The Workers’ Voice Summit was a three-day event hosted this week by the Department of Labor – Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), in collaboration with other federal agencies. Hundreds of workers from different sectors, organizations and worker advocates came together to build relationships and discuss ideas from workers about how to make their workplaces safer and how to ensure that enforcement agencies – like OSHA – effectively support workers to exercise their rights.
The summit was filled with powerful testimonies from workers across a diverse array of industries, including domestic workers from across the Alliance. Domestic worker leaders raised not only the many ways in which domestic workers are excluded from basic workplace protections, but also shared impactful models to strengthen protections for this workforce like the essential workers board in Harris County TX, state level domestic worker bills of rights like in NJ, and the domestic worker health and safety oversight board in CA. We were able to bring a unique perspective to issues of immigrant workers, workplace violence and sexual harassment, and non-traditional work arrangements.
Thank you to all the domestic workers who participated in the summit, and stay tuned for more ways to advocate for strengthened health and safety protections for domestic workers!
