Needham resident Eleanor Shore Speaks to Legislators on Workers' Rights

The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Human Rights (HB 1250), currently before the Massachusetts legislature, would strike some people as surprising. The reality is that domestic workers who care for children, seniors, or clean homes in the community, have none of the protections of people who work for corporate employers, nonprofit organizations, or professional temporary agencies. Throughout the US, it is an unregulated and largely invisible world of work.

Thus, the bill would establish labor standards that protect domestic workers’ basic workplace rights, including meal and rest breaks, clarity on what constitutes working time, sick time to care for themselves and their families, and freedom from discrimination and sexual harassment.

It enables employers to be sure that the workers receive the dignity and respect they deserve. Importantly, it will reduce turnover and improve the health and safety of employers and their families, by ensuring the health of workers. Clear guidelines will be provided on mutual responsibilities, so that the health and well being of all concerned are safeguarded. Such bills have already been made law in California and New York.

A host of advocacy organizations in the Commonwealth are supporting the bill, and hope to have it reported out to the full House by March. Meanwhile, legislators need to know that community members feel this is urgently important. Dr. Eleanor Shore of Needham recently provided testimony before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, co-chaired by Sen. Daniel Wolf and Rep. Thomas Conroy. She is a retired primary care physician, a former assistant for health affairs to President Derek Bok at Harvard, and is a retired dean for faculty affairs at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Shore testified that she has employed domestic works for most of her career, including the daughter of her original worker. The daughter has worked for her family for 49 years. “My professional career would not have been possible without her,” Shore testified. To secure the relationship, Shore provided a fair wage, a contribution to social security unemployment insurance, and health insurance; she also received paid vacations and sick pay.

Shore continued, “If Massachusetts wants a strong workforce that utilizes the talents of women and men, it must have a set of guarantees that support a cadre of capable, responsible, respected, and well cared for domestic workers.”