Towards a different kind of “Home Equity”: Seattle domestic workers issue new report after building diaper/glove display, sharing their stories, and calling for change at City Hall

Nannies and house cleaners bring their campaign to center stage at City Hall today

Release “Home Equity” research report after assembling  diaper/glove display, and speaking before City Council committee on need for Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

Nannies, house cleaners, and other Seattle domestic workers took a major step from invisible to powerful today, bringing a different kind of “Home Equity” to the top of Seattle’s political agenda today. First, workers assembled a large-scale display of diapers and gloves at City Hall, representing each of the housecleaners and nannies in the Seattle area — one diaper for each nanny in the Seattle area (about 8,000), one glove-finger for each house cleaner (about 7,000).

Photos of the event are available here.Photos of the event are available here.

Now the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance is issuing a new report: “Home Equity: Inequality and Exclusions Facing Domestic Workers in Seattle”, which analyzes community-based survey data and other research detailing the conditions faced by domestic workers in Seattle, and recommends a path forward for change.

Key findings of the Home Equity report include:

• There are approximately 8,000 people who work as nannies and 7,000 who work as house cleaners in Seattle. However, data is sparse, the work is all-too-often invisible, and there is great need for additional community-based research.
• Half of the domestic workers surveyed do not receive overtime pay, four in ten do not receive paid sick days, and 85% do not receive workers’ compensation benefits if they are injured at work.
• More than one in three surveyed workers are paid in cash, and less than half have a written contract. Almost nine in ten surveyed domestic workers of color do not have written contracts.
• Sixteen percent of surveyed workers who raised concerns about working conditions report facing retaliation from their employers.

The full report can be downloaded here (PDF).

Nannies, house cleaners, and other domestic workers in Seattle are coming together to make sure they get the same basic rights and benefits every worker needs. That includes the city establishing a structure that allows workers and employers to come together to set standards that support workers’ health and well-being.

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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org

Working Washington is the voice for workers in our state. Working Washington fast food strikers sparked the fight that won Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 minimum wage. Working Washington baristas and fast food workers led the successful campaign for secure scheduling in Seattle, and our members across the state helped drive forward Initiative 1433 to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick days. We successfully drove Amazon to sever ties with the right-wing lobby group ALEC and improve conditions in their sweatshop warehouses, and got Starbucks to address inequities in their corporate parental leave policy. And we made history once again with the landmark statewide paid family leave law passed last year. For more information, including our press kit, visit workingWA.org.

Official statement from Working Washington in response to the news that Starbucks is expanding its paid family leave program to cover more store employees

The following statement can be attributed to Working Washington:

“Baristas did it, not tax cuts.”

More information, including a timeline of how it all happened, available on our website.

THURSDAY: Domestic workers to kick-off campaign for citywide Bill of Rights

Key city councilmembers to attend as nannies and housecleaners launch Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance, kick-off campaign to raise standards in industry

Nannies, house cleaners and other domestic workers from across the city will gather Thursday evening to launch the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance. Joined by several key City Councilmembers, they’ll kick off their campaign for a citywide Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights which:

• Ensures all domestic workers are covered by all our basic workers’ rights laws.
• Guarantees written employment contracts for all domestic workers.
• Establishes an official city commission which includes domestic workers and has the power to set legally-binding industry standards on wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Who: Nannies, housecleaners, cash paid homecare aides, and other members of the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance, joined by City Councilmembers Lorena González, Lisa Herbold, and Teresa Mosqueda.
 
What: Campaign kick-off for a Seattle Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights. Domestic workers will launch the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance, share their stories, and call for change. Several city councilmembers and a representative of the mayor’s office will attend to offer brief remarks.

Where: Auditorium at 719 3rd Avenue in downtown Seattle, between Cherry & Columbia.

When: 6:30 pm, Thursday, December 7, 2017. Contact Sage Wilson at Working Washington at sage@workingwa.org if you would like to arrange an interview in advance of Thursday evening.

Currently, thousands of nannies, house cleaners, cash paid home care aides, and other domestic workers in Seattle don’t get the full protections of our workers’ rights laws. Few have access to basic benefits like healthcare and retirement. Some types of domestic workers are specifically excluded from the laws that provide these rights and benefits, and for many others the rights spelled out in the law simply aren’t realities on the job. Seattle domestic workers are calling for a Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights that will raise standards and address the inequities faced by a workforce that's mostly women and disproportionately people of color.

Thursday’s kick-off comes after months of organizing and outreach. Nannies raised these issues at several mayoral debates this summer, and as a candidate for office, Mayor Durkan repeatedly stated the need for a Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, and the importance of enforcing labor standards for all workers. Her campaign later issued a policy paper promising that a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights would be a top priority. In the week before the election, nannies and house cleaners leading the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance met with Mayor Durkan, and she signed on in commitment to work with them to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights during her first year in office.

The Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance (SDWA) unites nannies, house cleaners, and other domestic workers across Seattle. Workers have established SDWA a project of Working Washington, with support from Casa Latina, SEIU 775, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org

Working Washington is the voice for workers in our state. Working Washington fast food strikers sparked the fight that won Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 minimum wage. Working Washington baristas and fast food workers led the successful campaign for secure scheduling in Seattle, and our members across the state helped drive forward Initiative 1433 to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick days. We successfully drove Amazon to sever ties with the right-wing lobby group ALEC and improve conditions in their sweatshop warehouses, and got Starbucks to address inequities in their corporate parental leave policy. And we made history once again with the landmark statewide paid family leave law passed earlier this year. For more information, including our press kit, visit workingWA.org.

What to expect when you’re expecting paid parental leave at a Starbucks shareholder meeting

Questions, controversy, and balloons could loom over Starbucks annual meeting

Starbucks shareholders will gather Wednesday morning for the company's annual shareholder meeting in part to mark the transition from outgoing CEO Howard Schultz to incoming CEO Kevin Johnson. Johnson begins in the new role on April 3rd.

Photo credit: Alex Garland

Here’s 6 things to expect:

1) Controversy continues to build around Starbucks new parental leave policy, which would provide store employees dramatically less time with a new child than corporate employees would get.

2) Baristas & customers will be at the shareholder meeting to call on Starbucks to update their parental leave policy to apply equitably to all types of workers, all types of parents, and all types of families. They’ll carry green balloons reading “Congratulations, it’s unpaid!” as they reach out to shareholders about the importance of paid family leave.

3) Questions may be asked: Several baristas attending the meeting are also hoping to make use of the question & answer period to ask the gathered Starbucks executives to explain why they think the new children of baristas should get less time with their parents than new children of executives should get.

4) VP of Global Benefits: The shareholder meeting comes a day after two baristas delivered 80,000 petition signatures to corporate headquarters and then met with the VP of Global Benefits about the company’s paid parental leave policy. (Hi-res photos available.)

5) Meanwhile at City Hall: At the same time as the shareholder meeting gets underway at McCaw Hall, Seattle City Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez will be releasing the outline of a potential proposal for how Seattle can best move forward on a citywide paid family leave policy for private sector employees if the State Legislature fails to act. Starbucks already does business in 70 countries and several states which have paid family leave laws.

6) Hear our voices: Several baristas have shared powerful stories about the importance of paid family leave on our website.