Kaipat was referring to a July 22, 2008 report of the Washington Post that chronicled the four-year effort by immigrant women house workers in Maryland to gain better working conditions.
This new law in Maryland is based on the concept of a written contract for domestic house workers.
According to Kaipat, such “written contracts for foreign workers have been a staple of commonwealth law from the beginning.”
The Montgomery County Council approved “what are believed to be among the most far-reaching labor protections for domestic workers in the country,” Kaipat quoted the Post in her e-mail to Variety.
“We have had written contracts for house workers since 1983. We in the commonwealth are often criticized unjustly because people do not know about the extensive protections our laws provide. Compared to most states, we have far better labor laws protecting foreign workers,” Kaipat said.
“The legislation, which County Executive Isiah Leggett has said he will sign, will require Montgomery [County] employers to offer written contracts to nannies, housekeepers and cooks working at least 20 hours a week. The contracts will have to spell out wages and other benefits. The bill also requires that live-in employees have their own bedroom, equipped with a lock, and ‘reasonable accesses to a bathroom, kitchen and laundry room,” Kaipat quoted the Post report.
“The law in the commonwealth goes further,” Kaipat said, “because we protect workers against illegal deductions from their pay, and we provide bonding to help ensure that workers are paid by their employers.”
The advocacy group that pushed the reforms in Maryland represented 17 countries. About half of the members are from Latin America and the rest come from Africa and Southeast Asia.
While the Maryland legislation fell short of the goal of a domestic workers bill of right that would guarantee health insurance, the CNMI law has always protected workers’ from medical expenses, Kaipat said.
“Since 1983, we have required employers to meet all medical expenses of foreign workers,” she added..
“As domestic workers in Maryland, they are excluded from most federal labor protections, including those that mandate safe work places,” the Post reported.
But Kaipat said the “commonwealth law mandates safe work places for all foreign workers.”
“This protection is backed up by inspectors from the Labor Department who inspect the workplaces of all new employers of foreign workers. We also do periodic health and safety inspections of workplaces to make sure they meet our standards,” Kaipat said.
Montgomery council member George L. Leventhal, who co-sponsored the legislation, told the Post that a domestic workers bill of rights has little political support in Maryland.
“He said that he is sympathetic to [the workers’] 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,” Leventhal was quoted as saying.
By contrast, Kaipat said, what is considered politically impossible to do for foreign workers in Maryland, has been the law in the commonwealth since 1983.
“The commonwealth had enforcement problems over the years because it lacked resources and the federal government failed in its labor enforcement responsibilities here in the commonwealth, but the CNMI never lacked the political will to pass legislation containing the necessary protections. The new labor law, P.L. 15-108, passed the House without a single negative vote in 2007, and also passed the Senate without any opposing vote,” she said.
