In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers | 
pickAmazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing. This is the culmination of years of investigative journalism done during 2012-15. It documents the widespread problem of sexual abuse experienced by immigrant laborers. It covers the janitorial, agricultural, and domestic care industries, and discusses the roles federal govt orgs, states, nonprofits, and unions play in tackling rampant sexual abuse & exploitation of female immigrant workers. V heavy read.
As to why domestic workers & farm workers were excluded from labor laws created in the 1930s. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 "gave workers the right to form unions and to bargain collectively for improved working conditions". The Federal Labor Standards Act of 1938 "established requirements for minimum wage and overtime".
Low-income occupations that black folks primarily worked during that time were purposely excluded from these laws.
I've gotten through two chapters and I think I gotta stop for the day. This farm worker chapter really fucked me up.
Compared to the plight of the janitorial workers where they are invisible and nobody pays attention to their experience, farm worker sexual abuse is getting attention. Women are filing complaints with the EEOC. Now tho, they're getting put thru the wringer of the court system. Dozens of women in lawsuits, not a single one believed.
(on chapter about farm worker sexual abuse) so employers can avoid being liable for sexual harassment if they say it was "unreasonable" for the victim(s) to not file complaints. Even tho so many farm workers are threatened with more harassment, extra work, lower pay, and loss of employment if they dare report their experiences. Or if the abuse wasn't bad enough or didn't happen enough times.
?????????????
It's a common theme across various industries which hire low-income immigrants that women are so unlikely to report sexual abuse because of fear of retaliation. For farm workers there is an additional layer because families often work together and so many farms offer housing, which provides another opportunity to threaten women into not speaking out. (this reason in addition to not knowing their rights & the shame of being raped)
Chapter 1 (Finding the Most Invisible Cases) discusses sexual abuse that janitorial workers face, while chapter 2 (The Open Secret) discusses the sexual abuse farm workers face. It's wild how different the circumstances are: labor abuse in janitorial work is basically invisible--never discussed, never thought about, never looked into--while farm worker abuse has been a growing focus of labor & govt groups, yet rarely is anything done.
Book featured in my last post. A collection of years of investigative journalism about the unique threat of sexual violence immigrant women who work low-income jobs face. Examples of those jobs are farm workers, domestic workers, janitorial workers, etc etc. this book seeks to highlight the extremely high risk of sexual exploitation & violence immigrant women in these positions face. Wildly impt story that must be told in the #MeToo conversation
"Workplace sexual violence is not limited to immigrant women in low-wage jobs, but workers like Ladino thinks that the combination of undocumented immigration status and worries about loosing a job serve as a powerful muzzle. ... 'The biggest factor is fear ... Fear that the threats of deportation and the threats of losing our jobs will be real.'"
Cue highlighted bit which mentions how trump has made it 100000x worse. And this is just the intro.
