Domestic Workers: A New Face of Solidarity

When it passed the U.S. Congress in 1935, the National Relations Act recognized the collective bargaining rights of U.S. private-sector workers and established a process to require employers to bargain with their unions. The law carried a political price, however. Racist senators and congressional representatives in the Democratic Party, mostly from the U.S. South, demanded exclusions. Domestic workers, who were still largely African-American women, would not be covered. Neither would farm workers, who were mostly Mexican and Filipino immigrants in that era.