New Jersey’s housecleaners, home caretakers and others will be guaranteed a minimum wage and other labor benefits and protections the state historically denied domestic workers, under legislation Gov. Phil Murphy is expected to sign Friday.
New Jersey would become the 11th state with a so-called Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. It passed on Monday, the final day of the 2022-23 legislative session.
New Jersey’s 50,000 domestic workers — including childcare providers, cleaners, and caregivers to seniors and people with disabilities — have previously been excluded from the state’s minimum wage, currently at $15.13, as well as protections under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination. The bill ends those exemptions. It also says employers must provide meal breaks and rest breaks, and require they enter into written contracts to document hours, wages and duties.
“Traditionally domestic workers have been carved out of many different labor benefits, and this bill reverses that,” said Britnee Timberlake, who sponsored the bill as an assemblywoman in the last legislative session. She became a state senator at the start of the 2024-25 session this week. “This is a workforce that has traditionally been unseen and unspoken for.”
She added that the state Legislature “practically provided unionized rights for the entire sector” with its bill.
For Timberlake, the granddaughter of a domestic worker, the legislation was personal.
Timberlake said her grandmother, Mary L. Whitley, grew up as a Black sharecropper in Durham, N.C. During the Great Migration, Whitley came north to Harlem seeking a better life. She lined up jobs and opportunities and then sent for her brothers and sisters to come to New York.
“She was the matriarch of so much, and the architect of our family success,” Timberlake said.
Whitley cleaned homes and worked as a baby nurse. She became sought-after because of her specialization in helping women postpartum after they gave birth, Timberlake…
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