Alexsis Rodgers: Senate Democrats Embrace Jim Crow
IN THE NEWS: The General Assembly passed legislation allowing parents to opt their children out of following local mask mandates during a pandemic. What consequences might this pyrrhic victory have for Virginia residents? The General Assembly is debating equity licenses for marijuana retailers. What terms might they agree to in a compromise to expedite legal cannabis? Finally, the Governor wants to double the standard tax deduction and Democrats prefer a modest increase that preserves the state's fiscal options. What are the risks to the Senate putting a compromise bill on Youngkin's desk?
INTERVIEW: Alexsis Rodgers is the State Director of Care in Action and a former candidate for Mayor of Richmond. She's opposing an effort, supported by most Senate Democrats, to write Jim Crow language back into the Code of Virginia and strip farm workers and domestic workers of overtime protections.
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Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Thomas Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, the podcast that takes you inside Virginia politics.
Thomas Bowman
Later, we'll explain how Senate Democrats are adding Jim Crow racism to the Virginia Code, stripping farm workers and domestic workers of the ability to seek overtime pay. We're gonna be joined by Virginia State Director for Care in Action, Alexsis Rodgers. Michael, do you have any thoughts on how that conversation with Alexsis went?
Michael Pope
Well, it's a fascinating segment, you're really gonna want to listen to it. You know, it's really interesting how Senate Democrats are willing to graft Jim Crow racism into the Virginia Code. I mean, it's like it's kind of mind blowing, really, if you think about it. And when I say Senate Democrats, I mean, the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats, there were only eight, "No," votes on this. So it's really interesting segment, you're definitely going to want to stick around and hear it in the second half of the show. All right. Well, this is the point of the show where we thank our new Patreons. Now, we could not do the show without the support of listeners like you. So thank you to our newest Patreon, Victor McKenzie and Gonzi Aida, Gonzi was a former guest on the show. Now they have access to our exclusive content, like our interview with Ethan Lynne. That's the teenager who was trolled on Twitter by Team Youngkin. Now, if you have not heard that interview yet, you should totally check it out. And here's a clip.
Ethan Lynne
I would love an apology. I think that it's what's right, and know my parents would both like an apology, too, but yeah, I would love to hear from the Governor. I pretty much accepted that it's not going to happen, which is his legacy. I mean, if he wants to go around with that, that's fine. I'm gonna move on. I mean, they'll still be, I'll still be thinking about, you know, "Wow, I never got an apology for that." But that's, that's gonna be his legacy.
Michael Pope
So he never got an apology, Thomas. And you know, the part of that interview that I thought was the most interesting, was the fact that they seem to either have that photo of him and Northam ready to go, or it didn't take them long to find it, and put it with the Blackface photo. Also, like the Blackface photo should be used in a very rarefied context. You know, it's like, it's almost pulling out like the ace card, like they played their ace card too soon, in a way, right? Like, why would they play the Blackface card on a high school student who said something they didn't like on Twitter? Just everything about that just seems so strange.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. What's interesting is there's been an increase of right wing troll activity on Twitter, especially as Russia is poised to invade Ukraine. And one of the tactics they've adopted is to, as soon as anybody who they think is a liberal, says something on Twitter that they don't like, they, especially about Youngkin, they'll post this, supposed, picture of Ralph Northam in Blackface, or a Klan robe, and say something like, "You voted for this guy," or whatever. And this is becoming very common, especially over the last month, as their go to, dish it out insult, without addressing any grievance brought up.
Michael Pope
You raise a good point. I've seen lots of troll Twitter accounts use this Blackface photo, like multiple times a day, every day. So you're right, actually, it's very prevalent on Twitter, the use of this photo. The part that is striking, is that it was the Team Youngkin Twitter account that used the Blackface photo.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, incredibly disappointing and inappropriate. And it indicates that they did some work. Somebody had to compile all of the images into one, and somebody had to dig through this high school students Twitter account to go all the way back and find a picture of him with Ralph Northam from over the summer. And it's incredibly disingenuous to say, "I didn't know," when, "high school student," was on his Twitter bio.
Michael Pope
Yeah, they clearly knew, there's there's no doubt about that. But anyway, you should totally check out the interview. All right, let's get to the news. Mask mandates in Virginia schools are about to be a thing of the past. The General Assembly passed a bill ending mask mandates this summer, and then Governor Glenn Youngkin slapped an emergency clause onto that bill, making it effective as of March 1 of this year. Now, that's only a few days from now. Most Democrats voted against the bill, although, two renegade Democrat senators crossed party lines to make it happen. Senator Chap Peterson of Fairfax City and Senator Joe Morrissey of Richmond. Now, Peterson was actually the driving force behind ending the mask mandates.
Chap Peterson
I would like this to take effect yesterday, but that's not going to happen. And I do believe that we're going to need a transition time for some of our Northern Virginia School Districts and probably elsewhere in the state.
Michael Pope
Now the House had a bit of a debate about the power of the Governor to enact an emergency clause with a simple majority, although Democrats lost that fight. Delegate Marcus Simon says the Governor's emergency clause is a mistake.
Marcus Simon
These amendments don't make this bill better, they make it worse. They make it more difficult to comply with, this has been a rush to get the Governor a much needed political win. This is bad policy, poorly executed, in violation of the Constitution of Virginia.
Michael Pope
Now Simon is right. This is a political win for Youngkin. There's no two ways about it. He campaigned on it, and now he's making it happen. So I mean, lots of Democrats might not like that. But this is actually a pretty huge victory for Youngkin very early in his administration.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, except it's going to be a Pyrrhic victory. The reason for that is that the kids will get sick, and the parents will blame the policymakers who made it so that kids with problem parents can send their kids to school without a mask.
Michael Pope
Well, you said the kids will get sick, but I mean, isn't the data showing that we're kind of coming out of this anyway? I mean, like the- I think the timing of all of this is interesting, because I think we may be on the verge of having all this debate being a moot point anyway, right?
Thomas Bowman
No, actually not at all. So this is- you're getting at, actually, what the central policy mistake throughout all of COVID has been, which is to react, and have a stairstep of policy implementations based off the raw numbers of COVID transmission. What the proper policy would have been, had we started this in 2020, the policy response is you need to do everything, and only lead up when the threat is gone. And so this on again, off again, culture with the masks, here's a problem. One, this is not going to be the last pandemic in history, even if COVID disappeared tomorrow. The other problem with this is that COVID is going to circulate, you only have about 30 days immunity, or so, from an Omicron infection, even when you're vaccinated. So there's a couple considerations is that we can expect COVID to continue breathing back and forth through the country. And you'll see it like coming in waves, as the middle of the country is being infected, and it radiates out into the urban areas again, where you'll see all the rates start to spike, and then it will decrease in the urban areas, and go back to the middle of the country over the period of about 30 to 60 days for the full cycle. So that's where we are right now. And so it is a complete mistake to look at these numbers and think we're finished, or we're even near finished this. We are going to be dealing with this ad nauseum, until we get COVID licked, or until there's a universal COVID vaccine. And so there's absolutely no reason, whatsoever, to put human beings in a congregate setting. The other consideration is long COVID. So if you get COVID, you have up to a 30% chance of developing long COVID. But what we're discovering. is that even vaccinated people with mild symptoms, or none at all, exhibit some signs of long COVID, including organ damage and brain fog, and also diabetes. Childhood diabetes, type one, is on the rise, because of COVID. And so, the long term effects of organ damage, exposing all of these people to this, it's going to be more like the side effects of smoking, how they develop over 10 or 20 years, and this disease will shave years of life off of people. And we haven't really come to understand that yet, as a society.
Michael Pope
I want to touch on something you mentioned, which is this is not the last pandemic, we're going to be in a situation soon enough, where there's another pandemic, and the Virginia Code is going to tell your local school board, "You do not have the authority to have a masked mandate." Like I think that's the result of what has transpired last week.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. And actually it could come sooner than you realize. So I'm about to go to like the full blown, worst case scenario here for COVID. But Omicron, actually, we know that it mutated within an AIDS patient in Africa. And within Omicron's genetic mutations, include mutations found within AIDS that are immunosuppressive in character. And so what we don't know is whether that means anything in Omicron. But what we do know is that COVID is able to recombine with HIV. And if you could imagine for a minute, an airborne transmission for HIV, that would be a disaster scenario. And it's possible it's technically possible, highly unlikely, technically possible.
Michael Pope
Well, on that note, I want to do nothing other than change the subject. Alright, so let's talk about something else. Who will get first dibs on getting a valuable license to sell marijuana? Lawmakers are debating that, and the Senate passed a bill that has social equity licenses, these would be preferential categories of people who get the licenses first, and there are five of them. People convicted of marijuana misdemeanors, family members of people convicted of marijuana misdemeanors, jurisdictions that have been disproportionately policed in the racist War on Drugs, economically distressed areas, and HBCU grads. Is that five? Did I count that right? 1,2,3,4,5…
Thomas Bowman
We're not numbers guys.
Michael Pope
Delegate Paul Krizek is a Democrat from Fairfax County, who says he is hopeful that House Republicans will see the utility of social equity licenses.
Paul Krizek
I don't think Republicans necessarily hate the idea of equity licenses, they hate the word. Maybe they hate the word, "equity." I mean, it seems like it's a kind of verboten word these days. But it's they want to do the same thing as we want to do. And that is to right the wrongs of the past, and to make and to and to find a way to help those people who have been victims of the War on Drugs.
Michael Pope
The Republican Delegate Michael Webert of Fauquier County says he actually likes the idea of giving preference to economically distressed areas, which, again, is already in the Senate bill. So he likes that part of the Senate bill. And he says he would add something to that, which is preference for women or minority owned businesses, sometimes people call that "SWAM," or the acronym "SWAM." So he likes the economically distressed stuff, and he would add the SWAM. But he disagrees with the idea of giving preference to people who live in areas that have been disproportionately policed.
Michael Webert
You don't have to go looking into the census data to find who has been targeted the most for policing, etc, because it depends on your definition of targeting and policing, etc. You can have some very wealthy areas that have been hit hard by like, say, a cocaine bust.
Michael Pope
Now, Republicans might resist the idea of social equity licenses, and as you heard from Delegate Krizek, they don't particularly like the word, "equity," either. But they do have an incentive to get something done because many Republicans say the status quo is just unacceptable, because the only way for people to get this legal product, is, currently, the black market, and nobody likes that scenario. So Thomas, do you think Democrats are going to be able to strike a deal, or persuade Republicans, that people should have preferential licenses based on living in a jurisdiction that has been disproportionately policed, or among people who have been convicted of marijuana misdemeanors?
Thomas Bowman
This is going to be an issue area where the Black Caucus is going to hold a lot of sway. The Republicans are attacking a provision that was intended to help people they represent. And what's interesting is what Michael Webert is thinking of when he says, "Definition of targeting and policing and wealthy areas targeted by a cocaine bust." I mean, you have to be pretty disingenuous, and bury your head in the sand, to really give that answer back, and think that it's anything other than an exception to the rule. This is about money, right? Rural areas have been growing weed for a very long time, they would like to get paid and legalize this market, and he represents some of those areas. I think that their fear is, with a limited number of licenses available, and social equity, yeah, we could talk about policing, we could also talk about other economically depressed areas, as far as our definition of social equity. The reality is, that this is a debate that will probably not go the Democrats way, unless the Black Caucus can stick together, and prevent this provision from being stripped out of the bill.
Michael Pope
Well, one of the things you hear from Republicans is, that if you give preferential licenses to people who have been convicted of a misdemeanor, then you are benefiting somebody who has done something illegal. I think one of the Republicans had a sort of a quip about, you know, commit a crime, get a license. And so I think that is going to be the real tension, that one and the jurisdictions that have been disproportionately policed, I think they could probably make some sort of agreement on economically distressed areas, and women and minority owned businesses. And I think they could probably cut a deal on all that. But are they ever going to see common ground on preferential licenses to people who have been convicted, family members of people who have been convicted, or jurisdictions that have been disproportionately policed? I don't know the answer to that.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, and I would not be so callous, if I were an elected official, to say something like, if you've done a crime, you can get a license, because this was an unjust law from the very beginning, it was unjust implementation from the very beginning, in its very intention. So it's right up there, with refusing to let some business have a water fountain, because they were in violation of some Jim Crow Law, you know, with separate and segregated fountains, or bathrooms, or anything else. So the fact that they got charged with this, at one point in their life, or were convicted of a misdemeanor at one point in their life, when we no longer recognize it as a crime, should not have any bearing on how we think about this population whatsoever, other than to recognize that we did them as a society, a great injustice and have a responsibility, if they so choose, to let them earn their living legally.
Michael Pope
One more thing I want to talk about before we take our break is the tax policy, the tax break wars here between the House and the Senate. The House has gone full Youngkin in terms of the tax cuts they want. They want to totally eliminate the grocery tax, for example, but the Senate wants to eliminate some of the grocery tax, but then keep the 1% local tax, which would give them like $700 million more to play with. And then on the standard deduction, like the House wants to double the standard deduction. And the Senate says, "Let's maybe study that, and maybe we'll do that in the future, but not this year." And then on the gas tax, the House wants to suspend that increase in the gas tax that Youngkin campaigned on. The Senate has already killed that idea. So clearly, the House and the Senate are in conflict. I think they will probably remain in conflict until there's that sort of Budget Conference Committee. Thomas, what's your sense in the history of these kinds of debates between the House and the Senate? I get the sense the Senate usually has a leg up on this kind of stuff?
Thomas Bowman
Well that's exactly right, Michael. When it comes to questions of the budget, and this is a budget question, Senate Finance holds all of the cards.
Michael Pope
But what about the Governor's amendments? Doesn't he have the power to totally influence the outcome of this thing after it leaves the Capitol Building?
Thomas Bowman
Well, and that's the risk. And so that's why if you're the Senate Democrats, you want to be very careful about what that bill you put on to Glenn Youngkin's desk is, because if you open up that part of the Code, you're opening it up for the for the Governor, which has immense powers in the Commonwealth of Virginia, to line item veto, or amend, certain provisions of that bill. And if, for example, you pass some kind of nerf hybrid policy option, Glenn Youngkin is going to be able to take his pen and write it the exact way he wants it. And then you have to muster the votes to reject the Governor's amendment, which is a majority vote. What's interesting about that, is it depends on which Democrats in the Senate are willing to vote for the bill. All right, Michael, let's take a break because when we get back, we're going to be joined by Alexsis Rodgers of Care in Action. She'll explain why some Senate Democrats want to strip farmworkers and domestic workers of overtime protection. We'll be right back.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Pod Virginia. We're talking about overtime pay for farmworkers and domestic workers.
Thomas Bowman
Last year, Virginia created a state Cause of Action for workers to sue employers who fail to pay overtime. State courts are more generous in terms of compensating people triple damages and state courts, as opposed to double damages in federal courts. And lawmakers did something kind of unexpected. They extended the overtime protection to workers that are often overlooked, in terms of labor law, farm workers and domestic workers.
Michael Pope
Now they say that was all a mistake. They didn't actually mean to help farm workers or domestic workers. It was essentially a clerical error. And now they want to fix it and the fix is stripping these workers of the right to sue for overtime.
Thomas Bowman
Oops, they did it again.
Michael Pope
Here to help us understand this mess is the Virginia State Director for Care in Action, Alexsis Rodgers, thanks for joining us.
Alexsis Rodgers
Hey, y'all. Thanks for having me.
Michael Pope
All right, I want to set the stage here by playing some audio from Senator George Barker. I had the opportunity to talk to him about his bill stripping, farm workers and domestic workers of the right to receive overtime protections. Here's part of that conversation. So this bill, as I understand it, sort of, removes the ability for certain groups to to sue for overtime, farmworkers, airport workers. Don't those people deserve overtime?
George Barker
They certainly do deserve overtime. And actually, we're looking at what we can do to address the airport workers now. And we're also setting up a study committee to try to work out in terms of how we advance from this what this bill has in it.
Michael Pope
But the bill does take away their ability to sue, right?
George Barker
The bill takes us back to where we were before the bill that was presented last year. And that was misrepresented to the Senate. So what was stated as being in the bill, was not what was in the bill. What we're doing is we're trying to promote integrity in the process, and make sure that we do not pass legislation that, you know, in effect, takes us- that is not consistent with how the what the patron represented to the Senate.
Michael Pope
So you heard Barker there say that he hopes to help airport workers. So he ended up amending the bill in the Senate so that airport workers now, in his bill, have the ability to sue for overtime, which is in conflict with the House version that actually airport workers are excluded. That's something that might end up having to be worked out in a secret closed door conference committee. Now, Barker's bill had overwhelming support in the Senate, only eight senators voted against the bill. One of those senators was Jennifer Boysko of Herndon.
Jennifer Boysko
All of the facts were not laid out accurately. And so some people misunderstood what the bill actually had in it. And you know, how quickly bills move through the General Assembly, when we have 1000 bills, sometimes mistakes happen...
Michael Pope
Oops, they accidentally gave overtime to farm workers and airport...?
Jennifer Boysko
I don't even...I can't answer that.
Michael Pope
Why is it important for these people to have overtime?
Jennifer Boysko
Well, there's a livable wage is a thing that I think is important for everybody, and farmworkers, and airport handler, baggage handlers, and domestic workers, do back breaking work.
Michael Pope
Domestic workers do back breaking work. Alexsis Rodgers, do they deserve overtime pay?
Alexsis Rodgers
Absolutely. Especially now during this ongoing pandemic have been working hard to keep people safe and they deserve overtime. They deserve a decent and living wage.
Thomas Bowman
Alexis, when I was a legislative aide, we embarked on a effort to strip the Virginia code of minimum wage exemptions, because what we found is those were all put in during Virginia's brush with Jim Crow. And the Fair Labor Standards Act was written during the era of Jim Crow segregation in the 1930s, when Southern Democrats refuse to create protections for Black workers. So why are Senate Democrats so cavalier about grafting Jim Crow segregation into the Virginia Code in 2022?
Alexsis Rodgers
Well, what I would say is that, you know, we saw Delegate Price, Cia Price, certainly Chairwoman Jeion Ward, when we were in the majority, and even Senator Jennifer McClellan, you know, really make the case for why these racist exemptions needed to be removed. And I think that, you know, we have seen that elections have consequences. We have also seen that, you know, our rights are not guaranteed, they require constant vigilance to be defended. And it is deeply disappointing and frustrating that Senate Democrats would use their, you know, first opportunity to repeal protections for domestic workers, for farm workers, and for other essential workers, who have, historically, been excluded at the federal level, and only recently gained protections here at the state level.
Michael Pope
I want to stay on the racist history of this Jim Crow law that we're talking about, because when Congress was debating this back in the 1930s, during one of the hearings, Texas Congressman Martin Dies, actually said this, quote, "You cannot prescribe the same wages for the Black man as the white man." He actually said that in Congress. Alexsis, is that the logic that Senate Democrats want to use to exclude farm workers and domestic workers from overtime protection?
Alexsis Rodgers
To me, there's absolutely no logic to it. So I can't say what their thinking, or a kind of argument might be at this time. What I know is that Black women, particularly, and immigrant women, right now, are doing some of the hardest work, right, making sure that young people, people with disabilities, elderly folks are cared for. And we know even, you know, decades ago, like you're describing, it was a concession to southern lawmakers to get their support for the Fair Labor Standards Act, that they removed workforces that were historically, predominantly, Black workforces. They needed, white, southern lawmakers support, so they sold Black women out, and we absolutely, in 2022, should not be tolerating that kind of policymaking any longer.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, let's talk about airport workers real quick. The House version excludes airport workers from overtime protection. And why would anybody, Alexsis, want to exclude airport workers?
Alexsis Rodgers
I don't know why anybody would want to exclude any worker. I mean, again, we're not saying that any business needs to do more, we're simply saying that if a person works, 45 hours, an hourly employee works 45 hours or, you know, 50 hours in a week, that an employer, who does not pay for the extra five or 10 hours, should be held accountable. That worker is due their money, run them their check, right? So we're not saying that there's any new requirement for all the businesses who are doing the right thing. We're saying that a worker has a right to get what is owed them when they are done wrong. And so if you are an airport worker, if you are a nurse, if you are a grocery worker, you know, whatever your job is, you deserve the dignity to be paid what you have earned. Right? And that's common sense. I think Democrats should be leading on policies that uplift working families and uplift workers. And it is shameful to see any any Democrat lead the way to carving that out.
Thomas Bowman
Alexsis, will you respond to the framing, and the narrative, that even Democrats are using, that they passed a bill that was misrepresented, and that they don't understand? Is that a credible excuse in your mind? Is that actually what happened, or is this industry lobbyists lying to legislators in order to try to gain an upper hand?
Alexsis Rodgers
You know, I definitely like to think that we have, you know, integrity in our legislative process. I have been advocating for laws at the General Assembly level for, you know, nearly 10 years now. So I have seen a lot, but I maybe haven't seen it all. I would say that where we are at this moment is lawmakers and Democrats, in particular, have a choice to stand with working people or to stand against working people. So regardless of maybe their misunderstandings of the past, or misguidance of the past, today, you know, here in February 2022, Senate Democrats, and all of our elected officials, have a choice to make, to either pass a law that would gut the ability for workers to get the money they're owed, or to stand with workers, protect their rights, and make sure that they can, you know, live with dignity and respect.
Michael Pope
I would amend that to say, now I've seen it all. Never in my history as a journalist, covering local city council meetings, Board of Supervisors, school boards, I cannot remember ever, in my personal experience, ever, seeing any elected official say, "You know what, I didn't know what I was voting on, I was totally mistaken about that vote, and boy, did I screw up like, we need to have another vote to change that." I just, I cannot remember ever seeing that in the General Assembly, or anywhere else. I mean, it just is...the actual narrative of what's going on here is totally unbelievable.
Thomas Bowman
In order to believe that framing, that narrative, you have to believe that all 140 legislators didn't understand what they were voting for, or else it would have gotten brought up. You have to believe that all 140 legislators staff didn't do the right staff work to vet the bill. You have to believe that the Governor's staff, in the Executive Agency, didn't do their due diligence. And I can tell you right now, they analyze, very closely, the implications of every single bill before the General Assembly, it's got nothing to do with the argument that the Patron might make before the committee, because then a lot more good legislation would actually pass. It has everything to do, in my opinion, with a bill that they're trying to sneak through now that the industry thinks that they have the votes to do it. And I mean, I don't buy this, like...I don't believe that every single person involved with the legislative process missed a key provision.
Michael Pope
Can we go back to the posture of the bill for a second here? I'm curious about the distinctions here between the Senate bill that has exclusions for farm workers, and domestic workers, versus the House version, which has farm workers, domestic workers, and airport workers. So there's a there's a critical key distinction right now, between the House version and the Senate version, it's very likely to go into conference committee. Alexsis, is there any possibility of advocates killing this thing in conference committee?
Alexsis Rodgers
Well, I can tell you that Care in Action, and a lot of our, you know, friends in labor, whether it's SCIU, AFLCIO, and others, are going to be working damn hard to fix, if not kill, this bill. Right, because we know that we have seen Senate Democrats stand up for workers this legislative session, freezing the minimum wage was a debate, right? Senate Democrats stopped that. You know, there have been attempts to rollback the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights kind of overall, they stopped that, right? So we've seen them stand up for working people this session. And I believe you know, at Care in Action, and SCIU and AFLCIO, all of us want to see Senate Democrats stand up and right this wrong as well, and to realize that they cannot turn their backs on working people. So you know, we know it's gonna be a tough fight. This bill has already taken several votes, both on the House side and the Senate side. But we've been in tough fights before, whether it was passing Medicaid expansion, raising the minimum wage for the first time, or, you know, passing a Virginia Voting Rights Act, right? We've been in tough fights, so we know what it takes to win. And we're going to keep organizing, and knocking on those doors in the General Assembly, or virtually on Zoom, until we can get this thing done.
Michael Pope
So let's talk about domestic workers. This is your area here. So the move to strip domestic workers of overtime protection comes at a time when Virginia is extending new labor protections to these specific workers. Alexsis, what is the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and how does that factor into this discussion that we're having today?
Alexsis Rodgers
So the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is the first piece of legislation in the entire southern United States, that guarantees protections for nannies, cleaners, and homecare workers here in Virginia. There were, historically, a number of explicit and implicit laws on Virginia's books that made it impossible for domestic workers to have basic things like a guaranteed minimum wage, or protections against discrimination on their job, or health and safety protections. And for the first time with the, again, help folks like Delegate Cia Price, Senator Jennifer McClellan, Delegate Kathy Tran, Delegate Wendy Gooditis, over a course of two years, 2020 and 2021, we were able to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and so now, about 60,000 domestic workers across the Commonwealth, have access to just basic workplace rights. It's groundbreaking in the sense that many of these workers work in isolation, right, don't have an HR department to report to, and really are working in the shadows, and finally they are brought into, kind of, the same standard as other workers. And on the other hand, it's not groundbreaking, because it's stuff that you and I, you know, and many other workers, take for granted, right? The dignity of a base wage, the dignity of going to work. And if you're fired because of who you are, having a course of action of how to dispute that. And so it's really meaningful and powerful to other women who take care of us, to have that respect encoded in Virginia law.
Michael Pope
Alexsis, shed a little bit more light here on domestic workers. So you mentioned this a little bit in that last answer, but like, who are these people that we're talking about? What kind of jobs do they do? And sort of how do they fit into the labor force?
Alexsis Rodgers
Domestic workers are the women who are making everything else possible, right? They're cleaning our homes, taking care of our kids, taking care of our loved ones with disabilities, or who are, you know, elderly, and they're providing that direct care in our homes. And it's actually one of the fastest growing workforces, both here in Virginia, and across the country, as people live longer, right, and want to live comfortably in their homes, as, particularly my generation, start having kids, but also need to take care of our parents, or grandparents. There is a greater demand for the care economy, for making sure that these jobs are both well paid, highly professional, quality jobs, and also affordable to you know, the average working person who depends on care. And the workforce overall, is, as many of us know, predominantly women of color, immigrant women, Black women, who are working, you know, very long hours, often, for multiple clients. Sometimes I say domestic workers were like the original gig workers, right? Because domestic workers have often had to manage multiple clients, multiple contracts, multiple unique environments for their work, and they're hard jobs, and they're jobs that, you know, again, historically, have not had protections, or even kind of a fair, a fair setup, right? So many of our domestic workers may speak Spanish as their first language, and that creates a barrier with their employer, and could make it difficult for them to speak up for themselves if they're in a bad environment. So it's really an honor to be in this role, where I'm able to advocate for such hard working women. And you know, everyday I just try to show up and make sure that I'm doing them right.
Thomas Bowman
I had a Russian history professor, my freshman year of college, who quipped that there has never been a good time in the history of Russia to be a peasant. And I think this could apply to Virginia, in that there's never been a time in the history of Virginia, that it's been a good time to be a farm worker. They always get the shaft in Richmond, when...even when Democrats were empowered, they denied farm workers the ability to get a minimum wage. Alexsis, I know you represent domestic workers and not farm workers, but what is up with this?
Alexsis Rodgers
You know, it's it's so frustrating and heartbreaking. And while at Care in Action, we don't directly represent domestic workers, our- one of my colleagues, Jeanette, she brings this to our work every day, because her father is a farm worker, her mother is a domestic worker. And so she is seeing, firsthand, every day, you know, their experiences. And when she sits in committee hearings and hears Democrats or Republicans talk about removing protections for farmworkers, it's heartbreaking, because it's personal. And it is disappointing to think that someone who would be out, you know, in the fields, you know, doing literally back breaking work in the heat, in the cold, in the rain, often without, you know, the proper breaks. And sometimes, again, without the protections of this country because of their citizenship status, it's absolutely wrong, that we would not provide, again, a decent living wage to the hardworking farmworkers, making sure that we have food on our tables. And of course, back to the topic at hand, that they would not be eligible for overtime rates and protections if they're done wrong.
Thomas Bowman
All right, Alexsis Rodgers of Care in Action, thank you so much for helping us understand this debate now playing out in the General Assembly.
Alexsis Rodgers
Thank you. I really appreciate y'all having me.
Michael Pope
Pod Virginia is a production of Jackleg Media. Our producer is Aaryan Balu, our transcriptions are by Emily Cottrell, and our satirical spots are by Steve Artley.
Thomas Bowman
Find us on Facebook or Twitter. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and hey, write a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps people find the show.
Michael Pope
We'll be back next week with another episode of Pod Virginia.
