The Fate of Care Worker Unionism and the Promise of Domestic Worker Organizing: An Update

Abstract

Feminist Studies 40, no. 2. © 2014 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 473 Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein The Fate of Care Worker Unionism and the Promise of Domestic Worker Organizing: An Update During initial deliberations at the International Labor Conference held by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2010, observers and staff burst into tears and then into applause when the US delegate supported Convention 189: Decent Work for Domestic Workers . Although delegates from the United States often craft ILO measures, the United States rarely signs them for a variety of political and jurisdictional reasons, and Convention 189 was no exception. However, if anyone thought that with this act the subordinate legal status of household workers in the United States was going to crumble easily, their hopes were misplaced: the gap between US law and Convention 189 has just widened. Right before the July 4, 2014, Independence Day celebration, the US Supreme Court reinforced the exclusion of one type of household work, home healthcare or aid, from the National Labor Relations Act in Harris v. Quinn. In doing so, it underscored the persistent legacy of slavery , racialization, and feminization in shaping domestic and care work and demonstrated the current political strength of anti-union forces. It exposed the limits of an industrial-era labor relations regime that privileged white men in manufacturing and transport industries and poorly serves many workers in today’s globalized and service economy. The proliferation of terms for employment within the home–domestic, home healthcare worker, personal attendant, and others–reflects, even as it sometimes reinforces, the obfuscation of home labor as work. But 7 news and views 8 474 News and Views | Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein these names are also a product of the struggle between workers, employers , and other political forces. In Harris v. Quinn, the US Supreme Court with a 5-4 majority issued a ruling that tramples the livelihood of home aides and personal attendants by denying them the status of public employees and threatens the viability of the unions that they have built over the last thirty years. Home health workers help elderly people and people with disabilities to navigate the activities of everyday life such as personal hygiene, ambulation , and eating; they also cook and clean for the recipients of their care. Nearly two million strong, this disproportionately African American , immigrant, and female workforce is also one of the nation’s fastest growing, and it became the new face of organized labor when nearly a half million home health workers joined the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and other unions. Key to their success was a combination of community unionism, that is, coalition ties and joint campaigns with grassroots groups such as the defunct ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and independent living centers, alongside innovative employment structures that recognized the hybridity of home care—part social welfare, part domestic work, part healthcare—exposing as artificial the boundaries between private and public spheres. Following the money, these unions pinned responsibility for collective bargaining on the government agencies that funded the service, and nearly a dozen states established public authorities and other mechanisms to improve the delivery and working conditions of home care. Through a democratic process, when the majority of workers voted for union representation, they gained bargaining rights. In this way, trade unions such as SEIU Healthcare Illinois, Indiana, Missouri , and Kansas were able to bring those who labor in isolated spaces out of the shadows and win them recognition as workers.1 1. See Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein | News and Views 475 Litigated by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, supported by a who’s who of conservative legal think tanks, and funded by the Koch brothers and Wal-Mart’s Walton family, Harris v. Quinn challenged the requirement that employees who benefit from collective bargaining must pay what’s known as a “fair share” provision to a union, even if they opt out of being union members. Without such...