This story is a collaboration with theEconomic Hardship Reporting Project andMagnum Foundation. We asked photographers to show us the paradox of today’s labor movement. Even as the popularity of unions hasgrown over the last decade, actual membership has continued todecline. Can new enthusiasm revitalize American labor? Read about this unique moment for workershere.
Domestic workers perform grueling work with few protections. They provide care in isolated settings, leaving their essential labor all too often hidden. It can be a difficult job and a complicated one. When you work in a home, lines blur.
For decades, feminist activists have said that work in the home—often performed for no pay by wives, mothers, and daughters—has been misunderstood as separate from “real” labor. This feminized care has been relegated and detached from a labor movement focused on men.
In the United States, such work has also been done by Black women who have had to organize aggressively against the odds. Infamously, domestic workers were excluded from the labor agenda during the New Deal. And, since then, they have had to fight to catch up to standards enshrined for others in the law. The National Domestic Workers Alliance and others have sought to change the state of play. After the pandemic, there has also been an uptick in interest in movements like Wages for Housework—a campaign in the 1970s to organize and recognize work in the home.
In this project, Chloe Aftel highlights the day-to-day demands of these workers who often go unnoticed. She follows Vivian Siordia and Liezl Japona, both care workers in California, showing the daily ups and downs of such labor. Both Siordia and Japona think that more organizing and aid to care workers could help make the job better.
Update, April 11: This article has been updated to more clearly reflect the work of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and California Domestic Workers Coalition.
Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget.
We noticed you have an ad blocker on. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism?
Do you give a damn about this country’s future?You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t. So while corporate media goes
all in on horse-race journalism, we've spent this election season digging for the stories that matter, like dirty deeds done by billionaire-funded
super-PACs and the GOP’s ties to right-wing extremism. One thing that can reliably stop liars, grifters, and wannabe dictators is truth-telling
independent media.Please show your support and donate right now.
Do you give a damn about this country’s future?You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t. So while corporate media goes
all in on horse-race journalism, we've spent this election season digging for the stories that matter, like dirty deeds done by billionaire-funded
super-PACs and the GOP’s ties to right-wing extremism. One thing that can reliably stop liars, grifters, and wannabe dictators is truth-telling
independent media.Please show your support and donate right now.