San Francisco'Immigrant women organize the City's first domestic workers union

For Immediate Release: March 04, 2002
Contact: Elly Kugler, 415-553-3406

Immigrant Women Take Their Housecleaning to the Streets;
Promote their Collective as alternative to worker exploitation.

Carrying brooms, dustpans, and English textbooks, the immigrant women who form the backbone of San Francisco’s economy will march through affluent Pacific Heights at 10am on Friday, March 8, International Women’s Day. The marchers are members of the San Francisco Day Labor Program Women’s Collective, a non-profit project organized by low-income, unemployed or underemployed Latina women and open to women of all races. Although the women’s professions in their home countries ranged from social work to farming, the woman have focused their new Collective on domestic work since that is one of the few forms of work available to them.
The women demand:
1. fair and humane treatment on the job
2. a living wage
3. that all conscientious employers use the services of their Collective.

"We clean people’s houses and offices and care for their children and parents. Yet many employers think they can treat us like garbage, to use and throw away." says Maria Lourdes Garcia, Collective member. The women formed their demands in response to their experiences with highly exploitative and low-paid working conditions. One member of the Collective worked as an unpaid full-time live-in babysitter, and was not allowed to take care of her own young child when he cried.

Members of the Women’s Collective promote worker-organized collectives as an alternative to such working conditions. "When we are isolated, it’s easy to exploit us. We urge all compassionate employers to only hire workers who are organized, and we urge all workers to join together and organize yourselves." says Guillermina Arroyo, a Collective member. The women in the Collective go out regularly to distribute fliers to potential employers, and meet weekly both to discuss job performance and to support each other’s day-to-day struggles.
Friday, March 8th: 10am – domestic workers press conference at Lafayette Park (Gough/Washington) 11am – march through Pacific Heights to Fort Mason (Bay and Laguna)

Feature-length story available with more extensive history of the Collective and stories of members of the collective. Photos of Collective also available. Please call Elly Kugler at 415-553-3406.