{"id":49524,"date":"2017-01-27T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T13:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=49524"},"modified":"2017-01-26T23:42:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T05:42:46","slug":"domestic-worker-gains-her-rights-and-finds-her-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/domestic-worker-gains-her-rights-and-finds-her-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Domestic worker gains her rights and finds her voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cloee Cooper and\u00a0Puja Bhattacharjee<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lucia Wrooman has been cleaning homes in the Chicago area for 14 years. Originally from Mexico City, she came to the United States with her Italian husband and son after they sold their restaurant\u00a0in Acapulco in 2002. After so many years in the house-cleaning industry, Lucia works at seven\u00a0homes a week and makes a competitive salary of between $15-$22 an hour. Yet, like the estimated 35,000 other house-cleaners, care-givers and nannies in Illinois, Lucia was not guaranteed health care, a vacation, protection from sexual harassment or paid time off until this year.<\/p>\n

In November of 2015, Lucia began campaigning for her rights, including taking unpaid days off of work to go to Springfield. 67 percent of live-in workers are paid below the state minimum wage, and the median hourly wage of these workers is $6.15, according to The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work<\/a>, the first national survey on domestic workers.<\/p>\n