Wealthy Enclaves in O.C. Hide ‘Household Slaves’ : Domestics: Human Relations Commission chairman decries exploited women’s “parade of misery.”

Martha Perez always rose at 7 a.m. to clean the house, wash the cars and tend to the children of an Orange County couple. Her 12-hour day ended only after the children were bathed and ready for bed.

She says she was paid about $70 a week--until last month when she was sick with a gallbladder infection. Then she was fired.

Perez, 27, is part of a silent underclass of women in Orange County. Deemed the “hidden exploited” by immigrants rights advocates, they clean houses, cook dinners and care for children in return for a paycheck and a place to sleep.

Often, they work for a fraction of the minimum wage and get no health benefits or time off, even to go to the doctor. They rarely complain to authorities because most of the women are illegal immigrants.

Like their brothers, husbands and sons, the women cross the border from Mexico or immigrate from Central America to seek work. But what they sometimes find are abusive employers and no job security.

“We see hundreds of women a month,” said Jean Forbath, chairwoman of the Orange County Human Relations Commission and executive director of the Costa Mesa charity Share Our Selves. “It is a constant parade of misery.”

Every day since she was fired, Perez has gone to the Resource Center in Orange, hoping to find a permanent job. It is across the street from the two-bedroom apartment that she shares with 12 other people.

Sitting in the center’s conference room recently, she quietly recalled how her former boss refused to provide her with meals. Sometimes she would pick through the trash for dinner.

“I never thought I would find myself in that situation,” she said.

But a year after she crossed illegally into the United States, Perez has accepted the fact that her difficult life would probably become worse if she had to leave. Her four children, whom she left with her mother in Mexico, have become dependent on the checks she sends.

“They had a celebration for Mother’s Day and my children didn’t have a mother to take,” she said, starting to cry. “And I am here, loving somebody else’s child.”

Hundreds of women such as Perez pass through the four day-labor centers in Orange Country every year, according to officials who work with them. Their plight is a problem that immigrant rights proponents are just begining to grapple with.

According to figures from the state Employment Development Department, which are based on the 1980 census, about 6,000 domestics work in Orange County. But because many are part of a cash-based “underground economy,” they are impossible to count, said Eleanore Jordan, an EDD labor market analyst.

A specialist with the Human Relations Commission speculates that as many as 90% of the homes in Corona del Mar may use domestics. And the Spanish-language newspapers that circulate in Latino areas of Orange County regularly carry advertisements offering housekeeping jobs.

Carmen Saldana, supervisor of the Resource Center, said she believes that more and more immigrant women who are coming over the border alone. Many are the sole caretakers of their families, abandoned by their husbands who crossed the border before them.

“I think this is a sociological phenomenon that is not talked about,” Saldana said. “Some of these women haven’t heard from their husbands. They come looking for them, then just start working.”

Unlike male day laborers whose presence on city street corners has prompted neighborhood outcries, controversies, new laws and new employment centers, these women are largely unseen, tucked away in wealthy neighborhoods in Newport Beach and elsewhere. Even immigrants’ advocates themselves have a tendency to forget them.

“As a class of workers they are quite often overlooked even by advocates,” Forbath said. “They are very isolated. . . . Their voices are not heard.”

In a special labor-exploitation report compiled in 1989 by the Human Relations Commission, Forbath chronicled some of the women she has seen through her work at the anti-poverty center.

“The saddest cases we’ve seen are these women who have been working, and the employer, no longer wanting her, putting her out on the street with no occupation, no housing, nothing. This happens over and over again.”

The report, which included comments from 20 experts who work with immigrants, concluded: “Exploitation of domestic workers goes relatively unchecked. . . . When these workers are terminated without pay, they are not only unemployed but also left homeless.”

Calling them “household slaves,” Forbath contends employers just don’t value their work, a view shared by Barbara Considine, also of the Human Relations Commission.

“There is a perception that it is not a real job,” Considine said. “Until we overcome that perception, it (abuse) is going to be real hard to crack.”

Adding to the problem is the fact that many workers are here illegally and are afraid to come forward, fearing arrest.

John Brechtel, assistant district director for investigations for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said that although domestics are not a priority, the INS will deport them if they are discovered to be here illegally.

If the women try to apply to the state Labor Commission for a work permit, the first step in the long legal process of becoming a resident, the information may be forwarded to the INS, Brechtel said.

Also, he said, employers who hire illegal domestic workers are subject to the fines allowed under the 1986 Immigration Reform Act.

“We do pursue them to let all employers know that the immigration reform applies to both large and small employers alike.”

Marian, who declined to give her last name because she fears deportation, refused to go to authorities when her employers suddenly moved away without paying her for a week’s work.

The 23-year-old woman had worked for the couple for six months when she returned one day to find the house empty except for her mattress, thrown on the floor.

Miriam was grateful for the $160-a-week job, considered top salary for a domestic. It was much more than the $20-a-week secretarial job she had in Mexico three years earlier.

As a domestic, she worked 14 hours a day, waking around 6 a.m. to make herself breakfast because she wasn’t allowed to eat with the family. They also forbade her to use the front door. And when her English classes interfered with washing the supper dishes, she was not allowed to go anymore.

“The worse thing is they kicked me out like a dog,” she said. Now, she vows: “I am not going to clean houses the rest of my life.”

John B. Carter, a deputy commissioner in Orange County for the state Labor Commission, said his department gets about 100 complaints a year from domestic workers. And when they come forward, it is often hard to prove their cases. In any unpaid wage case, Carter notes, the commission disregards the legal status of the complainant.

“The problem there is establishing the time records,” Carter said. “The lucky ones do have them.”

In cases where evidence exists, a majority end with a judgment against the employer, he said. But many are not even investigated, Carter acknowledged, because his office is understaffed.

Under labor laws, domestics who are not just baby-sitters but housekeepers must be paid at least $4.25 an hour--the state minimum wage--or $170 a week before deductions. Benefits are not required unless they are promised by the employer.

But officials say that employers come up with creative ways of reducing the amount, including deducting the workers’ meals.

Robert J. Cohen, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, said his organization often refers substandard wage complaints to the Labor Commission. But there, he contends, many are ignored.

“Folks have the right to have a matter pursued for them, but the Labor Commission won’t because they are understaffed,” Cohen said. “It is a horrible situation. Folks try to work for a living, they get ripped off, then they have nowhere to go.”

Equally disturbing to advocates is the attitude of some employers who mistreat workers.

Msgr. Jaime Soto, vicar for the Latino community for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, said employers often rationalize the low pay because they bring the women into their homes.

“The giveaway line is, ‘She is a member of the family; that is why I pay her less,’ ” Soto said.

But the “family” feeling usually dissolves if the domestic becomes ill and asks for medical benefits, he said. The women often contact Soto looking for an inexpensive clinic.

“It is a very victimized population,” he said.

Another common claim by employers is that the workers are being treated better then they would be in their native countries. Considine bristles at that notion.

“If people come from a country where they are routinely tortured, the fact that they are only being tortured a little is supposed to be all right?”

Luisa Sanchez left her three children in Mexico last year and found work with a Placentia family. She was paid $100 a week to clean the house, iron the clothes and take care of their two children. The arrangement was fine until one Saturday when she was asked to stay without pay and help prepare for a party. It was her day off, but without a ride to the weekend apartment she shared with a friend, Sanchez had no choice. But when she protested, she said, they asked her not to come back.

From there she was hired by a woman who ran a day-care center in her home. Three days a week, Sanchez tended to the nine children, all the employer’s customers, and two afternoons a week she got time off to clean the house.

She left that job when a family member became ill and she had to return to Mexico. Now, she works on a daily basis, when the work is available.

“Sometimes employers think they can get blood out of these workers,” said Marta Lopez of the Brea Job Worker Center, where Sanchez sought help. “They should know better.”

She is haunted, she says, by the fear of not being able to send money home to feed her own three children.

This desperation is often what makes domestics endure the conditions, advocates say.

“Some of the ladies could protect themselves if they would hold out a couple of weeks for higher pay,” said Saldana of the center in Orange.

A campaign to tell women their rights and to teach them how to protect themselves has been started by the Brea Day Worker Center and other immigrant organizations. And the Legal Aid Society recently held a meeting with local law enforcement officials to see if they could pursue wage cases through other channels.