FOCUS: Asian women domestic workers organize in New York

Asian Economic News, April 16, 2001

NEW YORK, April 11 Kyodo

Low-income Asian women employed as domestic or child-care workers in the New York area are seeking recognition as industry employees with the right to organize.

As migrants, these women -- many of them from the Philippines and South Asia -- often find themselves without legal safeguards, having been issued special visas that tie them to individual employers.

Should they wish to leave their jobs, these women risk becoming undocumented and while they are technically covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act -- the U.S. law guaranteeing a minimum wage and basic conditions -- they are denied the right to collective bargaining.

Dave Parker, a spokesman for the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. federal agency that has oversees that right, says collective bargaining is not likely to be granted to foreign domestic workers any time soon.

This is because an amendment of the act extending the right to organize to domestics, farm workers and employees in small businesses was ''not likely under this Congress,'' Parker told Kyodo News.

Recent reports in the U.S. media have documented severe cases of mistreatment and abuse of migrant domestic workers forced to work long hours for less than the minimum wage, sometimes being held virtual prisoners in the employers' homes and suffering sexual harassment.

The Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV), a not-for-profit advocacy group in New York, has launched a campaign to address these issues and to put city and state laws on the books to assist Asian women win labor protection.

According to studies compiled by the International Labor Organization and the International Organization on Migration, Asian women have emerged as a fast-growing category of international migrant workers over the past decade.

Whether in New York, Tokyo, London or Hong Kong, these women often find employment in the homes of corporate executives and diplomats, attracted by offers of higher wages than what they might earn back home and visas that allow them to emigrate.

Even without abuse per se, long hours of isolated, physically exhausting domestic labor for live-in nannies, cooks and housekeepers can extend beyond what most employees would tolerate. And compensation, even when including room and board, often does not cover basic needs such as clothing and health care.

Since 1997, CAAAV has organized women from the Philippines, China, South Korea and Malaysia in its ''Women Workers Project'' aiming to impose a standard contract on employers of domestic workers and to inform the workers of their rights. A sister group called Andolan organizes women from Bangladesh.

CAAAV estimates that about 20% of about 5,000 immigrant domestic workers currently in New York are from these Asian countries.

On behalf of these women who suffer a linguistic handicap of not knowing their rights, CAAAV has written a contract -- detailing duties, limiting hours of work, listing holidays, weeks of paid vacation and providing for sick leave and health care. The contract also imposes penalties on employer in case of infringement.

''We are trying to get respect, dignity and a standardized industry for domestic women workers,'' said project coordinator Carolyn De Leon, who herself left the Philippines in the 1980s to work several years as a nanny in Hong Kong and later in New York.

Two legal teams, one based at New York University and the other a non-profit group called the National Employment Law Project (NELP), are helping CAAAV find ways to enforce the contract at the city, state and federal levels.

''Domestic workers are not recognized as being in the economy,'' Andrew Kasyap, a lawyer with the NELP team, said.

U.S. labor leaders are saying this is outdated and ''it's time to change employers from this plantation mentality,'' Kasyap said in a telephone interview.

Under U.S. labor laws, which vary from state to state, a mandatory federal minimum wage is usually in effect, but the government cannot limit the number of hours worked or specify days of leave. The problem for live-in domestic workers is that the work day is ill-defined and the boundary between the job and non-work environment is permeable.

In labor terms, this means no overtime pay, little protection from abuse and a vague job description that can easily turn a nanny into a cook, cleaner and housekeeper.

De Leon said another problem was that parents of small children make for demanding employers, expecting nannies to provide quality care, but not giving them with the right to discipline the children.

De Leon referred to the time she found herself in charge of two boys, aged nine and seven, when she was brought over in 1991 from Hong Kong to the U.S. by the children's mother, a company executive, and their father, an international real estate agent.

De Leon says she worked from 6:30 a.m. to about 9 p.m. every day, doing all the housecleaning, food shopping, baby-sitting, tutoring, and dog-walking for $500 a month.