City Council Backs Huizar Domestic Workers Bill

The Los Angeles City Council voted 11-1 Wednesday for a resolution introduced by to regulate the wages, hours and working conditions of California's estimated 200,000 domestic workers, especially those who clean homes, tend to the elderly and sick as well as serve as nannies to children.

The legislation, titled AB 889 and called the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, earned the support last week of the California Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee, which voted 5-2 in the bill’s favor. AB 889 is now headed to the office of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for a review before it is sent to various state legislative bodies for consideration as law.

The sole councilmember who voted against AB 889 was CD 12’s Mitch Englander, who was elected to the city council earlier this year and sworn in last month.

AB 889, which was endorsed by CD 6 Councilmemebr Tony Cardenas and backed by a string of Latino, Asian and immigration rights groups, most notably the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), seeks to protect domestic workers from a wide range of physical, emotional and labor-related abuse.

The bill, authored by California Assembly members Tom Ammiano and V. Manuel Pérez, would allow authorities to ensure that domestic workers earn 30-minute meal breaks after five hours of work and 10-minute breaks after four hours of work. Workers would earn overtime as well as an hour of paid vacation for every 30 hours worked. Those who work for more than five hours at a stretch would also earn the right to cook their own food in kitchen facilities that employers will be required to provide to them free of charge.

“They clean our homes, care of our children and loved ones and tend to the sick,” Huizar said in his concluding remarks shortly before the bill was voted on. “When we don’t have regulations that protect these workers, the system is ripe for abuse.”

Laura Morales, a Spanish-speaking domestic worker who said she is a member of CHIRLA, told the City Council during the public comments period of the session that she earns $175 per month as a domestic worker. “It’s not fair,” she said, speaking though an interpreter. “As domestic workers we deserve to rest and have lunch and get overtime and much more.”

A member of the Southern California-based Pilipino Workers Center told the City Council that California law requires workers who don’t get at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep to be paid wages for 24 hours.

“Sometimes we think of the industrial age and the farmers’ struggle, but here in our own backyard we have issues we should do something about,” Huizar said.

CD 13 Councilmember Eric Garcetti, whose (closing) comments immediately followed those of Huizar, thanked his CD 14 colleague for proposing AB 889. Garcetti recalled his great grandmother, who, he said, came to the U.S. from Mexico as a domestic worker. Her husband—Garcetti’s step great grandfather—was a dishwasher, the councilmember said, adding: “I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for a domestic worker.”