The Invisible Labor Union

In January 2020…

I began to reach out to thought leaders in the “momtrepeneur” world with a wild vision. The dream was The Invisible Labor Union : Where your work counts.  

In 2018 I launched a website, billthepatriarchy.com for people to quantify their domestic and emotional labor. Caregiving, cooking, cleaning - all the things we do for others at our own expense. For me it comes to over $100,000 a year. 30,000 people have visited the site and 4,000 have self-reported over 500 million dollars in lost wages. This robust data set of emotional and unpaid labor provides insight into how people value themselves, how their time is spent, and just how much of it is currently unseen and uncounted. 

I thought: Once we know our value we will not work for free.

I believe that if we create a union - a community and platform for those of us who are working hard but are not being seen - a seismic economic shift will take place. There are many think-tanks and NGO’s fighting for the important but incremental work around this issue, Paid family leave, Universal Child care etc. These are all so important. But at the ILU we are reverse engineering a world where care work is truly valued. In that world, the entire future of what work looks like is very different. We will provide the tools to help people see it, and step into it. A feminist, 21st century Union which is digital first.

The ideas behind this are not new and have been well researched and documented by economists around the world for over 50 years. Building on what I believe is a repeatable mechanism that made billthepatriarchy.com successful we will: 

-Provide online and downloadable tools to track time doing invisible work

-Help quantify and qualify the estimated salary for that work 

-Advocacy tools for policy change

-Community resources to stay connected in an isolating non-job

-Objects and memorable experiences to make each member feel truly seen and valued

Or at least… that was the dream. I have almost a hundred members on board…but by the time I got to launching in May 2020 my little newborn began to walk, childcare infrasture crumbled around me and The Invisible Labor Union remains a dream project ready to be taken up again.

Visit www.invisiblelaborunion.com to sign up and know as soon as I launch.]