Books The hidden industry of hired help
DOMÉSTICA: IMMIGRANT WORKERS CLEANING AND CARING IN THE
SHADOWS OF AFFLUENCE By Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo University of
California Press, 309 pages, $19.95 |
REVIEWED By ROSEMARY
JOHNSTON
Americans are quirky about class. We point to democracy and
egalitarianism as the defining elements of our society, yet we cannot ignore
our checkered history of exploitation of land and labor.
Fast forward to the 21st century. The majority of women with
children are working, and two-career families struggle to stay ahead of the
frenetic pace. They try to balance the demands of the workplace with the needs
of the family and the tasks associated with taking care of our
stuff. Many working women -- on the advice of friends, therapists, or
just because it makes sense to pay others to do work theres no time to do
-- turn to housekeepers and nannies to minimize the chaos and make time for
activities besides working at work and working at home.
Yet there is a profound moral ambivalence about having hired
help in our homes, paying others to clean our homes and care for our
children. It sounds so aristocratic and reeks of feudalism. There is discomfort
about hiring mostly poor and mainly immigrant women to do the dirty
work of cleaning and caring. Some may question whether or not this kind
of work is a real job, a conundrum not lost on stay-at-home moms who are often
on the defensive when the inevitable question is raised at a cocktail party or
company picnic: So what do you do? Women who do not have a
professional career yet depend on a housekeeper and nanny to help out admit
they dont like being around when the worker is cleaning. Thats the
day or the time they choose to run errands or go shopping.
It is this discomfort and this invisible, largely unregulated
workplace that University of Southern California sociology professor Pierrette
Hondagneu-Sotelo explores in her latest book, Doméstica. Sotelo,
author of three other books on race, gender and immigration, interviewed or
surveyed more than 200 Latina domestic workers and their employers in the Los
Angeles area in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Sotelo confesses that she too has bought into the bias that her
real work is her teaching, research, and writing, not the varied
activities surrounding the care of her home and family. The daughter of a
Chilean woman whose domestic employment with an American family in Chile was
her ticket to the United States, Sotelo is keenly aware of how current
immigration trends, cultural expectations and stereotypes, the demand for
nannies and housekeepers, and their vulnerability conspire to keep domestic
employment and the working conditions they encounter just another dirty little
secret in the suburbs of large cities all over the United States.
Even this hidden industry has its career ladder, the reader
learns. Most newly arrived Latina immigrant women begin as live-in housekeepers
and nannies. They receive room and board. That benefit, though often highly
touted by their employers to defend the low wages these women earn, can vary
widely in quality and quantity. The average wage for a live-in the Los Angeles
area is about $3.80 an hour for what is often a 16-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week
job. This money is often exchanged under the table so that taxes, Social
Security and other benefits are not collected nor wages reported. Health
insurance and pension plans are unheard of, and vacations are iffy, dependent
on the generosity of the employer who is accountable to no one.
These women may be single or they may have children. If they are
mothers, they may have arranged what Sotelo has described as
transnational motherhood. The children remain behind in the
mothers native land, often with grandmothers or other family members,
until the live-in moves up this very short career ladder to the next rung -- a
live-out housekeeper and nanny. This type of domestic worker lives elsewhere
but reports to the same house daily and often works long hours, usually by
herself. The pay is a little better and the sense of isolation is
diminished.
Housekeepers or cleaning ladies represent the top rung
on this career ladder. They clean a different house every day. Their workday is
shorter, maybe six hours, enabling them to be home in time to greet their
school-age children. And the pay is much better, $300 a week or more.
Yet there are still major issues about the emotional relationship
between these women and their employers and their families. The domestic
workers long for a relationship characterized by personalism, which Sotelo
defines as a bilateral relationship that involves two individuals
recognizing each other not solely in terms of their role or office but rather
as persons embedded in a unique set of social relations and with particular
aspirations.
Some employers exhibit maternalism -- a unilateral
positioning of the employer as a benefactor who receives personal thanks,
recognition and validation of self from the domestic worker. Other
employers treat them coldly, as though they were invisible. Or worse, employers
become verbally abusive, leading to immediate termination that could mean the
loss of food and shelter for a live-in. Live-ins and even live-outs may become
very attached to the employers children, who spend far more time with
this hired help than they do with their own parents. Sudden job
loss means not only the loss of income but the affection of the children they
cared for so lovingly.
One of the major complaints of the workers is that their employers
do not define exactly what is expected of them. The employee, as Sotelo
describes it, is often left to intuitively figure out what needs to be
done. A pediatric nurse with two young children describes the ideal
nanny/housekeeper as somebody who can know what you need before you have
to ask -- like just know you that well. The employers -- it is almost
always the woman of the household who is responsible for the domestic
workers working conditions and wages -- claim they are too harried to get
involved with their workers or that theyre more comfortable keeping their
distance.
While personalism is no substitute for better wages or working
conditions, the absence of it ensures that this work is experienced as
degrading by those who do it.
In the last section of her book, Sotelo offers some solutions to
the conditions faced by domestic workers. She reviews existing labor and tax
laws and commends the Domestic Workers Association, a division of the Coalition
for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. All profits from the book will be
donated to the association.
To be sure, this book is no page-turner, more of a sociological
report. But it shines a light where many of us would rather not look -- at an
invisible workplace where Latina immigrant women work long hours at low wages
so their employers can work long hours at higher wages with the assurance that
their children and their stuff is being taken care of. This arrangement works
well for the employer, but it leaves these domestic workers vulnerable and ripe
for exploitation.
Rosemary Johnston is program director of the Interfaith Shelter
Network in San Diego and a founding member of the Interfaith Coalition for
Immigrant Rights.
National Catholic Reporter, May 25,
2001
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