NY Times: For Nannies, Hope for Workplace Protection

By: Russ Buettner

In a city of secret economies, few are as vital to the life of New York as the business of nannies, the legions of women who emancipate high-powered professionals and less glamorous working parents from the duties of daily child care.

Those nannies, as well as other domestic workers who make possible the lives of New York’s eternally striving work force, have long gone without basic workplace guarantees that most employees take for granted.

That appears likely to change soon.

The State Senate this week passed a bill that would require paid holidays, sick days and vacation days for domestic workers, along with overtime wages. It would require 14 days’ notice, or termination pay, before firing a domestic worker.

The Assembly passed a similar measure last year, and lawmakers expect that the two versions will be reconciled and that Gov. David A. Paterson will sign what they say would be the nation’s first such protections for domestic workers. It would affect an estimated 200,000 workers in the metropolitan area: citizens, legal immigrants and those here illegally as well...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/nyregion/03nanny.html?src=mv&pagewanted=print