Toward Flexible Care and Secure Work in Intimate Labor

Abstract

This chapter highlights the importance of deeply democratic alliances between domestic personal support workers and recipients that negotiate tensions at the intimate level of the labor process. Disabled people have long had support from their own advocacy organizations, like independent living centers (ILCs), on ways to be a fair employer and attain quality services. Yet, despite such support, informality can creep in to individual relationships due to the complexity of labor legislation in this sector and to the lack of enforcement. Alliances between recipient organizations and the labor movement could address these issues in creative ways. If the goal is security with flexibility, workers need critical education about how the locations of disability and age shape people's quest for ongoing input into their services, and they need training and support on how to negotiate this. What kinds of organizing models can engage deeply and continuously with workers and recipients to address tensions in the labor process? Community-based labor organizing provides inspiration.