As Women’s History Month continues, it’s important to highlight the often unsung heroes doing great work that continues to push the union movement forward, like domestic workers and groups advocating on their behalf. For many of us, domestic workers are the backbone of our household, providing general family care, housekeeping and home health care. They are responsible for some of the most vital and intimate work in our nation, and yet the law does not guarantee them the same protections they guarantee our families.

Overcoming a four-year struggle to gain union representation, Missouri home health care workers celebrated a victory this week when the state’s Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to a lower court decision upholding a 2010 election in which the workers voted to form a union.

Late Sunday night California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoed the California Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights and TRUST Act. The TRUST Act would have prevented a deeply flawed federal deportation program from tearing apart more California families, diverting important resources and costing the state millions of dollars. 

The governor's midnight veto of the California Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights “does not shake our commitment to winning in California or building a national movement,” said the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), in a statement released Monday. The group vowed to carry on the fight for the workplace rights of the state’s 200,000 domestic service workers.

Even in the face of setbacks like this one, our movement for dignity, respect and labor protections for domestic workers grows stronger. We know that our work to make the world a more just place for domestic workers—and for all of us—is the work of a lifetime. And one governor’s poor decision will not derail us.

The women and men—mostly women—who care for our aging and ill relatives, providing both physical and emotional support, sometimes for many years, are among a workforce that has long been underpaid, overlooked and, all-too-often, looked down upon. Yet these home health aides, personal care assistants and domestic workers toil in occupations described by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as among the fastest growing in the United States.

So what does this say about us as a nation?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is constitutional “is only beginning of the next phase of health care reform,” said the AFL-CIO Executive Council in a statement from its August meeting in Washington, D.C., this week.

The path forward should be clear: First, we must move full speed ahead to implement the ACA; second, we must firmly reject efforts to undo the progress that already has been made with the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare; and third, we must build upon the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare to achieve our goal of quality health care for all.

While anti-worker bills in state capitols across the country still threaten middle-class families, Republican state legislatures are beginning to second guess whether to continue pursuing their extreme agenda attacking working families.

Yesterday morning, the Republican-controlled New Hampshire Senate tabled HB 1677, the so-called “right to work” bill.  This bill is the pet of Speaker Bill O’Brien, dubbed by a recent Concord Monitor editorial as a “self-drawn caricature of vindictiveness and power run [amok].”  “Right to work” failed last year, and so far this year it has failed to muster a veto-proof majority.

The nearly 2 million home care workers—about 92 percent of whom are women—who take care of the elderly and people with disabilities often work 12-hour days and 60 to 70 hours a week. But they are seldom paid overtime and their net income is often less than the minimum wage. Unlike workers covered by federal labor laws, they are not paid for all the hours they are on the clock, witnesses told a U.S. House hearing Tuesday.

In December, the Obama administration proposed a new rule to bring the nation’s nearly 2 million homecare workers under the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) minimum wage, overtime and other provisions.

Home care  workers will have a measure of justice if a rule proposed by the Dept. of Labor goes into effect.

In Minnesota, they want to end the jobs of 15 percent of the men and women in the state workforce. In Tennessee, they want to take away the right of teachers to join unions. In Ohio, they want to eliminate collective bargaining rights for home health care and child care workers and restrict the bargaining rights of police officers and firefighters.