For seven years, Teresa served a Manhattan family as a nanny, a role that eventually became the worst job of her life.
While she helped raise the family’s children, her employers kept meticulous logbooks of her hours—a habit that inadvertently provided the evidence she needed to confront them for years of wage theft.
Teresa is one of thousands of domestic workers across the United States currently testing whether landmark labor protections can actually provide security in the shadows of private homes. While cities and states from New York to Philadelphia have codified rights for nannies and house cleaners, the reality of enforcement remains a daunting, often dangerous, uphill battle.
When Teresa moved to New York in 2003, she began a career in childcare and housecleaning that allowed her to put her own children through private school. But in her most recent position, she faced a stifling environment where she was forbidden from speaking to other nannies at the playground.
She eventually learned from the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) that she held incontestable rights regardless of her immigration status. Realizing her employers were withholding wages, she secretly copied their own logbooks before leaving, providing the documentation necessary to fight back.
The Illusion of Legal Protection
In 2010, New York passed the country’s first Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, a move designed to extend protections like overtime pay and harassment safeguards to the state’s roughly 328,000 domestic workers. Yet, for years, the number of formal complaints filed remained remarkably low.
Marrisa Senteno, director of the NDWA’s New York chapter, said that a law on the books is not a magic wand. Because enforcement is complaint-driven, workers isolated behind closed doors often lack the knowledge or the agency to trigger an investigation.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that domestic workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, leaving them without the federally protected right to unionize. Without shop stewards or formal grievance procedures, organizers have had to redefine the workplace to include parks, libraries, and laundromats. By training workers as enforcement fellows, the NDWA aims to bridge the gap between statutory rights and actual compliance.
Marrisa Senteno, director of the NDWA’s New York chapter, said that a law on the books is not a magic wand. Because enforcement is complaint-driven, workers isolated behind closed doors often lack the knowledge or the agency to trigger an investigation.
Retaliation Silences Immigrant Worker Communities
The stakes for speaking out are high, particularly for immigrant workers. Nicole Kligerman, founder of the Pennsylvania chapter of the NDWA, has observed that a single act of reprisal against a worker can silence an entire community.
This fear has only intensified following the surge in federal immigration enforcement and the fiscal year 2027 budget debates in Washington, D.C., where funding for legal aid programs faced major cuts before being restored by the D.C. Council.
In Philadelphia, the 2025 POWER Act increases enforcement. The law allows the city to open investigations without waiting for a formal complaint, imposes meaningful fines, and establishes a “Bad Actors” database to track repeat violators.
Nicole Kligerman, founder of the Pennsylvania chapter of the NDWA, observed that a single act of reprisal against a worker can silence an entire community. “That happens to one person, and everybody knows about it immediately,” Nicole Kligerman, founder of the Pennsylvania chapter of the NDWA, said, adding that when investigations stall, it creates a real chilling effect.
Southern Progress Remains Slow for Regional Equity
Progress in the American South remains significantly slower. In Virginia, domestic workers still lack most overtime protections. Although Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed Senate Bill 28 into law this year, the protections are not set to take effect until July 2028, and they remain contingent on reenactment by the 2027 legislature.
For workers represented by groups like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the struggle involves both passing legislation and addressing the systemic challenges of applying labor laws to the private home.
For Teresa, the legal battle continues. After her former employer’s lawyer went silent on a settlement, she was forced to move her case into the courtroom. She remains determined, however, to prove that even the most vulnerable worker can hold wealthy households accountable.
“It occurred to me to grab the books without permission, knowing that they trusted me,” Teresa said. “I took them home, took copies for the years I was there, 2017 until 2024.”
