Women in Harlem begin organizing a Domestic Workers Union connected to the T.U.U.L.’s Food Workers Industrial Union.

‘Conditions and Struggle of Harlem’s Domestic Workers’ by Mary T. Ford from The Harlem Liberator. Vol. 1 No. 22. September 16, 1933.

The Harlem Domestic Workers Union has been organized to meet a vital need. Until now there has been no organization to fight against the intolerable conditions under which the women of this community must earn their living. By far the largest the largest number of Negro women are employed as domestic service in private homes as full time, part time, or day workers. Employers force them to do overtime work without pay, discharge them without notice, withhold their money and obtain their services at ridiculous wages. Employment agencies charge exorbitant fees and many operate as rackets to collect money from the workers without giving them jobs. Even the NRA has neglected domestic workers in its codes. With hundreds of desperate women forced to slave at starvation pay, individuals are helpless to protest against any abuses. Only by organization can they demand reasonable hours and wages.

A meeting of the Harlem Domestic Workers Union was held on Friday, September 8th. An appeal to all domestic workers was formulated stating the aims of the union. The demands are for fifty cents an hour for day’s work, with a minimum wage of $10.50 a week for part time work, and $15 a week for full time. The union also demands a forty-eight hour week and unemployment insurance.

Frances Ellis is the organizer of the union, who was sent as a delegate to the meeting of the Domestic Workers Branch of the Food Workers Industrial Union, reported that the union pledged its support to the Harlem workers. In order to urge the necessity of Negro and white domestic workers to support each other, cases were cited of Negro girls being discharged and their places being given foreign girls at reduced wages.

After the business meeting a discussion was held during which the members described their experience. Some knew of cases where women work for as little as ten cents an hour. Another member told of employers expecting girls to prepare food at all hours of the right. Some said they had been given rotten food for their meals and that employers made them work a half hour or an hour overtime without extra pay, while they were doing day or part time work. One member, employed as house-keeper in a large establishment, described the circular letters sent her by agencies offering to furnish workers at lower wages than those being paid the present employees.

Learn From World-Wide Struggles

In discussing the value of organization one of the members gave an account of the unions of domestic workers in Sweden, whose struggles have obtained fixed hours, minimum wages and unemployment insurance. Another member described a strike in Chicago in which 1600 girls, organizing for the first time in their factory, forced their employer to grant them wage increases and better conditions. The factory owner had deliberately established his shops in the jim-crow section, because he thought he could maintain sweatshop conditions among Negro girls without fear of labor troubles.

The case of a Harlem worker was also described. She had been employed for two years by the same woman but when she was sick and did not come to work for a day she was discharged and the woman refused to give her last week’s pay. When a delegation from the Food Workers’ Industrial Union called upon the “Madam” she said that the girl was dirty, inefficient and that she broke too many dishes. The delegates pointed out that she had, taken a long time, two years, to discover that the girl was unsatisfactory. Then the Union threatened to hold a demonstration outside the woman’s door with her name in large letters on a placard. The woman, terrified for her “respectability”, paid the backs wages immediately.

The Union will hold an Open Air meeting on Thursday, September 14th, at 8:30 P.M. on the corner of 138rd Street and Lenox Avenue with women speakers. All domestic workers and house-wives are urged to attend, to learn more about the Union. The next membership meeting will be held on Friday, September 22nd, at 8:30 in the evening, at 102 E. 103rd St. Apt. 21.

The Liberator was the paper of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, largely edited by Benjamin Davis and begun in 1930. In 1932, its name changed to the Harlem Liberator, an again to the Negro Liberator before its run ended in 1935. The editorial board included William Patterson, James W Ford, Robert Minor, and Harry Haywood. Printed, mostly, every two weeks, The Liberator is an important record not only of radical Black politics in the early 1930s, but the ‘Harlem Renaissance’ as well. The successor to the American Negro Labor Congress, The League of Struggle for Negro Rights was organized by the Communist Party in 1930 with B.D. Amis was the LSNR’s first General Secretary, followed by Harry Haywood. Langston Hughes became its President in 1934. With the end of the Third Period and the beginning of the Popular Front, the League was closed and the CP focused on the National Negro Congress by 1935. The League supported the ‘Self-Determination for the Black Belt’ position of the Communist Party of the period and peaked at around 8000 members, with its strongest centers in Chicago and Harlem. The League was also an affiliate of the International Workers Order.

PDF of full issue: https://dds.crl.edu/item/57605