Domestic workers, such as housekeepers, home care aides, and nannies help with the day-to-day upkeep of family life. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 90% of home care health aides are women, 56% percent are women of color and 28% are foreign born having migrated from Latin America and the Caribbean. In a culture where women’s waged labor has been devalued and women’s unwaged labor has been taken for granted, the Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative provides the first steps to an antidote. This women-run, mostly immigrant, cooperative, helps childcare workers gain some traction in the form of worker protection, a living wage and regaining personal time. Currently excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers of domestic workers are not required to pay a minimum wage or overtime. While there are organizations and groups around the country who are campaigning on the rights of domestic workers to be included under FLSA, the women of Beyond Care, in the meantime, are taking matters into their own hands.
