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.

Fifty years after the stories told in the film, domestic workers remain an unprotected workforce, without access to basic rights that other workers take for granted. Still mostly women of color, far too few domestic workers receive overtime pay, meal and rest breaks, sick leave or vacation. And far too many of them work for less than minimum wage. 

The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) today released the video, “Today’s Help,” to highlight the stories of 21st century domestic workers and let people know what they can do to help “the help” today. (See video above.) 

For more information and to find out how you can help, visit www.nationaldomesticworkersalliance.org.

The story of today’s “help” is not just one of difficult struggle. It is one of some significant, but all too few, victories. Workers across the country are mobilizing now to push for passage of a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in California. The California legislation is modeled after a similar bill passed last year in New York, which  provides guaranteed sick days, overtime pay, a day of rest and protection from discrimination. If the bill becomes law, those same rights would apply to the more than 200,000 domestic workers in the nation’s largest state.

In June, the International Labor Organization (ILO) took a major collective step toward achieving economic and social justice for some of the world’s most vulnerable workers with the overwhelming adoption of the first-ever Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention and accompanying recommendation.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said of the new convention:

…for the first time in history, the international community acknowledges that domestic work—work performed in or for private homes—is indeed work. Further, the people who perform this work—overwhelmingly women, migrants and people from historically marginalized communities—are indeed workers, and thus entitled to the same rights and protections all other workers enjoy.

Last May, the AFL-CIO  signed a new partnership agreement with the NDWA. The landmark agreement outlines a framework for the groups to partner around issues of organizing, winning rights for excluded workers and building long-term relationships.