Fighting Workplace Abuse and Dislocation Through Law & Activism

The October 16th forum explored the challenges faced by migrant women workers. Cheryl Andrada, a second year student at the Boalt School of Law, opened the talk by discussing the legal protections available to migrant Filipina domestic workers.

Noting the discrepancies between theoretically sound, legal prescriptions, and the way they are enacted in the real world, Andrada proposes to more closely examine the multi-level interactions of laws and their effects. With a particular eye towards wayfaring Filipino laborers, she hopes to address the contradictions of home as workplace, and government as labor protector versus remittance beneficiary. Filipinos who leave their homeland to work overseas are responsible for about $15 billion in remittances. This represents approximately one-seventh of the Philippine GDP. Consequently, the government is actively involved and has even comissioned a special department, The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), to oversee and protect transnational workers. The POEA negotiates contracts for overseas domestic workers, ensuring for example that workers receive at least $400 in wages per month, 8 hours of rest per day, and that their passports cannot be confiscated.

However, as Andrada reports, the POEA is severely understaffed. Given the large number of domestic worker recruitment agencies–at least 1,500 by some estimates–it can be difficult to ensure that agencies are maintaining continual contact and correspondence with the women they represent. She believes that U.S. domestic violence laws should be expanded to include domestic workers. One concern however, is that current domestic violence laws are usually under-enforced. Similarly, labor laws, such as the FLSA or NRLA, specifically exclude domestic workers. In both instances there is resistance because Americans do not want government in their homes, despite the fact that for many domestic immigrant workers, the home and workplace are one and the same.

Because the project is ongoing, Cheryl would appreciate any comments or thoughts about the trajectory of her legal research.

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Beginning with a protest chant–“NAFTA, No! Work, Yes!” Francisca James Hernández discussed the effect that labor shifts–occurring as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)–in the twin U.S. and Mexico border towns El Paso and Cuidad Juarez had on “obreras,” or women workers. Hernández, a post-doctoral fellow in Ethnic Studies, shared her ethnographic work on the activism against dislocation along the Texas-Mexico border.

Hernández compared the border to an open wound, quoting Gloria Anzaldua, “where the third world bleeds from the encounter with the first.” In 2000 alone, 20,000 jobs were lost, leaving El Paso the fourth most impoverished city in the nation. She points out that if you were to measure the area as a single metropolitan unit, over 20 percent of the population is in poverty, ranking first by US standards. The majority of dislocated workers battle material scarcity, and many support themselves and up to 4 generations on $100 per week. Federal programs are largely failures because of language discrimination–when 70 percent is Spanish speaking–and because of a gendered funneling of women into lower paying jobs.

With this as backdrop, Hernández asks, “How do the marginalized push back and determine alternatives?” She argues that intersectionality, a mainstay in the feminist conceptual canon, is political, and more than race, gender and class–the typical triad–must be taken into account when theorizing about agency. She suggests the intersections of history, territory and geography structure the subaltern, where they develop collective resistance.

Providing some hope, Hernández cites Mujer Obrera (mujerobrera.org) an NGO comprised mainly of garment factory workers. When bridges from the US to Mexico were closed down, Mujer Obrera organized hunger strikes, lobbying, marches and other grassroots campaigns. Through their multilayered and diverse activism, formerly dislocated obreras developed knowledge about themselves in the community.

Hernández concluded her talk by urging the CRG audience to consider and address the same goal as this particular, what she calls ingenious NGO: “How do we, as Mexican immigrant women workers, combat the destruction generated by globalization, and build sustainable communities rooted in dignity and justice?”