Current Campaigns

Health and Safety Law for All Workers

In 2020, after years of terrible wildfires in California and the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, MUA members identified the urgent need to improve workplace safety protections. Our house cleaner members were forced to work in areas affected by falling ash and toxic smoke without adequate ventilation, masks or gloves. Nannies and caregivers worked in close contact with children and the elderly without masks, gloves, air filters or other protections. Hundreds of our members became ill with COVID, many of them exposed at work. And legally, these workers had no right to appeal to demand protections.

For these reasons, in 2020 and 2021 we co-led a state campaign of the California Domestic Workers Coalition to approve the Health and Safety Law for All Workers (SB321), a bill originally intended to eliminate Cal-OSHA's unfair exclusion of domestic workers. Through a hard-fought campaign involving many of our member-leaders, we got the billed passed in both chambers of the state legislature twice. In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed our bill with an unfounded claim that homes should not be treated as workplaces. In 2021, direct negotiations with the Governor's office led us to amend the bill and secure his support. The new law, passed in September 2021, led to the development of the first state health and safety guidelines for domestic workers, although it did not make those guidelines enforceable by law.

The right to paid sick leave for domestic workers

CDWC launched its first municipal campaign in San Francisco for access to paid time off for domestic workers.

Sick leave is a right under state and federal law for all workers. However, most domestic workers, who often have more than one employer, do not have a system for accumulating sick leave pay. Therefore, if a worker is sick or has a sick family member to care for, she usually has to show up to work anyway or miss pay that day and possibly risk losing her job. MUA, as a leader in the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the California Domestic Workers Coalition, has been at the forefront of changing this unjust situation.

In 2021, MUA co-led a successful campaign in San Francisco to pass the first local ordinance in California to create a functional system that will allow domestic workers to take paid sick leave. The Sick Leave for Domestic Workers Ordinance requires the creation of an app that employers and workers must use to enforce sick leave. For each day worked, an employer must pay a small fee into the worker's city-managed sick leave account through the app. The worker will be able to see the accumulated amount and access those funds when she needs sick leave.

We are currently working with city agencies to get the system up and running. We will also launch an outreach campaign to workers and employers to make sure they know how to use it.

Are you an employer? Click here to learn more about this law and others affecting domestic workers in California.