California Domestic Workers Coalition

KALW |

Domestic workers are people who work in private homes – like nannies, house cleaners, cooks and caregivers. In California, most are immigrants and women of color.

Not only is this work often undervalued, it’s out of the public eye. The state isn’t coming in to check that basic labor and safety laws are being met. So these kinds of workers are vulnerable to a wide range of abuses.

Maria Elena – Caregiver in San Jose – Domestic Worker
Wendy Reyes / KALW

On the job

It’s Wednesday morning and Maria Elena Ceja is arriving to work in San Jose. For her, going to work means going to someone’s home.

Maria Elena is Gloria and Rogelio’s caregiver. She’s been working with them for a year. She begins each morning the same, gives them their medicine, a protein shake, and makes them coffee. Gloria sits in front of the TV while Rogelio retreats to his lawn chair in the front yard. Maria Elena heads to the kitchen table to pull out a well-worn notebook.

She jots down what time she came in, what she fed Gloria and Rogelia, and any other notes related to her caregiving.

“We have to document things like that at work,” Maria Elena says, “because it may be that people sometimes have dementia. So sometimes they don’t remember what they ate and if they were fed”.

Maria Elena has been doing this work for 14 years, and has taken care of clients with various health needs like memory loss. The work is both strenuous and precarious. She tends to start working with people towards the end of their lives, which often means dealing with death, followed by unemployment. But for her last client, that ended differently.

Maria Elena was taking care of another elderly couple. The woman had Alzheimer’s and could be aggressive. The woman pulled on Maria Elena’s hair once in the shower and strained Maria Elena’s neck. At other times, the woman would start hitting her. This is common with people with dementia. If the patient lived in a skilled nursing facility, Maria Elena could call for back-up or talk to her boss, but in this case, there was no back-up and her boss was the couple’s children.

The harm reached a personal breaking point one day when Maria Elena ran into traffic to retrieve the elderly woman who had wandered out of the home. When Maria Elena suggested they hire a second caregiver to allow for breaks to heal from injuries, the couple’s daughter said no. The daughter said she could keep the job as is or leave. Maria Elena chose her safety and left.

“I preferred it this way,” she says.