Guest Opinion | Connie Galambos Malloy: We Need Guidance to Protect the Health and Safety of the Domestic Workers in our Homes

For the past few weeks, I have been worried about Luz, the woman I have employed to care for and clean my home for the past five years. I haven’t seen Luz since shelter in place started, and I want to work out an agreement with her so that she can safely come back to work. But there are no guidelines for people like myself who employ a housecleaner, nanny, or other domestic worker. The employers of other workers that are at high risks for contracting COVID-19, like cashiers, hospital workers or teachers, get guidance from Cal/Osha about how to protect the health and safety of their employees; household employers like us  are left to make it up as we go along.

This lack of guidance is stressful for me as an employer, a Pasadena resident learning how to work from home full-time, with my husband and our three children. I know the stakes are much higher for domestic workers themselves. Through my involvement in Hand in Hand, the Domestic Employers Network, I have some insight into what domestic workers like Luz are going through right now. Most are facing the difficult choice of continuing to stay home without any income at all, or going back to work, unsure if they will have access to health and safety training, gloves, masks or other protective equipment. Some homecare workers who have continued caring for elderly or ill clients throughout this pandemic have fallen ill with COVID-19.

Sadly, many of these same workers faced similar threats to their health and safety during the wildfires. Some were asked to stay behind in evacuation zones to protect their employers’ property. Others got sick working in smoky conditions or cleaning up the toxic ash from inside their employers evacuated homes.

I’m pleased to learn there is a bill in the California state legislature that would change this. SB 1257, The Health and Safety for All Workers Act,  would end the historical exclusion of domestic workers from Cal/OSHA. If passed, Cal/Osha would provide domestic work employers like me clear guidance about possible occupational risks in our homes and what kind of protective equipment or training our employees need to ensure their health and safety. There are many employers who like me want to do right by the workers in their home. SB1257 would make getting back to work safely that much easier for us all.

Last weekend I joined many of my fellow Pasadena and Altadena residents, at Charles White Park to lift up our voices in support of our African American families and neighbors. I see SB 1257 as a concrete tool to address systemic racism. Domestic workers are not included in Cal/Osha because when most major labor laws were passed in the 1930’s politicians didn’t want to include to domestic workers, because they were mostly Black women. Passing SB 1257 now will help us protect the safety of domestic workers, who like so many other people of color have either lost their jobs in this pandemic or are putting their lives at risk working the lowest paid jobs.

Senator Anthony Portantino (D-Pasadena), who represents our district of Pasadena, chairs the State’s Appropriations Committee, which is debating SB1257 between now and June 18th. He has the power to advance this bill in the legislature so that domestic workers have the same right as all other workers to a safe workplace. I call on Senator Portantino now to stand with domestic workers as well as employers like me, as we work together to protect the health and safety of all of our families.