How Much We Sacrifice for the Community and Why It Is Finally Time the World Knew By Melanie Pablo

I began my journey as a domestic worker in December 2002. Over more than two decades, I have watched the world change around me while continuing to do the same essential work, beginning each morning at seven o'clock, caring for households, and giving of myself in ways that rarely make it into conversations about who keeps society running.

I draw my strength from my family, my faith, and the solidarity I find with fellow domestic workers who understand this life from the inside. On the hardest days, it is the thought of my children's future that lifts me. That connection between the daily sacrifice and the long-term hope is the engine of everything I do.

What I want the world to know is something I feel deeply: I want everyone to understand how much domestic workers sacrifice for the community. Not just what we do, but what it costs us. The distance from family. The years of working in other people's homes while raising our children in our own. The quiet absorption of difficulty because speaking up carries risk. These are the sacrifices that do not appear in any job description but that shape my life every single day.

I am completely hopeful that things will improve. I also see a great deal of respect from those around me, which reflects either my own positive working experience or my belief in human capacity to do better when given the chance. Either way, it speaks to a fundamental generosity of spirit that has sustained me across twenty years of this work.

The right I identify as having hurt domestic workers most is the inability to change employers. Being tied to a single employer without the freedom to leave is not just a professional limitation. It is a safety issue. It is the removal of the most basic protection any worker has: the right to walk away from a situation that harms them.

VODW's campaign for the right to change employer without restrictions speaks directly to what I have identified. When a worker cannot leave without losing her legal status, every relationship with every employer becomes unequal. The worker must absorb what comes. The campaign for this right is a campaign for safety, for dignity, and for the basic conditions of a fair working relationship.

I also believe the right to renew the ODW Visa and the right to settlement must be restored, and I consider all three of these rights life-changing. I spend four hours each week worrying about my job and visa situation, four hours drawn from a week that is already full of hard work and dedication.

I believe workers must speak up. Governments must make laws. The public must raise awareness. The unions and NGOs must act. Everyone has a part in this.

If these rights were restored, I would feel so happy and really thankful. After more than two decades of service, that happiness would be earned. It would also be a signal to every domestic worker coming after me that the years of waiting and working and advocating were not wasted. VODW stands with me in that hope, and in the work of making it real.

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