The Invisible Corner: Expanding Workplace Rights for female day Laborers

Abstract

Governmental approaches to regulating day labor markets have focused principally on industries such as construction, landscaping and agriculture, in which men almost exclusively work. Legal and social science scholarship regarding day labor has largely ignored the significant numbers of women working in domestic industries like housekeeping and child-care. Such workers are in all respects “day laborers,” who contract for no more than a day's or a few hours' pay, and who experience the acute contingency and imbalance of economic and political power that typify the day labor employment relationship. Despite some progressive advances for day laborers generally, including the creation of formal hiring sites, women are often forced to search for domestic day labor in unregulated public and private spaces, with few legal protections.The Article considers why women have largely been excluded from legislation and public policies designed to regulate day labor markets and improve day laborers' working conditions. The Article explores new models of regulation, organizing, and advocacy that can help shift the imbalance of power between domestic day laborers and their employers.Alternative models for improving working conditions for female day laborers are particularly important because domestic workers are specifically exempted from many of the major federal and state laws designed to protect employees, and are therefore particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Through the development of worker cooperatives and collectives, domestic workers have successfully organized for greater workplace protections and transformative changes within the domestic work industries. The Article recommends that federal, state and local lawmakers reexamine the historically gendered approach to day labor and enact legislation to bridge the gap between existing employment laws and the realities of domestic day labor markets.