“MAKING THE DIGNITY OF OUR LABOR A REALITY”: HOUSEHOLD WORKER ORGANIZING IN NEW YORK CITY, 1960-1980 By ANASTASIA HARDIN A thesis submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies written under the direction of Dorothy Sue Cobble and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey [JANUARY 2013] ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS “Making the Dignity of Our Labor a Reality”: Household Workers Organizing in New York City, 1960-1980 by ANASTASIA HARDIN Thesis Director: Dorothy Sue Cobble This thesis investigates the local movement of household workers in New York from 1960-1980. Adding to labor and feminist histories that challenge the notion of domestic workers as “unorganizable,” this thesis provides an account of the Household Technicians of New York, an organization created and run by working- class Black women in New York. These women fought to gain decent pay and benefits for their labor, and dignity and respect as household workers. With the use of meeting notes, recordings, correspondences, and publications, as well as secondary sources, this thesis examines the vision of the Household Technicians of New York, within the context of the larger national movement of household workers in the 1960s and 1970s. This study pays particular attention to tensions within the movement of household workers and to the efforts to find allies, two topics which have yet to be fully explored ii in previous scholarly literature on domestic worker organizing. This thesis finds that the Household Technicians of New York saw an alliance with women’s movement, largely middle class white women, as central to redefining household work. At the same time, the larger women’s movement was trying to find ways to get women out of the household all together. Rather than focus on the civil rights movement or labor movement, household workers made a strategic choice to focus on the women’s movement. Through this alliance, they hoped to create a coalition of household workers and employers. While the women’s movement did have brief moments when it worked with household workers, ultimately, white feminists were unable to see Black household workers as a part of their vision for liberation. iii Acknowledgements I am incredibly grateful to each member of my thesis committee. Professor Dorothy Sue Cobble – Your invaluable knowledge about women and labor have helped me develop as a student. Your work is inspiring. Thank you for serving as my primary adviser and for taking the time to help me develop my ideas and edit my work. Professor Marisa Fuentes – Your encouragement early on in the process helped me to develop my research interests. Thank you for meeting with me regularly and keeping me on track throughout the process. Professor Mary Trigg – My conversations with you were especially helpful in narrowing my topic. Thank you for always being such a kind and supportive professor, and for always making yourself available for your students. To my best friend and accomplice in the Women’s and Gender Studies program, Samantha Bobila - Thank you for always being there to listen to me complain. And to Michael Velarde – Thank you for being my longtime friend and partner and for keeping me sane throughout the process. Finally, I am also indebted to my family. Mom and Dad – Thank you for always supporting me in life and for pushing me to finish this thesis. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv List of Illustrations vi Chapter I: Introduction 1 Chapter II: The Household Technicians of New York 23 Chapter III: Strategies and Goals of the Household Technicians 42 Chapter IV: A Difficult Alliance 54 Chapter V: Conclusion 70 Bibliography 75 v List of Illustrations 1. Geraldine Miller 30 2. Carolyn Reed 33 3. Aunt Sally versus Carolyn Reed 40 4. Fair Labor Standards Household Sticker 49 vi 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Today a thriving movement of household workers exists in New York. In 2010, after years of organizing, Domestic Workers United and their allies helped to pass the historic “New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights,” which set new standards for better wages, benefits, and job security. This is not the first time that household workers in New York have organized. In fact, New York has a rich history of domestic worker organizing. In 1977, household workers under the name of the “Household Technicians of New York” worked with Bronx Assemblyman Seymour Posner, as well as the NAACP, the Urban League, the Service Employees International Union, and the National Organization of Women to pass a state law that allowed household workers in contract cleaning firms to collectively bargain.1 While the bill was limited in its coverage, it was the first of its kind in the history of the country. Astonishingly, household workers, who had been repeatedly excluded from labor legislation, were able to pass legislation that was unheard of in the rest of the country. This local victory came shortly after a national triumph, when Congress expanded the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to include private household workers and brought them minimum wage protection in 1974. The Household Technicians of New York emerged in 1971. It was directly run by local Black household workers, while being an affiliate of the national Household Technicians of America (HTA). The HTA was created by the National Committee on 1Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, ‘We Were the Invisible Workforce’: Unionizing Home Care,” in D.S. Cobble, The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 184; Nadine Brozan, “Bargaining Legislation for Domestics May Have Wide Impact,” New York Times April 28, 1975, accessed October 1, 2012. http://spiderbites.nytimes.com/pay_1975/articles_1975_04_00000.html. 2 Household Employment (NCHE) which was based in Washington D.C. with 33 chapters and about 5,000 members by 1974.2 Originally, the NCHE was created in 1928, mostly to protect the white middle class household.3 In 1964 the NCHE reemerged, with the help of the National Council of Negro Women and the U.S. Women’s Bureau, with more focus on household workers, rather than employers. And it was truly remodeled under the leadership of Edith Barksdale-Sloan in 1969. Sloan, not a household worker herself, was a Black feminist activist who had previously worked on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.4 The NCHE served as a central organization to the movement of household workers that grew in the late 1960s; similar to the NAACP, which served as a base for the civil rights struggle.5 One NCHE executive, Anita Bellamy Shelton, once described the goal of the NCHE as "making the dignity of our labor a reality, not just a dream.” The NCHE, she argued, would help household workers, "move toward the day when our children can take pride in what we are doing.” That day could only come “when we have done all that needs to be done to elevate this honorable occupation to the position it deserves."6 These aspirations were also shared by leaders on the local level in New York. Carolyn Reed, a 2 Patrick McCormack, "Maids Want Household Technician Title." Herald Tribune, April 21, 1974, accessed October 1, 2012. http://news.google.com/newspapers. 3 Dorothy Sue Cobble, “A Spontaneous Loss of Enthusiasm”: Workplace Feminism and the Transformation of Women's Service Jobs in the 1970s. International Labor and Working-Class History 56 (1991): 34; Vanessa May, Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-class Reform in New York, 1870-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2011). 4 Dorothy Sue Cobble. The Other Women’s Movement, Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004),198-200; Vanessa May, Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-class Reform in New York, 1870-1940. 5 “Meeting Notes” Series 3 Box1 Folder 11 in NCHE Records, 10. In these notes, Sloan says that she envisioned the NCHE as a membership organization similar in design to the NAACP or the League of Women Voters. 3 central leader of the Household Technicians of New York, explained that “The image and dignity of household employment will improve only after wages, hours, and working conditions have been raised sufficiently to reflect the value of the service performed.”7 *** Many labor and feminist scholars have begun to document the FSLA victory and the larger national movement led by the NCHE of the 1970s.8 But very little has been written on the local household workers movement in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. What did this local movement of household workers look like? In what ways was it a successful movement, and in what ways did it fail? What was the relationship between household workers and other major social movements at the time? What can we learn from studying this largely unexamined local movement which was led by working class Black women? In an attempt to begin to fill in this historical gap, this thesis examines the Household Technicians of New York from 1960-1980, its leadership, and its goals within the context of the larger national movement. Affirming Premilla Nadasen’s claim that “domestic worker activists forged a feminist alliance of working women and housewives, professionals and domestics, to revalue women’s household labor and claim it as legitimate work,” I argue that Black household workers pushed for a coalition with the 6 Donna Allen, “Household Technicians’ Organize To Gain Equal Status As Workers” In These Times, August 10, 1977, 16. Accessed October 1, 2012, http://www.unz.org/Pub/InTheseTimes-1977aug10- 00016a02. 7 McCormack, "Maids Want Household Technician Title." 8 Cobble, “A Spontaneous Loss of Enthusiasm”; Boris and Klein, “We Were The Invisible Workforce”; Eileen Boris and Premilla Nadasen, “Domestic Workers Organize!” Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 11 (2008); Premilla Nadasen, “Power, Intimacy, Contestation” Dorothy Bolden and Domestic 4 larger women’s movement.9 Household workers also sought out allies in the labor movement and civil rights movement, but saw the women's movement as particularly important. They strategically sought to create a coalition between household workers (mostly Black working class women) and employers (mostly white middle class women). Household workers challenged the “hegemonic feminism” of the time by attempting to discuss and dismantle class and race based tensions within the women’s movement.10 Ultimately, white middle class women failed to see household workers as a part of their vision for liberation. Yet there were brief moments when household workers were able to push the larger women’s movement to take up their struggle. These moments produced some concrete legislative victories in New York, and the rest of the country. Looking at this local history reveals new dimensions of the household workers movement in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the topics, not fully covered in the national histories, is the tensions that arose internally within the movement of household workers. By exposing the tensions that existed within the movement in New York, it becomes clear that Black household workers were not a homogeneous group. Rather, household workers were a diverse group of women, who had different views on how household work could be improved. Another topic not fully explored in previous scholarly literature is that of alliances. By looking at the local movement, this thesis provides an intimate perspective on alliances, or lack of alliances, with the movement of household workers. Worker Organizing in Atlanta in the 1960s" in Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care, ed. Eileen Boris and hacel Parre as Stanford University Press, . 9 Premilla Nadasen, “Citizenship ights, Domestic Work, and the Fair Labor Standards Act,” The Journal of Policy History, 24 (2012):83. 10 Chela Sandoval. “U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World,” Genders 10 (1991).