A few years ago I had a meeting with some women who had been
hired in Brownsville as domestic workers--as maids. I had been working on a small pamphlet that
would orient young women who were just getting started working in homes. I had
asked these women to figure out what kind of advice they would offer these new
workers.
Minerva, who rarely speaks in these kinds of meetings,
started off with a snort. “Primero, hay que limpiar la cocina, las recamaras,
la sala, los baños, y, por supuesto, el
‘playroom.’ The entire group bursted into laughter.
“They need to know what they are getting themselves into.
You all know how it is--first you have to clean the kitchen, then the bedrooms,
the living room, the bathroom, and then, of course, the “playroom.”
The reference to the “playroom” was what drew the laughter,
driven by these women’s experiences of
growing up in one-room shacks in south Veracruz, Mexico, of having to work in the fields as soon as
they could walk. The idea of play was curious enough, but the notion of an
entire room set aside for that sort of leisure demanded some comic relief.
Most of the advice in the meeting came in the form of
warnings.
“You can’t get a bank account and they will pay you in cash,
but don’t let the woman who hires you keep your money for you. That would be
her way of keeping you there as long as she wants.”
“Do not ever think that the family that you work for are
your friends.”
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| Advice to domestic worker |
“As soon as they start accusing you of stealing things,
leave. That’s the way the ones who don’t have the guts to fire you get rid of
you.”
Then there was a long silence. This was not a group that was
short on ideas, so I wondered about the sudden quiet. Finally, young but so
very wise Alma sighed. “The best advice that I would give them is not to come.
Dying of hunger in Mexico is better than the years of humiliation here. We are
nobody here, nobody. So that is what I would tell them, that’s my advice.”
Just this past week, there was another gathering of people.
These folks had also been thinking about domestic workers, and the
extraordinary situations that they labored in.
On Thursday morning, leaders in the FUERZA de Valle Workers’ Center held
a press conference in which they launched a “justice for domestic workers
campaign.”
A banner described the truth behind the action, reminding
the public that “They work so that we can work.” In turn, attorneys and labor
organizers reminded the community that, documented or not, all domestic workers
were due at least the minimum wage—as well as other rights that America
guarantees employees.
There were three domestic workers at the press conference
that offered their own testimony, describing the shameful conditions that they
had endured while working in the homes of local families.
As I studied a photograph of the press conference. I
noticed, sitting in the crowd, a young woman that I knew. Her mother is a
domestic worker who for years had suffered the humiliation of cleaning play
rooms and bathing dogs and being on call, 24/7, for the families that she
worked for—often for as little as $2 an hour.
I noticed how this young woman was leaning forward in her
seat. I know that she must have been enthralled with the women who spoke that
morning. It is always an extraordinary honor and privilege to witness, first
hand, those who courageously and publically name the evil and the injustice
practiced by those who live nearby, particularly when one is as vulnerable as
poor woman in a land not her own.
That testimony must be particularly poignant when given on
the behalf of your own mother, a woman who as a child had not known much in the
way of play, and who had worked, for years, so that the mothers of the families
that had hired her could work, and in that way, offer their own children the
goodness of play, if not the excess of a play room.
