Asserting Their Dignity: The Detroit Household Workers Organization as a Model of Social Movement Unionism

In 1969, Mary Upshaw McClendon founded the Detroit Household Workers Organization (HWO). While scholars have written about the national domestic workers' movement, they have largely neglected local organizations like the HWO, especially before the twenty-first century. Using local newspapers and collections from the Walter P. Reuther Library, my paper uncovers how the HWO fought for its constituency—domestic workers—from 1969-1976. The particulars of the HWO's struggle, and domestic workers' exclusion from labor law, set it apart from mainstream labor unions and aligned it with social movement unionism. Ultimately, this paper addresses a gap in the historiography of postwar social movements and especially the labor movement. It also offers lessons for how today's precarious workers can develop their own social movement unionism.