No Glass Ceiling in Dreams of Women Workers

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52900

Excerpted from an article on international working women's rights by By IPS/TerraViva correspondents on the Inter Press News Agency Website. New Routes Leader Guillermina Castellanos of La Colectiva is featured. (pictured far right)

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Wages depend on a number of variables, one of which is bargaining power. The women who clean, cook or care for children and the elderly have in their hands a particular power: the key to the smooth functioning of a family.

In San Francisco, California, La Raza Centro Legal's Women's Collective teaches members, mostly undocumented immigrant women who work in private households, how to negotiate for decent wages and safe, dignified working conditions.

"The women dictate how much they earn," Guillermina Castellanos, coordinator of the Women's Collective, tells TerraViva.

The centre has a Day Labour Programme where employers willing to pay a decent wage can hire experienced workers with just one day advance notice.

"Because I care for their children, both my employers are able to work full-time, but I struggle to buy groceries for my family and pay rent each month," says Reina Flamenco, a member of the collective.

"But," Castellanos warns, "outside the organisation, many domestic workers are more likely to be exploited."

According to the centre, two-thirds of domestics in California earn low wages or wages below the poverty line.

Neither California nor the rest of the country provides legal protection for the roughly 2.5 million domestic employees in the United States, nearly all of whom are immigrant women.

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Read more on the IPS News Website.

Tags: domestic workers, women workers
Topics: Business, Economics, Family, Immigrants, Training