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 passed the bill 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, requires the development of the state's first health and safety guidelines for domestic workers, but did not make those guidelines enforceable by law.

In 2022, a lead MUA member was elected to the state task force to develop the new health and safety guidelines. Our current goal is to create strong guidelines for all domestic workers that we will eventually make enforceable by law.