New York Nannies May Get Workers' Bill of Rights, Including Sick Days, Holiday Pay

(June 3) -- New York may soon become the first state to offer employment protection for nannies.

The state Senate passed a bill of rights for domestic workers this week, a measure that would require employers to offer New York's approximately 200,000 household workers paid holidays, overtime pay and sick days.

Supporters say the step will provide needed relief to thousands of women -- and some men -- who are helping to raise the children of wealthier New Yorkers without any legal workplace rights beyond the federal minimum wage.

Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, called the measure "a huge step forward in reversing the long history of exclusion that domestic workers face." Her organization has been lobbying for the legislation for six years.

The New York State Assembly passed a similar bill last year, and once the two bills are reconciled, Gov. David Paterson is expected to sign the measure.

Many say securing job protections for domestic workers can be difficult.

"It's work that happens behind closed doors," Priscilla Gonzalez, director of the New York-based Domestic Workers United, told AOL News today in a phone interview. "This work has been largely unrecognized because it's considered women's work, the work of immigrants and women of color."

Longtime New York City nanny Barbara Young said some employers treat their nannies without dignity.

"When they don't need you any more they just treat you as if you were never there," Young said in a phone interview. "Over the years you hear, 'You were like family,' and then, at the end of the relationship, it is as if you've never been there."

Young, 62, is a member of Domestic Workers United and says the new measure will help bring job security to nannies.

Under the legislation, employers would have to give two weeks' notice before firing a nanny, a protection most American workers have enjoyed for years.

Poo said child care is sometimes "not even considered real work" but is critical to New York's economy. "We know it's the work that makes all other work possible, and without it, it would make the economy crumble," she said.

Still, some are raising concerns about whether the legislation would be able to protect domestic workers who are in the country illegally.

"If you are legal in this country, you will benefit from it, but if you are not, then I don't think it will do much for you," Rhea Bolivia,
a nanny who immigrated from the Philippines, told The New York Times.

But the measure covers all nannies regardless of legal status, and supporters say the bill is not about immigration but human rights.

"I don't need to see your green card status before I know if I'm going to treat you like a human being," Democratic state Sen. Eric Adams told The Associated Press. Adams, whose mother was a domestic worker, called the bill a "landmark piece of legislation."

Republican state Sen. Andrew Lanza voted against the bill. He told The New York Times that he worried mothers would be discouraged to report cases of suspected abuse among nannies. "I just think that's wrong when it comes to a parent-child situation in a person's home," he said.

Advocacy groups are pushing for similar legal protections in other states where there are large numbers of nannies, such as Colorado and California.