Role of Participatory Research in Documenting and Improving Workplace Conditions of Vulnerable Workers: A Case Study of Domestic Worker-led Research and Advocacy in the United States

Since the creation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, domestic workers, or workers employed in private homes as nannies, housekeepers, and personal attendants, have routinely been excluded from labor and occupational safety and health laws protecting many other workers. In addition to increasing their workplace isolation and vulnerability to exploitation, the exclusion from these laws has meant that very little data is collected and little is known about the conditions faced in the work environment.

In 2003, a domestic worker organization in New York launched a participatory research study to survey 547 workers about their health and employment conditions. Two years later, another domestic worker organization in California conducted a similar study surveying 240 Bay Area workers. In 2010, the National Domestic Worker Alliance launched an ambitious survey of 2,300 workers in 14 metropolitan areas, conducted in nine languages.

This session will briefly share the findings from the recent participatory research studies conducted by domestic workers and describe how the research helped build the organizations' capacity to speak as experts on the working conditions of domestic workers and the need to increase labor protections for excluded workers. The session will highlight recent impressive achievements of the domestic worker movement including local employer accountability campaigns, the passage of a New York Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the introduction of legislation in California, a national campaign to create address the crisis in caregiving, and an International Labor Organization (ILO) convention on domestic work.