Of Human Bondage: Domestic workers have been 'told they were slaves and treated accordingly.'.

AuthorBader, Eleanor J.

"Petitioners and declarants... describe being denied freedom of movement, being closely monitored, [and] made to work for extremely long hours without break[s]," it states. "They describe being harassed, sexually abused, told they were slaves and treated accordingly."

These accounts are not a relic of history. The petition was filed in March by the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School. According to the ACLU, it asks the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous arm of the Organization of American States, to "acknowledge and address the US. governments failure to protect" the 2.5 million nannies, house cleaners, and care workers who comprise the U.S. domestic labor force.

According to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, immigrant domestic workers are mostly female; the majority come from Central America, Mexico, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Africa; many are victims of human trafficking.

Sarah Bessell, deputy director of the Human Trafficking Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization providing pro-bono legal representation to trafficking survivors, tells The Progressive that, while the line separating human trafficking from domestic service exploitation is sometimes hard to discern, trafficking victims are typically prevented from leaving their worksite or are threatened with physical or psychological violence.

To illustrate this, she cites the case of Fainess Lipenga, an immigrant from Malawi who was brought to the United States in 2004 by Jane Kambalame, then beginning an eight-year stint as a first secretary in Malawi's embassy in Washington, D.C.

Lipenga had cared for Kambalames daughter in Malawi and, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Maryland, agreed to work as a live-in aide. She was promised a monthly salary of $980 for a five-day, thirty-five-hour workweek and told that benefits would include paid sick leave and health insurance. Lipenga was further assured that she would be able to attend English classes.

None of this materialized. In fact, the complaint alleges that as soon as Lipenga arrived in the United States, Kambalame hid her passport, threatened to report her to immigration authorities if she left the house, and forced her to work from 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., six days a week. Her tasks included child care, meal preparation, house cleaning, washing and folding laundry, mending torn garments, serving overnight guests and other visitors, and shoveling snow.

In addition, the complaint alleges that when Kambalame installed an entryway keypad, she refused to give Lipenga the code. On top of this, Lipenga was forced to sleep on a wooden basement floor with just one...

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