COVID-19 Is Exacerbating Problems for Black Domestic Workers
Lydia Nakiberu got the call on a late Sunday evening in April. The novel coronavirus had just begun to seize the natural order of everyday life in her city of Boston, Massachusetts, capsizing schools, businesses, social fetes, hospital capacities, and the economy as Governor Charlie Baker joined political leaders across the world to instate stay-at-home orders and enforce social distancing. Nakiberu, a home health aide who had been working for an elderly man for the past six months, was not to come into work the next morning, her client told her over the phone, as they feared she may transmit the deadly virus since she uses public transportation. They would call again when they needed her services. Three months later, Nakiberu says she is still waiting for that call.
“I’m so stressed about it,” Nakiberu, who emigrated from Uganda to Massachusetts 15 years ago, tells BAZAAR.com. Since, she has attempted reaching out to her client again, wishing him a happy Easter and Father’s Day, but he and his family reaffirmed that they did not yet want her to return. “Even finding another job right now, it’s so difficult. A lot of people don’t want to bring people in their houses because of the coronavirus. And yet I have family, I have kids to take care of.”
Like so many other domestic workers, her immigration status has also barred her from receiving any unemployment benefits and the stimulus check provided under the CARES Act, which was signed into law in late March. Her family—including her three children, aged 13, 12, and eight—have since relied on income from her husband, who works in a nursing home, until he, too, contracted COVID-19. As he recovered, he was unable to work for a month. “That also added up to our financial difficulties,” Nakiberu says.
Survey Results Quantify What Domestic Workers Already Knew from Experience
A recently released survey reveals a tiny sliver of the pandemic’s repercussions toward Black, immigrant domestic workers, many of whom suddenly found themselves without income or financial assistance. Conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies’ Black Worker Initiative, and in partnership with the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s We Dream in Black, Notes from the Storm looked at three key locations in the United States that have large Black immigrant communities: the state of Massachusetts; Miami-Dade, Florida; and New York, New York. Under the survey, domestic workers are defined as those who work as nannies, caregivers, house cleaners, and newborn specialists, with much overlap since many work multiple jobs.
Across all locations, 70 percent of respondents faced either job loss, like Nakiberu, or reduced hours and pay. More than half of the workers surveyed also said that their immigration status adversely interfered with their ability to find new jobs. Undocumented workers are especially affected, with distinctively higher rates of job termination and inability to find new work. Nearly 50 percent of all workers surveyed also said they feared seeking federal, state, or local assistance because of their immigration status.
Health hazards also pose an undue risk. For those who continue to work during the pandemic, 73 percent reported that they have not received any personal protective equipment (PPE) from their employers. More than half of all respondents reported that they have no medical insurance, with undocumented workers having the highest uninsured rates (88 percent to documented workers' 32 percent). A quarter of those surveyed also said that they have experienced or live with someone who has experienced COVID-19 symptoms.
While the numbers are staggering, the results merely quantify what many who work in the field already knew from experience. Domestic work, most especially for those who are Black, immigrants, and undocumented, is a distinctively underpaid, exploited, and vulnerable occupation.
"What we know about Black domestic workers is that we exist at the intersection of racism, gendered violence, state violence, and we, across the board, experience massive disinvestment in our own community," says Aimée-Josiane Twagirumukiza, an organizing director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance. "What the past few months has really done is laid bare the ways that all these oppressions come together to create the storm and the crisis we're in right now."
Working as a caregiver for the past 14 years, the conditions of Nakiberu's labor have remained static over time. "They are the same," she says. "And when I say they are the same, it's that they've never been any good."
The Start of the Domestic Care Industry in the United States
Domestic workers' exploitative bearing in the American economy is particular to the trade's roots in slavery. "The original domestic workers, so to speak, were actually enslaved Africans working in white slave owners' homes during chattel slavery," says Twagirumukiza. Even after the abolition of slavery, she explains, former slave owners used intimidation to keep women as free domestic labor. "There's this real push by people who supported a slave economy in the U.S. to keep really cheap domestic workers as free labor for as long as possible."
After the abolition of slavery and as more and more Black women came to dominate the occupation, many justified the poor working conditions of domestic workers with the mammy stereotype, which painted a portrait of Black women loyally and happily serving white families.
Uniting workers to fight back against such circumstances could prove to be difficult, given domestic labor's peculiar position as a mostly isolated occupation hidden in the home and usually performed by the most marginalized of communities. Still, history shows that workers, together, prevailed. In 1881, for example, a group of 3,000 predominantly Black washerwomen shut down Atlanta, Georgia, in pursuit of higher wages, a rousing triumph especially considering that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued just 18 years before. "Because nearly every white household relied on a Black woman to do its laundry, the strike affected the entire city," wrote Eileen Boris and Premilla Nadasen in The Journal of Labor and Society.
Organizing among workers, then, is one way to force employers, potential supporters, and society at large to see what has long been called "invisible" labor for what it truly is: work.
"A lot of people who aren't involved in our programming might not get connected to the dignity and power that lives with the domestic worker name and that movement," says Twagirumukiza. "If you're doing work as a home health aide, or you're doing work as a nanny in someone's home, you are a domestic worker and you're part of this legacy and this is how we organize together to strengthen our story."
One could easily find irony in the dual reality that forces domestic workers into precarious economic statuses as the industry contemporaneously becomes one of the fastest-growing occupations in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Solar panel engineers are one of the other fast-growing industries and their salaries are completely different," Twagirumukiza continues. "There's no argument on whether this is a professional or skilled position, whereas in home care, there's all of these biases that keep that as a low-paying profession, even though it's just as needed as some of these higher-paying professions that are also rapidly growing."
The Road Ahead
Today, organizations like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, of which Nakiberu is a council member, are working toward improving the conditions for domestic workers through regional and national campaigns. Of recent prominence is the introduction of the National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, introduced last summer by California Senator Kamala Harris and Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal. The legislation would extend federal protections to the vast swaths of domestic workers in the country, who have long been excluded from labor laws that guarantee paid time off and overtime pay, privacy protection, a written employment contract, and more. (Currently, only nine states and the city of Seattle have extended their labor law protections to domestic workers.)
We Dream in Black also offers a sweeping list of broad recommendations, from strengthening the ability of workers to organize and collectively bargain to establishing basic labor protections for those in the domestic care industry.
But in the midst of the ongoing surge of coronavirus cases, immediate relief is also needed, especially for those workers excluded from financial assistance provided under the CARES Act. Consequently, the National Domestic Workers Alliance is pushing for the passage of the HEROES Act, which passed in the House of Representatives in May. Under the HEROES Act, a proposed $3 trillion would allow for another round of stimulus checks, as well as expanding coverage for those who were previously excluded, including immigrants without social security numbers.
Even with prompt legislative changes, the road ahead is a long and winding one. "What I would hope is that people don't leave the spotlight thinking that this is something that has just happened or something that we can quickly relegate with one or two strongly worded pieces of legislation," says Twagirumukiza. "What we really do need is to have a serious reflection about the history of Black work in the United States and also push for the culture shift that I think all Black workers need right now."
As daily uprisings for Black lives continue to disrupt major metropolitan areas across the country, the ground beneath us is shifting. Calls to defund—if not fully abolish—police departments are also raising the question of how that money could be used to serve and protect communities in genuine ways. "We know that that money would be better invested in actually building up a care infrastructure that's anti-racist, which means that it definitely serves Black folks and Brown folks," says Twagirumukiza. She suggests funding subsidized public health care, affordable housing, schools, and social programs.
While Nakiberu continues to wait on her client to call her back into work, she is also keeping her eye on the larger vision of a world in which she will no longer have to struggle to get benefits, insurance, better wages, paid time off, and basic respect as a worker. "For me, we are building power by telling our stories. I hope the government listens. I hope America listens," Nakiberu says. "We are tired and we say no more."
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