When the highly acclaimed movie “The Help” premiers today, 2.5 million domestic workers will be hard at work taking care of someone else’s children and cleaning their homes. Working people are hoping that this movie, which for the first time features African American domestic workers at the center of a major motion picture, will also shine a spotlight on those who usually remain invisible.

Emmelle Israel, a fellow in the AFL-CIO Media Department, writes about the founding of the Caring Across Generations campaign.

More than 700 care workers, care recipients, community activists and union members came together yesterday in Washington, D.C., for the first-ever Care Congress. The energy in the room was electric as everyone celebrated the launch of the Caring Across Generations campaign, a national effort to reform the direct-care industry. Care workers from across the nation were joined by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Schuler and AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders. Each spoke about the importance of direct care work for the nation as a whole and even in their own lives.

Across the world, working men and women celebrated the historic vote June 16 by the UN’s International Labor Organization creating a new global rule to protect domestic workers. Now the work begins to make sure countries implement the rule, known as a convention, and make protections for domestic workers a reality.

Today, at the International Labor Organization’s 100th annual conference in Geneva Switzerland, the global community took a major collective step towards achieving economic and social justice for some of the world’s most vulnerable workers with the overwhelming adoption of the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention and accompanying recommendation.

Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance /La Alianza Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar, sends her observations on the International Labor Organization’s (ILO‘s) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, where a new global rule on domestic workers is set for a vote June 16.

Devon Whitman of the AFL-CIO Field Department reports on a huge victory for domestic workers at the International Labor Organization (ILO) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

Last night, following a week of intense negotiations, governments, employers and workers from across the globe reached agreement on the 19 articles which will make up the first international convention on domestic work at the 100th annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO). While the final vote of the ILO’s general body will take place on June 16, the victory last night marked a major achievement on the road to winning a strong international convention setting out the rights of domestic workers the world over.

Domestic workers around the world play a crucial role in raising children, caring for the elderly and the infirm, and generally supporting those in need of household help. But these same workers are all too often exploited and have little recourse because they are largely excluded from the legal protections that safeguard almost all other workers.