Initially created as a support organization for the surviving workers from Windows on the World, a large restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, following 9/11, the ROC has become a sort of laboratory of approaches to restaurant worker justice. It has spun off a cooperative restaurant, Colors, as well as other initiatives to bring forward the struggles of workers in the large, mostly non-union food sector of NYC. There are approximately 300,000 foodservice workers in the "Greater New York" megacity, with perhaps 10-20 thousand of them unionized. ROC-NY has also generated interest in foodservice worker justice in other cities, spawning CHI-ROC (Chicago) and others.Domestic Workers United (DWU) @ http://www.domesticworkersunited.org/
DWU describes itself this way: "Founded in 2000, Domestic Workers United [DWU] is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in New York, organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build a movement to end exploitation and oppression for all."As such, it represents another form of worker center, for another largely-unorganized sector of the economy, one with problems perhaps more severe than foodservice workers. Given the isolation of domestic workers, abuse (physical and sexual) and virtual slavery are not uncommon conditions. DWU is thus important as both advocate and support group.
Recently, DWU was able to pass through the NY legislature the first US law protecting domestic workers- who are excluded from the important labor-rights laws of the 1930s, the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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