Wash Post op ed agrees with the Wages for Housework Campaign!

Please see this Washington Post op ed, Yes. Balancing work and parenting is impossible. Here’s the data, which mentions the Wages for Housework Campaign, links to the Global Women’s Strike and calls for what we have been advocating for decades. A two-parent family chronicled balancing waged work and caregiving work for their children during lockdown and found:

“The [on-duty] parent was interrupted 45 times, an average of 15 times per hour… Numbers like that help illustrate why sustained concentration while working from home is so difficult… Congress should expand the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) to include everyone doing additional care work because of the pandemic and to provide essential workers with financial support for the care of their dependents. Compensating care work directly and equitably, as feminist projects and groups like the Wages for Housework campaign and the National Domestic Workers Alliance have long advocated, would also give caregivers the ability to negotiate with their employers over establishing boundaries between work and home life, while crediting the economic value of caregiving in ways that might transform the post-pandemic economy.”

The article couldn’t be more timely as we mobilize to get support for the Worker Relief and Credit Act (WRCR HR5271). 

It is introduced by Rep Gwen Moore (WI) and Rep Marcia Fudge (OH). The WRCR would redefine workers to include unpaid family caregivers and students. It would make Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) fully refundable and available to more people, getting cash directly into mothers’, other caregivers’, and students’ hands. It would help alleviate poverty, particularly of Black, Indigenous and Latina caregivers, by 30%. 

It reflects in part the global call for a Care Income for People and Planet put forward by the Global Women’s Strike and the Green New Deal for Europe.

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