For twenty years, two very different communities have been meeting on the corner of Marcy and Division avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ultra-Orthodox Jews go there to find cleaning ladies; Latina immigrants to find work. Gloria Puma, 35, is one of the latter, an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador. One morning almost exactly four years ago, her…
Domestic workers are a visible fixture where I live in Manhattan, caring for the elderly, cleaning apartments, shepherding kids to playdates and playgrounds while mom and dad are at work. But in many ways, they have long been an invisible and exploited workforce. They are considered “help” and not “labor” by truly misguided social convention….
Israel’s first lady was afraid of her Nepalese employee. That’s the updated version of events from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a day after his publicity team acknowledged that a domestic worker dislocated her finger during an argument with the prime minister’s scandal-prone wife. The still-unnamed worker “responded with an uncontrollable burst…
For the sake of his own political career, Benjamin Netanyahu might want to keep his wife away from household workers. For the second time in less than two years, Israel’s first lady is being accused of serious mistreatment by an employee, an allegation that is now soaring to the top of Israel’s headlines. This time…
During the past eight years, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice has been a key ally in Domestic Workers United’s fight for fair treatment of housekeepers, nannies and other caregivers. As part of its Shalom Bayit [peace in the home] campaign, JFREJ has assisted the organization in determining best practices for employers of domestic workers,…
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