The #MeToo movement we aren't discussing

During our last Feminist Legal Theory class, students threw out some topics to cover for the last few weeks of school. I suggested sexual assault during the nightshift, and I was a little surprised when I had to elaborate on it. Why hadn’t my fellow feminists heard of it before?

Surely someone from the blog has written about it. So I got a little curious and checked the posts under the “immigration” label. Search result: zip, zero, nada. However, my peers did cover sexual assault in the fields, which has been viewed as the rural equivalent of sexual assault during the nightshift. That coverage is a step in the right direction in terms of making these sufferings a part of the #MeToo conversation, but I see that we have much more work to do.

Before I go any further, let me give you a brief explanation on what exactly I’m discussing here. Sexual assault during the nightshift is a phrase used to describe the many forms of sexual violation that janitorial women face while cleaning our corporate offices and government buildings in the middle of the night. Their shifts begin while everyone else is already home and in bed. They work alone and often times, the perpetrator is their own supervisor. The supervisor uses his position of power to violate the women. He knows the areas of the building that do not have cameras and he knows no one else is in the building to see or hear the assault take place. Many of these survivors experience inappropriate comments, unwanted touching, and rape - what so many other women of the movement had been forced to tolerate and endure for so long.

With so many courageous women coming forward naming their perpetrators (shoutout to #MeToo and #TimesUp), I couldn’t help but wonder why the female janitors weren’t a part of the conversation. Has the movement become too “Hollywood” with allegations against our most powerful men in entertainment, news media, and politics? I mean it is Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Larry Nassar, Bill O’Reilly, Brett Kavanaugh, and our very own POTUS - just to name a few. The famous perpetrators and their victims get the coverage, but so many other women are stuck in the same power dynamic. We’re fighting the same fight, yet the janitorial women’s suffering has fallen on deaf ears. If you’re asking why, so am I, and we’re not the only ones. It’s a difficult question and no one really has an answer.

But it’s important to note that the intersectionality of these women are embedded with identities that are often excluded or ignored: poor brown or black (single) women or (single) mothers, who most often, do not have legal status in the United States. These are the forgotten survivors of #MeToo.

While many victims are forced into silence with threats of termination or reports to immigration, not all of the women remain silent. For those who do report the incident, employers often turn a blind eye to it. For instance, ABM Industries, the largest janitorial company in the U.S., recently made a $5.8 million settlement in a class action lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC discovered that ABM Industries received 40 sexual assault reports from their janitor employees over a 20 year span and did absolutely nothing in response, putting their employees at risk and perpetuating rape within the company. Without an employer that protects its victimized employees, many are forced to stay with the company until they find other work. They simply cannot afford to lose their income.

These survivors have also attempted to publicize their experiences before #MeToo came about. In 2015, Frontline aired Rape on the Night Shift, a documentary that exposed this problem. Since then, these survivors have spoken at events like the Women’s March, and they pushed policies to prevent sexual abuse on the night shift. In fact, last year, California passed a law that required janitorial companies to provide sexual harassment training for all employees. Last September, the survivors came together from Florida, New York, and California, to march from San Francisco to Sacramento in support of AB 2079 - a bill that would require janitorial companies to use their janitorial staff to give the sexual harassment training to one another. The secretary treasurer of the janitorial union behind the march, Alejandra Valles, explained the importance of the bill:

Is it going to be somebody in a suit and tie or someone who looks like them? It makes the difference between whether that woman is going to live in silence or whether that woman’s going to actually report it.

While making their 100 mile march, the survivors stopped by our campus and I had the privilege to speak with them individually, listen to their experiences and struggles, and hear why AB 2079 is instrumental to their line of work. Walking away from that experience, I realized how privileged I am to be in a position to advocate for these women and to have an audience that listens. Moreover, I, like many of my peers here at the law school, are also in positions to walk away from our employers if we experience the things these women fear every shift. At the end of the day, all they were asking for was to work in an environment that is safe and holds perpetrators accountable now and for future generations. Is that too much to ask for?