Who Takes Care of the Houseworkers?

LOS ANGELES -- "Sometimes I can't believe the messes I get myself into," said Juana Nicolas, scrutinizing the giant departures screen at Los Angeles' Union Station. It was 8:30 in the morning and she'd just missed the train to the Santa Ana hills, where she had a long-anticipated meeting with a potential recruit. The 5-foot-tall, 48-year-old former nanny and housecleaner is the lead organizer of the Household Workers Project, a grassroots labor group made up of immigrant women who clean houses and care for children across the Los Angeles region. Nicolas paced, wondering how she'd make her meeting with a Mexican housecleaner. "I need to get these to her," she said, clutching a brown leather satchel full of pamphlets, "because that's how we make change."

One person at a time, Nicolas and the Household Workers Project have made inroads with a notoriously hard-to-organize group who tend to be isolated and undocumented. Housecleaners and nannies usually work without contracts or union representation, and have little knowledge of their legal rights. Nicolas immigrated to L.A. in 1998 from Oaxaca, where her involvement with a teachers' union had led to death threats. Feeling isolated and overworked as a nanny and housecleaner, Nicolas began to volunteer with the fledgling Project and took over as lead organizer in 2003. When the group, the only one of its kind in L.A., started in 1998, Nicolas recalls, "There were about seven women, including me, and only three or four would come to the meetings."

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