Immigrant Workers at Home: Hired Hands Hold Family Bonds

By Michelle Chen
Racewire Blog

In American households, the divide between the home and the workplace is always evolving, and immigrants are shaping that evolution more than we know.

Immigrant women workers today form a pillar of the middle-class family. As nannies, housekeepers and other domestic workers, their status is defined by the strangely intimate nature of their work combined with structural discrimination. A new study presents their hidden plight in a new light: as a driver of the advancement of the mothers they serve.

An economic study by Heinrich Hock of Florida State University and Delia Furtado of the University of Connecticut analyzes the immigrant labor market in household services (primarily child care, cooking, and housekeeping) and its impact on college-educated non-immigrant women. Predictably, they found that when privileged women have a cheap source of help at home, they gain freedom in other aspects of their lives.

The research suggest that “inflows of low-skilled immigrants resulted in a higher rate of childbearing in this population of high-skilled women living in large urban areas.” In addition, this immigration flow “substantially reduced the work-fertility tradeoff facing educated urban American women”—in other words, it enabled working women to balance career and family duties.

So immigrant workers help lift white-collar mothers toward that coveted work-life balance. But back at home, work remains the same as it ever was: hard, endless, and never fairly compensated. The difference for domestic workers, of course, is that they are still outsiders in the home, culturally and professionally. And when overworked and exploited, they end up tending to other people's families at the expense of their ability to care for their own.

Immigration generally serves as a human subsidy for the host country's economic development. Domestic work shows how the process plays out on the household level. Another study by Univ. of Connecticut sociologist Amanda Moras argues that the availability of domestic labor can be “liberating” to well-off women, but at the same time deepens and reshapes racial and gender inequalities. The tension between a nanny's twin roles as low-paid employee and family caregiver creates a sticky social dynamic:

there has been both a racialized and gendered hierarchy of who assumes this work and paid domestic work is a reflection of this gendered and racialized division of this labor.... the responsibility of waiting on children and husbands is placed upon domestic workers. These arrangements are not necessarily challenging sexism but rather shifting the burden of sexism from middle-class women to their employees. In effect, this reproduces the demeaning and sexist aspects of housework and reaffirms women’s subordination.

Nativists accuse immigrants of ruthlessly competing for “American” jobs. But the labor market for diaper changing isn't looking too cutthroat these days. It seems that educated urban women are freeing themselves from housework through the servitude of a new female underclass.

Or maybe not so new. As Domestic Workers United points out in their historical overview of the sector, during the slavery era, the lifestyles of privileged households fed off the sweat of captive labor.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric invokes slurs like “anchor baby” to suggest that immigrant women have children in America in order to leach off of resources that should go to native-born families. But domestic workers turn that image of parasitism upside down. In their everyday struggles, these women take little away from citizen families; they only take care of them.

http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/09/immigrant_workers_at_home_hire.html

Solicitan ex braceros apoyo a legisladores

Juan M. Vergara González
EL DIARIO
Agosto 6, 2009

Chihuahua— Por lo menos 500 ex braceros y familiares abarrotaron ayer el Congreso del Estado y bloquearon la avenida Independencia a fin de exigir a los diputados locales que intercedan ante la próxima legislatura federal para que el pago de los 38 mil pesos sea en una sola exhibición, en lugar de los 4 mil pesos anuales que determinó el Comité Técnico de Fideicomiso en las reglas de operación.

Con altavoz en mano, la presidenta de la Diputación Permanente, Susana Muriel Acosta, convenció a los manifestantes de desbloquear la vialidad y les aseguró que el Congreso local los apoyará en sus demandas. No faltó la molestia por parte de los conductores afectados por el bloqueo.

Poco después de las 10:00 horas, cientos de ex braceros y familiares llegaron a la Torre Legislativa y una comisión se reunió con algunos diputados y con el titular de la Dirección de Atención a Grupos Vulnerables, Pedro Domínguez Alarcón. En esta reunión se acordó que el Congreso local tomaría diversas acciones en apoyo de los ex braceros, a saber: Solicitar al Gobierno federal efectuar el pago del importe del apoyo social en una sola exhibición -los 38 mil pesos- a los ex braceros o sus familiares. Exhortar al Ejecutivo federal para que se le otorgue reconocimiento a los recibos entregados como papelería oficial.

Asimismo, al Congreso de la Unión se le solicitó instalar una mesa permanente de trabajo en la que se integre la representación de ex braceros. Además, que pida al Comité Técnico de Fideicomiso dar a conocer las razones para el cambio de las reglas de operación, en las cuales se determinó que se pagaría a los ex braceros 38 mil pesos en montos de 4 mil al año.

Los diputados Susana Muriel Acosta y Ricardo Espinoza, en compañía de Pedro Domínguez, dialogaron con los adultos mayores y sus familias y les ofrecieron su intervención a fin de que los acuerdos prometidos sean cumplidos por el Gobierno federal.

Pedro Domínguez recordó que la lucha de los ex braceros por obtener los recursos que ganaron con su trabajo en los Estados Unidos ha sido larga y ardua, pero confió en que la próxima legislatura federal aprobará medidas mediante las cuales se logre su principal demanda, recibir en una sola exhibición los 38 mil pesos aprobados.

El 10 por ciento del salario que recibían en el país vecino por trabajar en la pizca, fue enviado a un fondo de ahorro que le correspondía a cada trabajador. Este fondo permaneció durante décadas bajo control de los Estados Unidos y fue hasta el 2005 cuando lo envió al Gobierno de México, para que fuera entregado a los ex trabajadores, lo cual no ha ocurrido para la mayoría.

http://www.diario.com.mx/

New Bedford factory targeted in raid to pay $850,000 in overtime

New Bedford factory targeted in raid to pay $850,000 in overtime
November 18, 2008
Brian R. Ballou
Boston Globe Staff

The owners of a New Bedford leather goods factory raided by immigration officials settled a class action lawsuit today, agreeing to pay current and former workers $850,000 in overtime.

The federal lawsuit was brought by five former and one current employee of Michael Bianco Inc., but it extends to 764 workers, said Audrey Richardson, senior attorney for Greater Boston Legal Services, which has represented many of the workers detained in the March 2007 raid.

The lawsuit charged that the company set up a fake corporation, Front Line Defense Inc., to avoid paying overtime wages. Employees said they were required to clock out at 5 p.m. after working a full day shift at Michael Bianco and then clock back in at 5:30 p.m. for Front Line. They received checks from both companies, to make it appear they had not exceeded 40 hours a week.

"Most of the time, the workers were doing the same work on the same machine as they did during the day,'' Richardson said.

Employees who clocked the most hours will receive up to $8,000 in back overtime pay.

“For a lot of people who were victims, this is going to help them and their families," said Digna Mendoza, a former employee at the plant, through a translator. "What we’re asking for is respect. For a lot of us, we come here to work and support our family.”

The six employees who brought the lawsuit will receive an additional $2,000 above the back pay they are entitled to, compensation for coalescing the group of workers, Richardson said.

Two weeks ago, owners of Michael Bianco Inc. agreed to settle a federal criminal case that included restitution for overtime owed to workers. That restitution amount, approximately $460,000, is included in today's settlement.

"There were weeks when I would even work 16 hours a day, but would not get any payment for overtime," said Else Hernandez, who earned $7.25 an hour for most of her four years working at the plant.

Hernandez said the lawsuit has served notice to other companies that may be engaging in similar practices.

"Now in New Bedford, a lot of employers from different companies are learning and being cautious, because a lot of them were doing the same," said Hernandez, through an interpreter. "Now they are paying better and paying overtime."

Dozens of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed the Michael Bianco factory on March 6, 2007, detaining at least 361 illegal immigrants. In the days following, federal authorities drew sharp criticism for the raid and its aftermath. Some of the detainees complained of poor conditions at detention facilities and of coercion to sign deportation documents. Some relatives of those detained complained that the children of the detainees were left without their primary caregivers.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/11/new_bedford_fac.html