Why am I passionate about this?
Womenâs rights in the workplace have been my passion for thirty years. As a sociologist who does fieldwork and oral histories, I am interested in understanding work through workersâ perspectives. The most important thing Iâve learned is that employers can be notoriously reluctant to enact change and that the most effective route to workplace justice is through collective action. I keep writing because I want more of us to imagine workplaces that value workers by compensating everyone fairly and giving workers greater control over their officeâs rhythm and structure.
Jennifer's book list on womenâs rights in the American workplace
Why did Jennifer love this book?
Did you know that until 1974, the job category âdomestic workerâ was excluded from labor rights that were established in FDRâs New Deal legislation such as the minimum wage and workersâ compensation? Did you know that 1960s union leaders ignored the exploitative labor conditions of domestic work because they considered these workers âunorganizableâ?
Historian Premilla Nadasanâs wonderful book tells the story of Black domestic workersâ exclusion from legal rights to which other workers were entitled and their fight to gain those rights beginning in the 1950s and extending through the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1974.
Telling this history through the life stories of domestic workers who were leaders in this movement makes this book a particularly compelling and worthwhile read.
2 authors picked Household Workers Unite as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, this book resurrects a little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing.
In this groundbreaking history of African American domestic-worker organizing, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen shatters countless myths and misconceptions about an historically misunderstood workforce. Resurrecting a little-known history of domestic-worker activism from the 1950s to the 1970s, Nadasen shows how these women were a far cry from the stereotyped passive and powerless victims; they were innovative labor organizers who tirelessly organized on buses and streets across the UnitedâŚ