Lorena Contreras has been cleaning houses in Northern Virginia
for more than a decade, but she always worked for other people.
Our goal is to have a job that makes our lives better and eventually make more jobs for other workers, and pay them what they deserve.” Co-op worker-owner Lorena Contreras
Sometimes the owners of the companies she worked for made her
work longer hours than scheduled, or didn’t pay her on time, or didn’t pay her
for all the hours she worked. As a woman and an immigrant — she came to
Arlington from Honduras 13 years ago — there seemed little she could do about
it.
But now Lorena and two other house cleaners — her sister, Dilcia
Contreras, and their friend, Anita Maldonado — are starting their own business,
a cleaning co-op. They won’t have to give the money they earn to the owner of
the cleaning company — they are the owners. And when they get enough clients,
they hope to hire other women.
“We are going to pay workers fairly, so they don’t feel
exploited,” said Lorena. “We will trust in God that we’re going to find
customers, and we will work hard.”
The business they’re creating is the first co-op to be launched
by NOVALACIRO, a community organization in the low-income, mostly Latino
Columbia Pike corridor in South Arlington. The group receives grant funds from
the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the domestic anti-poverty program
of the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Since its beginnings in 1969, CCHD has made nearly 12,000 grants
totaling more than $400 million to projects created and managed by people with
low incomes. Most of the funding comes from CCHD’s November Mass collections in
dioceses across the country; 25 percent of the amount collected remains in the
diocese to fund local projects.
“The bishops created CCHD to address the root causes of poverty,
rather than simply provide direct service to satisfy immediate needs, such as
food, which the church already did so well,” said Carla Walsh, coordinator of
the diocesan program office for CCHD.
Over the past 18 months, after listening to the needs of its
community, NOVALACIRO (short for Northern Virginia Latin American Civil Rights
Organization) made its top priority the creation and support of worker-owned
cooperatives, businesses that the workers themselves own and invest in.
Decision-making is democratic, with each worker given an equal share of power.
CCHD supports co-ops because they empower low-income employees as they work
their way out of poverty.
Many people are afraid to start their own business, “but we are
here to let our community know they can do it, and we can help them,” said
NOVALACIRO organizer Heylin Rodriguez, a parishioner of Our Lady, Queen of
Peace Church in Arlington. She said a number of parishioners are involved and
benefit from NOVALACIRO’s work.
Domestic workers such as house cleaners are three times as likely
to be living in poverty as other workers, and only one in five receives health
insurance coverage through their job, according to the nonprofit Economic
Policy Institute. There are more than 7,700 house cleaners in Virginia and more
than 344,000 nationally, the group says, adding that 92 percent of domestic
workers are women, and more than half are racial minorities.
Despite delays during the pandemic, the new co-op finally
launched in late October. It’s called Mujeres Manos a la Obra, an idiom that
translates roughly as “Women Get Down to Work” — which the three founding
worker-owners are eager to do.
They’ve been meeting with Rodriguez and Bianca Vasquez of the
Beloved Community Incubator in Washington to develop leadership skills and
learn about good business management practices that they will need to run the
co-op successfully. “We’ve been going to meetings every week for a year,” said
Dilcia.
They’ve also invested their own money as part of the grant match,
purchasing equipment such as vacuum cleaners, mops and boxes of cleaning
supplies.
“We want to get started,” Anita said at a neighborhood cookout
Oct. 23 to celebrate the launch. “This project is really good, and it motivates
us because they are helping us a lot.”
“Our goal is to have a job that makes our lives better and
eventually make more jobs for other workers, and pay them what they deserve,”
added Lorena, who is also on the NOVALACIRO board.
At the party, the worker-owners mingled with the other board
members and posed for photos with a large cake decorated in pink sugar flowers
and the words “Mujeres Manos a la Obra, Congratulations!” Husbands cooked hot
dogs on the grill and children and grandchildren played, waiting for the cake
to be cut.
“Are you proud of your mom and her work?” someone asked Lorena’s
daughter, Katherine Hernandez, 12, who stood near her mom with her little
brother, Christopher, 4.
“Very,” Katherine said.
Find out more
usccb.org/cchd
novalaciro.org
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