While in Los Ange­les, Calif., I sat down with María, whose name has been changed to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty, in light of recent immi­gra­tion attacks and the many reprisals work­ers face for speak­ing out.

While peo­ple have made and cleaned homes for tens of thou­sands of years using nat­ur­al cleansers and dis­in­fec­tants — from vine­gar and cit­rus fruit peels to rose­mary and thyme — the pro­duc­tion of syn­thet­ic chem­i­cals sky­rock­et­ed after World War II. Of the at least 80,000 chem­i­cals on the mar­ket in the Unit­ed States today, tens of thou­sands have nev­er been test­ed by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. Stud­ies show that our bod­ies — includ­ing our breast­milk — are awash in these chem­i­cals, lead­ing to a host of health issues like asth­ma and can­cer. Now, women like María are fight­ing back.

Like many of the women who mop floors and scrub toi­lets in oth­er people’s homes, when María first start­ed clean­ing, she devel­oped a nasty rash and cough, among oth­er ail­ments. Now she’s one of the lead­ing orga­niz­ers behind an effort to require that the con­sumer clean­ing prod­uct indus­try include ingre­di­ent lists so house­clean­ers can iden­ti­fy health risks.

Now this scrap­py but increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial coali­tion of most­ly first-gen­er­a­tion Lati­na and Fil­ip­ina immi­grant women is tak­ing on the pow­er­ful con­sumer clean­ing prod­uct indus­try that is poi­son­ing their bod­ies, chil­dren, air, water and soil.

In 2016, after more than a decade of intense strug­gle, a statewide coali­tion of domes­tic work­ers won a land­mark Domes­tic Work­er Bill of Rights in Cal­i­for­nia. The leg­is­la­tion estab­lish­es over­time pay for some of the low­est paid and most exploit­ed work­ers in California’s mas­sive economy.

Brooke Ander­son: You’re a leader in the Los Ange­les-based work­ers’ cen­ter, the Insti­tute of Pop­u­lar Edu­ca­tion of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (IDEP­SCA). How did you first get involved in IDEPSCA?

María: I grew up in Hon­duras and lat­er moved here to the Unit­ed States, like every­one who came to work, because there is lit­tle work in our home coun­tries. We came to find a bet­ter future for our kids. Once in Los Ange­les, I came to know IDEPSCA’s work­ers’ cen­ter. I was going there for sev­er­al months but then found work in the gar­ment indus­try. They paid me 3 cents per piece, and I was exposed to a lot of tox­ic prod­ucts. Since it was a real­ly hard and exploita­tive job, lat­er I came back to the IDEP­SCA in search of clean­ing work, and I got involved as a vol­un­teer. I learned a lot about what the com­mu­ni­ty need­ed, includ­ing about tox­ic prod­ucts in our food and the environment.

Brooke: So it was here at IDEP­SCA that you found work as a domes­tic worker?

María: Yes, I found work as a house­hold work­er here in the IDEP­SCA work­er cen­ter. I real­ly don’t like the word ​“domes­tic,” because peo­ple are not domes­ti­cat­ed. Ani­mals are domes­ti­cat­ed, but not peo­ple. So we say that we are ​“house­hold” work­ers. [In Span­ish, ​“domes­tic” is more com­mon­ly used to refer to domes­ti­ca­tion of animals].

Brooke: Peo­ple often think, ​“I clean my own house and it doesn’t seem like that much work.” But, I imag­ine the work is real­ly exhaust­ing. Tell us about the work of a house­hold worker.

María: That is what the employ­ers think — that house­work is not exhaust­ing. But of course it’s exhaust­ing. A house­hold work­er is not only one who cleans, but also includes work­ers who do care­tak­ing and cook­ing in pri­vate homes. House­clean­ers dust, sweep, mop and clean the kitchen and the bath­rooms. Some­times employ­ers ask us to clean the win­dows and the walls, to do the laun­dry and iron, to take care of the pets. But this is all addi­tion­al work, not housecleaning.

Brooke: What chal­lenges or abus­es do house­hold work­ers face on the job?

María: Many house­hold work­ers suf­fer from wage theft and not being paid min­i­mum wage. We did a sur­vey, and some work­ers report­ed wage as low as $2.50 per hour. Some work­ers live in the home where they work as ​“live in” work­ers. These work­ers are some of the most abused, because they are at the beck and call of their employ­er. They work more than eight hours but are not paid over­time. Many work­ers do not file labor claims out of fear that the employ­er will call immi­gra­tion enforcement.

Brooke: It was because of this that you fought for and won the Domes­tic Work­er Bill of Rights. What did you win, and why was that so important?

María: We fought long and hard to win the Bill of Rights. At the time I got involved in 2011, we had 10 points in Assem­bly Bill 889, but it was vetoed by Gov­er­nor Jer­ry Brown. Two years lat­er, it was re-intro­duced to specif­i­cal­ly pro­tect the right to over­time pay. We won that right, and it became law, but it was set to expire in 2017. Then, with SB 1015, after much work and sac­ri­fice, we won a per­ma­nent right to over­time for house­hold work­ers. Now that we have this right, we have to enforce it. Even this is a chal­lenge. Many work­ers don’t know that we won this right, because they are not organized.

Brooke: Now, in the wake of that vic­to­ry, you’ve launched a cam­paign against tox­ic clean­ing products.

María: Yes. The employ­ers have tox­ic prod­ucts and many work­ers have got­ten sick. When I first start­ed work­ing as a house­clean­er, I used a lot of these tox­ic prod­ucts. They’d make my eyes real­ly red. I’d get headaches, aller­gies and be sneez­ing and every­thing. I was scratch­ing at myself all the time. I’d cov­er up with a turtle­neck, because, if not, peo­ple would stare at me. It made me ashamed that peo­ple would think I was sick­ly. I’m a per­son who is gen­er­al­ly real­ly healthy. The doc­tor told me that I was sick from the tox­ins I was absorb­ing from the prod­ucts that I used in cleaning.

The com­pa­nies that make these tox­ic prod­ucts are not oblig­at­ed to say what the ingre­di­ents are or what prob­lems they can cause. If a per­son keeps using these tox­ic chem­i­cals over the long term, they can cause can­cer and hurt your repro­duc­tive sys­tem. Anoth­er con­cern are the younger work­ers who have chil­dren. For exam­ple, if a young moth­er is breast­feed­ing her baby, she could pass par­tic­u­lar tox­i­cs to her child indi­rect­ly as a result of what she has absorbed on the job.

For these rea­sons, IDEP­SCA and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions have been fight­ing for Cal­i­for­nia Sen­ate Bill 258: the Clean­ing Prod­uct Right to Know Act of 2017, which was intro­duced by Sen­a­tor Ricar­do Lara. SB 258 would require com­pa­nies to dis­close on their web­site the tox­ic ingre­di­ents in their clean­ing prod­ucts. Even though this pro­pos­al doesn’t get us all of what we real­ly want in the long term — that they no longer pro­duce tox­ic prod­ucts and that organ­ic prod­ucts are acces­si­ble to the com­mu­ni­ty — we see SB 258 as progress and we are going to keep fight­ing for this law until we win.

Brooke: While you all are fight­ing to pass SB 258 at a statewide lev­el, you are also edu­cat­ing and orga­niz­ing your own com­mu­ni­ty to make the switch to non-tox­ic prod­ucts right now.

María: Yes, we are edu­cat­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. We meet every Wednes­day at IDEP­SCA. We have an Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Com­mit­tee where work­ers learn more about tox­ic prod­ucts, and we talk about envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice for Lati­na com­mu­ni­ties in Los Ange­les. We are all women. We also go to health fairs where we demon­strate how to make health­i­er prod­ucts that the work­ers can take home with them. The Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Com­mit­tee also orga­nizes the com­mu­ni­ty to speak with their rep­re­sen­ta­tives about the impor­tance of SB 258.

Brooke: How do you make low-cost, non-tox­ic clean­ing prod­ucts? Could you share with us one of the recipes that you teach in the workshops?

María: Of course. Peo­ple say that the tox­ic prod­ucts clean bet­ter than nat­ur­al ones, but it is not true. You can make your own prod­ucts like we do here in the Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Com­mit­tee. The ingre­di­ents to make a mul­ti-use paste are: 1 cup of bak­ing soda, 1⁄ 4 cup of liq­uid Castille soap, 2 table­spoons of veg­etable glyc­eri, and 5 or more drops of essen­tial oil (for exam­ple tea tree oil, rose­mary or laven­der). Mix the ingre­di­ents, store them in a sealed glass jar and use the mix­ture with­in two years. For excep­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult jobs, spray vine­gar first. Let it sit and then con­tin­ue scrubbing.

Brooke: Here at the IDEP­SCA office, you have a ​“Tree of Jus­tice” in which you’ve writ­ten all the things you’re fight­ing for beyond just health­i­er clean­ing prod­ucts. What are some of those things?

María: We want clean water, clean air to breathe, healthy chil­dren, acces­si­ble edu­ca­tion, phys­i­cal and men­tal health for all and respect for all liv­ing things. With healthy and unit­ed fam­i­lies, we can do some­thing dif­fer­ent for the environment.

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