Speaking Out and Acting Together

This response to “When the Workplace is a Home: A Dialogue on the Complexities of Power, Care, and Human Rights for Domestic Workers” examines worker responses to the care crisis as exacerbated by the pandemic. We draw upon transcripts of 2023 focus groups of cleaners, nannies, and home attendants to probe the meaning of regulation and rights. Worker organizations, we argue, provide a framework and a space for those laboring in home workplaces to end their isolation, speak out, and support each other. Their voices are necessary, but shifts in understandings of the home as a workplace must also occur.