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Shalom Bayit: Justice for Domestic WorkersStories & Quotes for DiscussionInstructions: Pass out quotations, along with a pen and a notecard. Give participants a minute to read the quotation and write down their reactions and any questions they might have. Ask participants to share their quotations. They can also share their reactions and questions. Rather than going around in a circle, ask participants to share their quotes/reactions whenever they want to react to someone else’s.
“My grandfather, as a child living in a largely rural, Christian town in southwestern Michigan, carried the memory all his life of the schoolteacher who announced to the classroom that the Jewish kids, most of them poor, with parents who didn’t speak English, needed to hang their coats in a separate closet because they were dirty children. And my grandmother, who worked cooking and cleaning in a lake-side resort for wealthy families from Chicago, never forgot the patrons’ lack of basic civility and respect for her work.” -Gayle Kirshenbaum, JFREJ Member & former domestic worker employer in a sermon at Temple Beth Elohim ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have a dream that one day all work will be valued equally. --Domestic Workers United Slogan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inez worked on the Upper East Side for a couple who are both doctors. She worked from 7 in the morning until 8pm at night, cooking three meals for the two children, helping them with their homework, doing their laundry, picking them up from school and taking them to their after-school piano and ballet classes. She was paid $325 per week, working six days per week. One day, her employer told her that he needed someone who could live-in and do housekeeping for the entire household. When she refused, she was fired without notice, severance pay or wages for the two days that week that she had already worked. --Story from Domestic Workers United ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We cook, dust, sweep, mop, do laundry, fold, tidy, wash, scrub, pick up the kids, get them dressed, washed, take them to classes, help them with their homework, read to them, take them to the park, teach them respect. How do you benefit from my labor? --Domestic Workers United Poster ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “As an employer of a caregiver for my son the past two years, I’ve found new meaning in an old slogan from the women’s movement: the personal is political.” --Gayle Kirshenbaum, JFREJ Member in a labor day sermon at Temple Beth Elohim --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “As a feminist with an overweening sense of sisterhood, I think it’s possible I imposed too much intimacy with somebody who was just trying to do her job.” --Suzanne Levine in the Village Voice. Levine was the editor of Ms. Magazine from 1972 to 1987. Annie, who took care of Levine’s two children, cooked, and cleaned for Levine’s family for 20 years, retired a few years ago making $20,000 a year. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “We talk to employers who say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know we needed to provide benefits.’ Well do you want a job without paid vacation or healthcare? --Erline Brown, Domestic Workers United organizer & former nanny --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The first time I heard Debbie, our son’s caregiver, refer to me as her boss, I was taken aback. The word seemed too formal, too authoritarian.” --Gayle Kirshenbaum, JFREJ Member in a labor day sermon at Temple Beth Elohim --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “[My employers] shut off all outgoing phone service. I now began to get very worried. Not only was I not allowed to call anyone, I was also barred from leaving the house – I couldn’t even go into the front yard unless they were home. Jean instructed me not to talk to anyone, since I didn’t have working papers, someone might turn me over to the police.” --Immigrant domestic worker, as told to Domestic Workers United -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As everyone knows, women have entered the workforce in ever-increasing numbers, creating a growing need for childcare. The Urban Institute estimates that in 1999, nearly three-quarters of children in the U.S. under five years old whose parents were employed were cared for by someone other than a parent. --Tracey Middlekauff, Gotham Gazette Oct. 10, 2003 “Nannies” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “’This [Domestic Workers] legislation is asking people to commit to very rigid job specifications which change almost daily in a private home.” --Clifford Greenhouse, co-owner of the Pavilion Agency, in the Gotham Gazette ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Many of us have children, too. We have even fewer options for childcare. Yet in the families we work for, there is saving going on for college tuitions, for summer trips. Many of us cannot save even one penny, even working all the time.” --Carol De Leon, Domestic Workers United organizer & former nanny -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This [$20,000 a year plus taxes] is all we can afford, period . . . it’s more than we used to make collectively . . . However, as much as we’re doing for her, I can imagine how hard it is to get by on what we’re able to give her.” -- Eddie Rosenstein, in the Village Voice. Rosenstein is an independent filmmaker making a documentary about low-wage workers. His wife is a pediatric physical therapist) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Carla Vincent’s] first job in New York paid $225 per week in 1998for live-in childcare, housekeeping and cooking. ‘I would have to wait until they were finished eating and then eat. Then she wanted me to meet her in the Hamptons and I would be responsible for my own traveling expenses.’” --Chisun Lee, Village Voice --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “We give up a lot, and it’s only because you can better support your children from here than if you were home. There are no jobs down there.” --Carla Vincent in the Village Voice; Vincent is a nanny who is supporting her 8 year old daughter in Trinidads --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “There was the woman who worked as a nanny on Park Avenue for ‘a decent wage,’ private living quarters, and a food allowance. ‘On a scale of one to 10, my working conditions were an eight,’ she said. Yet she told of a pattern of put-downs that culminated on her birthday: ‘My employer forgot to give me my lunch break.’ I got a bagel from her bread keeper. She screamed at me for eating her bagel. I loved the boys. But the humiliation . . . ‘” --Chisun Lee, Village Voice --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “All the love I have for [my daughter] I pour into my employers’ kids. It is exactly the same feeling: you really do feel like they’re your own. I have yet to meet a nanny who can separate her feelings from the child.” --Carla Vincent, nanny, in the Village Voice --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When they brought slaves over from Africa, they put them to work in the field and in the master’s home. Does it seem like a coincidence that farmworkers and domestic workers are the two kinds of workers not covered by labor law?” --Erline Brown, Domestic Workers United organizer & former nanny
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