Fighting for Fairness: Domestic Workers and the Fair Labor Standards Act

In 1938, the groundbreaking passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) enshrined foundational protections for America’s workers. Yet when the law was passed, it excluded several categories of workers, including domestic workers. These exclusions were rooted in resistance to expanding protections to workers who were predominantly people of color and, in the case of domestic workers, predominantly women.

Domestic workers – which include home care workers, house cleaners, cooks and nannies – provide services and specialized care to private households and families. Domestic work plays a crucial role in our economy, but it has historically been devalued as a result of gender and racial bias, which has negatively affected the working conditions of domestic workers. Domestic workers have generally been paid low wages, worked long hours without formal employment arrangements or overtime pay, and have been more vulnerable to workplace abuse and exploitation – conditions exacerbated by their historic lack of legal protections. 

While domestic workers continue to face challenges in securing fair wages and working conditions, the eventual expansion of the FLSA to include domestic workers represented a critical milestone in upholding the rights of these essential workers. The grassroots effort to expand labor protections for domestic workers wasn’t just a policy fight. It was a multigenerational movement to improve the welfare and rights of marginalized workers and their families, many of whom relied upon domestic employment as one of the few job opportunities available to them, and to increase the visibility and recognition of this largely women and women of color workforce. 

There is a long history of domestic workers organizing for better working conditions. As far back as the 1880s, for example, Black washerwomen in Atlanta organized and led a citywide strike for higher wages – and their success and perseverance inspired other domestic and service workers to demand better working conditions. For decades, domestic work was the largest paid occupation for women in the country. Despite domestic workers’ exclusion from much of the early history of the organized labor movement, these workers continued to create unions and mutual aid associations in cities and towns across the country – bringing together women of color, immigrants and indigenous women in their fight for fairness.

In the 1930s, Black domestic workers in cities like Chicago, New York, El Paso and Washington, D.C. organized to demand labor standards, including minimum wage and overtime pay, and to combat harassment and exploitation from their employers. Significant numbers of domestic workers in St. Louis joined the Urban League, which brought together workers to build collective bargaining power and improve working conditions. The Urban League’s employment bureau also assisted domestic workers and employers in establishing employment contracts to define expectations for the employment relationship, giving workers access to key protections otherwise not afforded to them under the law.

Domestic workers continued their fight even after the passage of the FLSA excluded them. As the profession of domestic work evolved, a new generation of workers – active in or inspired by the civil rights movement – continued to organize in cities across the country. In 1968, Dorothy Bolden founded the National Domestic Workers Union in Atlanta, helping organize domestic workers on a scale never seen before in the U.S. The union taught domestic workers how to bargain for higher wages, vacation time and other protections and benefits. In the summer of 1971, hundreds of domestic workers from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C. for a national convention of domestic workers. This led to the formation of the Household Technicians of America, the first national domestic worker organization. These workers and their allies, including many middle-class Black women, advocated for change through organizing, storytelling, work stoppages and other strategies.

In 1974, these workers won a critical protection – a landmark amendment to the FLSA that finally expanded the act’s protections to cover most domestic workers.

And while the 1974 amendment represented a major breakthrough for domestic workers, it still excluded domestic workers who perform “companionship services,” which under federal regulations at the time included those who may be considered home aides. In 2013, the Department of Labor issued new regulations that resulted in nearly two million direct care workers — such as home health aides, personal care aides and certified nursing assistants — receiving the same basic protections already provided to most U.S. workers.

Domestic work is vital to our economy, our homes and our families, but we have much work left to do to ensure domestic workers are treated with the dignity and fairness that every worker deserves. Since the beginning of this administration, the Wage and Hour Division’s national care worker initiative has resulted in more than $45 million in back wages and damages for 30,000 workers. We’re also working across the department to equip workers with the tools to ensure their workplace rights are respected. In November 2023, the department published sample employment agreements to lay out the rights and responsibilities of cleaners, home care workers and nannies working in private homes and their employers.  

Domestic workers have had to fight – and will continue to fight – for better working conditions and equal protections under the law. Today, organizations like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, continue to bring together domestic workers from across the country to ensure that workers and the families they care for have rights and dignity. At the Wage and Hour Division, we remain committed to enforcing these hard-won protections and supporting the workers who support our families every day.

Katherine Eyster is the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division.