Register now for the online event:

Truth Commission: Poverty in all its forms is violence:
Caregivers victimized by poverty speak out!

Thursday March 18 from 7-8:30pm (US Eastern Time).   Convened by National Welfare Rights Union (NWRU). Testifiers include Global Women’s Strike Benefits Working Group members.

Registration link:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/truth-commission-poverty-in-all-its-forms-is-violence-caregivers-victimized-by-poverty-speak-out

Please see this Washington Post op ed, Yes. Balancing work and parenting is impossible. Here’s the data, which mentions the Wages for Housework Campaign, links to the Global Women’s Strike and calls for what we have been advocating for decades. A two-parent family chronicled balancing waged work and caregiving work for their children during lockdown and found:

“The [on-duty] parent was interrupted 45 times, an average of 15 times per hour… Numbers like that help illustrate why sustained concentration while working from home is so difficult… Congress should expand the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) to include everyone doing additional care work because of the pandemic and to provide essential workers with financial support for the care of their dependents. Compensating care work directly and equitably, as feminist projects and groups like the Wages for Housework campaign and the National Domestic Workers Alliance have long advocated, would also give caregivers the ability to negotiate with their employers over establishing boundaries between work and home life, while crediting the economic value of caregiving in ways that might transform the post-pandemic economy.”  (see full article below)

The article couldn’t be more timely as we mobilize to get support for the Worker Relief and Credit Act (WRCR HR5271). It is introduced by Rep Gwen Moore (WI) and Rep Marcia Fudge (OH). The WRCR would redefine workers to include unpaid family caregivers and students. It would make Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) fully refundable and available to more people, getting cash directly into mothers’, other caregivers’, and students’ hands. It would help alleviate poverty, particularly of Black, Indigenous and Latina caregivers, by 30%.

It reflects in part the global call for a Care Income for People and Planet put forward by the Global Women’s Strike and the Green New Deal for Europe.

Endorse  Share on Twitter  #Money4Caregivers  #CareIncomeNow

Continue reading →

Click here to endorse the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act

The pandemic demonstrates how caregivers serve as frontline and essential workers, filling the gaps in our health care system. Even before this crisis, around 43.5 million Americans worked as unpaid caregivers to their children, aging parents or adult family members with a disability. The WRCR Act updates the definition of work to recognize the uncompensated care these individuals provide, which is estimated at $500 billion annually. from the Letter to Leadership re. the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act (WRCR HR 5271)

Policymakers are starting to take note of what we’ve always known – that mothers and other unwaged primary caregivers are also essential workers, counted on for everyone’s survival but not paid for this work.

The Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act, WRCR HR5271, introduced by Reps Gwen Moore (WI) & Marcia Fudge (OH), would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to make it fully refundable and available to more people, including mothers and other unwaged primary caregivers, and get cash directly into mothers’ and families hands. It redefines workers to include unpaid family caregivers & students.

For more info and to endorse the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act click here or sign below & email it to us.  Please share on social media:  Facebook  Twitter  #Money4Caregivers  #CareIncomeNow

Highlights of WRCR HR 5271: Continue reading →

Mothers and other unwaged primary caregivers are counted on for everyone’s survival, especially but not only during this pandemic, yet we are never included in relief/stimulus legislation. Instead, we’re disrespected, especially those of us on welfare or other benefits struggling the hardest to survive. Our economic contributions are hidden, so we keep working even when ill, and without financial means we can’t escape domestic violence and face having our children taken away, as poverty is treated as neglect.

But we too are essential workers making a fundamental social contribution to survival, health and the economy – we have earned our right to stimulus money! ● More healthcare is provided by unwaged caregivers than all healthcare institutions worldwide ● $470 billion is the value of unwaged caregiving for adults (not even including care for children) in the US (AARP) ● 34 billion hours per day is how much women & girls spend on caregiving work worldwide ● $143,000 a year is what US moms would earn if we were paid for all the jobs we do, with overtime, according to Salary.com ● Yet, women & children are 73% of the poor in the US ● There is plenty of money: The US has 607 billionaires; the top eight richest billionaires own as much combined wealth as “half the human race”. The US military budget keeps rising and pays for bases all over the world… It’s about time caregivers are prioritized not only in the US but worldwide. This helps ensure health everywhere.

Full list of demands here • Take Action: Tweet at Congress & share on social media • Sign & Share our Petition • Sign up for action alert texts here