Mirna Arana received the good news six years ago: she was pregnant and excited to bring a child into the world. But Arana, a housekeeper from San Francisco, was also afraid to tell her employer at a local cleaning company about the pregnancy. She worked fifteen hours a day, endured constant wage theft and was threatened with dismissal if she raised concerns about her working conditions.

So one night when she was assigned to lift heavy boxes until 11 p.m., she did as she was told. Later that night, bleeding and in pain, she realized she was losing her baby. The next time Arana became pregnant, she told her employer and, as she had feared the first time, she was fired.

Housekeepers, nannies, home care workers and others who work in private households risk their own health and safety every day. They are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they usually work in isolation behind closed doors.

However, as the law currently stands, their employers have little responsibility to ensure their workplaces are healthy and safe. Due to an exception in the California Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973, employers of domestic workers are exempt from complying with standards that apply to other employees.

Domestic workers take on this injustice. Arana and other members of the California Domestic Workers Coalition are lobbying for both a federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which would strengthen health and safety protections for domestic workers nationwide, and for legislation to remove the domestic worker exception from the California OSHA standards so that state regulations can be extended to this workforce. The latter measure, Senate Bill 686, was passed by the Legislature this month and is awaiting an administration decision. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom vetoed similar legislation in 2020 because, from a regulatory perspective, private residences cannot be treated in exactly the same way as a traditional workplace or workplace. In response, under legislation passed the following year, domestic worker representatives and other concerned interests spent a year developing policy guidelines and recommendations that provide a roadmap for regulating these workplaces. That should allay the governor’s concerns and allow him to correct this unlawful exclusion from state protection.

About 1 in 50 workers in California are domestic workers. If they all decided to stay home tomorrow, workers across the state in every other sector would struggle to find someone to care for their toddlers or help their elderly parents. The ripple effect would affect everyone.

Even during the pandemic, as many of us transitioned to remote work, domestic workers did not have this option. Many continued to work in person during the pandemic, including home health care workers who provided their clients’ only lifeline to the outside world, and nannies who made working from home possible for other workers with children home from school.

Domestic workers were and are frontline workers. That’s another reason to ensure their safety, security and ability to get us through the next crisis.

California is often a leader in worker rights and fairness, and we cannot afford to lag behind in protecting domestic workers and everyone who depends on them.

Ai-jen Poo is the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.