The National Committee on Household Employment (NCHE) was founded in October of 1928 during a conference organized by Lucy Carner, executive director of the YWCA’s industrial division and former teacher at the Bryn Mawr summer school for women workers. The NCHE is not a part of the YWCA but an organization made up of several groups, including the YWCA.

While the conference in 1928 consisted of mainly housewives’ organizations, Carner made a point to invite one worker representative from the YWCA to their first conference and then more to their other conferences. The NCHE held several conferences throughout the years to advocate for domestic workers and as a result, they experienced resistance from employers a lot of the time. When trying to establish contracts with minimum wages and work hours, employers stated that they wanted the NCHE to understand that the relationship between the employer and employee was a personal one and therefore did not want the NCHE to get “too scientific” when setting standards (Palmer, 117). The NCHE was successful in bringing employers to its meetings and conferences, and in making efforts to listen to and educate them.

The documents from this conference can be found in Box 493 in the SSC. This conference really shows the ways in which the YWCA and NCHE fell short in incorporating the voices of domestic workers in the conference. The conference was intended to discuss domestic workers’ rights, but only one domestic worker was invited to the first conference. The organization ran from 1928 to 1942 and then was recreated later, working to shift its focus from employers to the rights of domestic workers. The goals of the organization were to mediate the relationships with employers and employees through creating contracts. While this was successful, they fell short because they prioritized the voices of the employers.

Sources:

Palmer, Phyllis. Domesticity and Dirt:Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.

Nadasen, Premilla. Household Workers Unite The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015.