Roxana Sanchez slipped and fell on fresh moped floors while at work. She went home with bruises. She scrubbed away feces and blood.

She has two bulging discs in her back, arthritis in her wrist and chronic neck pain, problems she attributes to working long hours cleaning houses for more than a decade.

Domestic workers like Sanchez, a 43-year-old

immigrants from Mexico living in Los Angeles are excluded from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration protections that other workers across the country benefit from.

The California Legislature voted Thursday to make the state the first in the nation to include housekeepers, nannies and other domestic workers in laws requiring health and safety protections.

The fate of the bill now rests in the hands of the governor. Gavin Newsom, who previously vetoed a similar proposal, said that while domestic workers “deserve protections to ensure their workplaces are safe and healthy,” private households cannot be regulated by the state in the same way as businesses.

The pressure

to sign the bill

is on

more than ever before for the Democratic governor, who paid $288,000 in wages to domestic workers in 2019

,

according to his publicly released tax records.

Workers across the state are on strike, demanding better wages and benefits, and influential unions are holding up the law’s exclusion of a workforce dominated by women of color as an emblem of California’s yawning economic inequality.

‘We want to be recognized just like everyone else. We need health and safety

,

too,” Sanchez said as he marched alongside hundreds of workers with brooms and dusters outside the Capitol in Sacramento.

end of August

. “Our families need us to stay safe.”

The bill, SB 686, would remove a 50-year-old exclusion of domestic workers from California Division of Occupational Safety and Health rules, requiring anyone who hires domestic workers to comply with employer laws regarding injury prevention beginning in 2025.

A 2020 report from the UCLA Labor and Occupational Safety and Health Program found that 85% of domestic workers surveyed had suffered musculoskeletal injuries, and that many injuries common in the workplace could be avoided with legal protections such as

using the right equipment, such as

Long handled tools to limit bending and reaching.

“For too long, the workers, the women we entrust to care for our loved ones and our homes, have been marginalized and dehumanized by the deliberate exclusion of our workplace health and safety laws.”

State Senator Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles)

author of

SB 686,

said on the Senate floor Thursday evening.

In his 2020 veto, Newsom cited significant liability and privacy concerns for 11 million homeowners and renters who would be subject to a slew of new employer rules regardless of their expertise in workplace safety.

The governor called that proposal “unworkable” but pledged to continue conversations with domestic worker representatives, and in 2021 signed legislation requiring Cal/OSHA to convene an advisory committee to develop recommendations for in-home settings.

“New laws in this area must recognize that the places where people live cannot be treated from a regulatory perspective in exactly the same way as a traditional place of work or workplace,” Newsom said in his 2020 veto message.

The 2021 legislation resulted in voluntary industry guidelines to prevent “slips and trips”; injuries from lifting heavy objects and allergic reactions and occupational asthma from chemicals in cleaning products.

Recommendations include using cleaning products with less harsh chemicals, providing personal protective equipment to household workers and providing fans to increase air circulation.

The committee, which included employers, employees, advocates and health and safety experts, recommended an end to the Cal/OSHA exclusion.

“Once someone hires someone to do a job in their home, the home becomes a workplace and the employer has a responsibility to ensure it is a safe place to work,” the report said.

Now, after years of negotiations, Durazo is demanding Newsom make these workplace recommendations mandatory into law.

Durazo said Newsom’s concerns have been resolved, pointing to a change that would allow the state to take a “more informal approach” by contacting home employers by phone and mail as an “initial warning” to address privacy concerns about intrusive enforcement. prevent.

“Governor Newsom has a choice,” Durazo said at a news conference

last month

. “He told us what the issues were for him, we came back and introduced a new bill. Now it’s time to get on the right side of history. Enough is enough.”

A spokesperson for Newsom’s office declined to answer questions about the governor’s position on the current bill, pointing to $35 million in the state budget for “education and outreach” to domestic workers.

The bill has a long list of supporters, including SEIU California, the California Immigrant Policy Center and the Legislative Women’s Caucus, and no official opposition. If adopted, the policy is expected to cost the state about $42 million annually.

Newsom’s Treasury Department opposes the bill, citing “significant state costs” and echoing the governor’s concerns about enforcing domestic regulations even with the advisory committee’s more limited proposal.

California faces a $31.5 billion budget deficit, and Newsom has already warned of impending vetoes over cost concerns.

Domestic workers have been excluded from federal workplace protections since the 1970s. Supporters of SB 686 say exclusion reflects racist and sexist policies dating back to slavery that devalue domestic work.

According to the UCLA Labor Center, nearly 90% of California domestic workers are Latina and 84% were born outside the US. The average wage for domestic workers in California is $10.79 per hour, as many are classified as independent contractors and do not qualify for the state minimum wage of $15.50, the center said.

“Too often, we women of color have been compromised, treated as disposable. The damage to our bodies, the pain of injuries, the trauma of abuse, is treated as trivial,” said Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California. “Our work has been invisible. Our struggle has been invisible to some, to those who blindly live in a bubble of privilege.”

Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, pointed to examples of domestic workers in California reporting for duty during dangerous wildfires and the worst of the pandemic, while other workers did not. Housekeepers also face high rates of sexual harassment.

“Governor Newsom’s legacy depends on bills like this, which endanger California’s path,” Poo said. “Will the state lead to fair working conditions, especially for marginalized women of color, or perpetuate harmful inequities?”