Virginia Rising

[originally published on the AFL-CIO Blog]

We have broken the silence. We have yet to break our chains.

Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance /La Alianza Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar, sends her observations on the International Labor Organization’s (ILO’s) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, where a new global rule on domestic workers is set for a vote June 16.

I’m on my way home from a week of discussion and debate about the “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” convention at the ILO’s International Labor Conference in Geneva. This is the first international convention on domestic work. Getting here has been a long road, more than 10 years in the making. The final vote on the convention will take place on June 16.

This process was a powerful reminder of the importance of movements: movements of workers that demand change, movements of women that promote hopeful visions for new ways in which we can relate to each other, social movements that create progressive governments that can play powerful roles in international arenas. It was the growing movement of domestic workers around the world—and our capacity to capture the imagination of trade union movements and governments internationally—that got domestic work onto the agenda at the ILO in the first place.

I learned so much about the importance of progressive governmental voices in the international arena. The government voices that spoke loudest in support of a strong convention on domestic work came from Brazil, South Africa and the United States. In Brazil and South Africa, workers’ movements have captured the imagination of the public, and they have been able to deeply integrate workers’ rights into the agenda of their governments.

While conditions for workers in the United States are different and the labor movement is under widespread attack, we do have a public official—Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis—who has a profound dedication to protecting vulnerable workers. The daughter of a domestic worker and the product of a proud union household, she has prioritized vulnerable workers at every level of the Department of Labor. This meant that the U.S. government delegation played an important progressive role in the negotiations, consistently challenging the European Union and other nations to support strong protections for domestic workers.

Finally, the U.S. labor movement played an important progressive role in the negotiations, providing a model of the ways in which trade union federations and independent workers movements can work together to improve the lives of working people. I’m proud to say that building on the partnership between the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the AFL-CIO, the United States was the first among the world’s trade union federations to include a domestic worker, Juana Flores from Mujeres Unidas y Activas, in its official labor delegation to the ILO.

Our work is not done; we have a long road ahead. As a reminder and an inspiration, I want to share some words spoken by a worker from the Guatemalan domestic workers union after the adoption of the draft Convention,

We have broken the silence. We have yet to break our chains.

via Domestic Workers: ‘We Have Broken the Silence. We Have Yet to Break Our Chains’ | AFL-CIO NOW BLOG.