Shared Struggle Led Women to Political Action

After a year or so of sharing their plight, committee members and Casa organizers decided in 2004 to push for legal rights. The group began meeting with Montgomery council members and spending Sundays fanning out to downtown Silver Spring and Metro stops to gather signatures on petitions calling for certain guaranteed benefits, De Simone said.

During the week, they circulated petitions on buses, at playgrounds, in churches and at their English classes. The women collected at least half of the approximately 4,000 signatures supporting the legislation, De Simone said.

Cruz, 58, said she was motivated by a miserable decade as a live-in housekeeper in California. After arriving from El Salvador in 1976, she said, a law student promised her $1,000 a month to clean his house, do laundry, iron and cook. She said he required her to work seven days a week for $200 a month.

She said she stayed in part because she didn't know where to turn for help. She is proud, she said, that she still managed to save enough money to bring her four children to the United States before moving to the Washington area in 1986.

Cruz still cleans houses, but she has vowed to never again live with an employer. Her two current employers treat her well, she said. Because she works fewer than 20 hours a week in Bethesda, she will not be covered under the new legislation. Still, she said, she hopes it will prompt discussions with her bosses about "putting something in writing," hopefully including paid vacation time and sick days.

"These are good people," Cruz said through a Spanish translator. "I hope we can do it."

Another group member, who spoke on condition that she be referred to only by her first name of Martha because she worried about what her employers would think, said she had felt stuck living with an emotionally abusive couple. At the time, she said, she spoke little English, had no family or friends to turn to and didn't know how to drive.

The couple brought her to Montgomery from their native Peru 14 years ago, she said. But promises of a $750 monthly salary, English classes and eight-hour work days evaporated when she got to Maryland, she said. She said she ended up making $250 a month.

Still, she was so grateful to them for sponsoring her U.S. visa, she said, that for two years she put up with mandatory 15-hour days and six-day workweeks, cooking, cleaning and caring for their young son.

"We brought you here," she said the couple told her, "so you'll do what we tell you."

She said she felt confident enough to leave only after she met other domestic workers through church, took driving lessons and could afford her own car.

She said she now watches two children 18 hours a week for a Montgomery family and works an additional eight hours each week cleaning two houses. She is paid almost $20 an hour as a nanny. The parents, for whom she has worked for 12 years, give her paid time off for her birthday, when she's sick and when they leave town, she said.

Although she feels well-treated, Martha said, she plans to continue the push to make such perks guaranteed job benefits. She said the group also plans to focus on trying to strip immunity protection from diplomats accused of abusing or enslaving their hired help.

"We deserve to be treated as professionals," she said.

Montgomery council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large), who co-sponsored last week's legislation, said a domestic workers bill of rights has little political support. He said that he is sympathetic to their plight but that it would be unfair to grant them rights that other low-wage workers, such as gas station attendants or taxi drivers, don't receive.

Cruz and others say they'll keep pushing anyway. But yesterday, the Committee of Women Seeking Justice did not hold its weekly meeting. They took a break, albeit a brief one, to celebrate.