.

Dixie

Nice storey Jim
Those people are at risk of losing their house and a ton of money in fines if they get cought

I couldnt hire anyone to do my house work ever
what would my wife do ()Joke() we all do the house work here
I couldnt hire any one to watch the kids and for dagone sure not a forigner

Therein lies the problem. The spoiled, selfish, elite morons who think they are above the law need hand maidens and servants to wipe theirs and their brats [mod edit]. As for the illegal aliens who come here with no skills and then whine because they have to wipe the noses and [mod edit] of these snobs, gee what exactly were you doing before you left your 3rd world cesspools? If you weren't a rocket scientist in your home land with a 3rd grade education and speaking only spanish, it ain't gonna change simply because you got past border patrol.

People who employ slaves in their homes should be jailed for aiding and abetting and the uneducated illegals need to quit whining about the choices they make.

Yeah oh boo hoo. What are we suppose to cry. Just think their anchor babies are tomorrow's gangs!!

Originally Posted by wilma1

Yeah oh boo hoo. What are we suppose to cry. Just think their anchor babies are tomorrow's gangs!!

and they have access to a key to your house

This all boils down to personal choices and responsibility over those choices.

To the Maids:

If you are educated and come here illegally, don't expect to be offered the Golden Goose. Because of your illegal status, EXPECT TO BE EXPLOITED, education notwithstanding. If you are educated, you should know this already. But if you persist and come here illegally, then stop whining. It was YOUR CHOICE. Not only was it your choice, but you actively forced it to happen. You were not kidnapped to come here. So as FREE adult, you are responsible for your choices, good or bad. Just like me.

THIS IS WHY AMERICA WANTS YOU OUT. You keep playing the victim role. You are not a victim, anymore than I am. You are just reaping what you sowed and hoping that your tears will get you AMNESTY. I am sorry. I am fed up with stories like this. I am not buying it anymore. But thanks for playing. Try again.

Didn't a Bush nominee to the United States Supreme Court have to turn down the nomination when it came out he/she had employed a 'nanny' off the books?

That's how high up it goes!

When I was in Mexico City in 1977 as a student on a visitors visa the two opportunities for income I was offered sub rosa were as a tutor in a lodging house for Mexican students from other states and as an elder companion for my relatives. I suspect that even after those people with no visas are gone there will still be Mexicans here on visitors visas who are working as domestics for their legal relatives.

Appearently these people have not read any of the horror stories where these "helpful" people are helping themselves to the homeowners stuff. In one case landscapers were breaking into neighborhood houses where they were contacted to work, while the owners were at wotk thmselves. My wife and I clean our own house, cut our own grass !!