Contemporary Authors

• In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers ( nonfiction) New Press (New York, NY), 2018

1. In a day's work : the fight to end sexual violence against America's most vulnerable workers LCCN 2017053297 Type of material Book Personal name Yeung, Bernice, author. Main title In a day's work : the fight to end sexual violence against America's most vulnerable workers / Bernice Yeung. Published/Produced New York ; London : The New Press, [2018] Description 225 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9781620973158 (hc : alk. paper) CALL NUMBER HD6060.5.U5 Y48 2018 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Reveal News - https://www.revealnews.org/author/bernice-yeung/

  Bernice Yeung
  Reporter
  byeung@revealnews.org
  bmyeung
  510-809-3177
  PGP Public Fingerprint: 88B7 6BBE 2934 674B 0F42 4AEF 0891 96CB 2F1E 7A72
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  BIOGRAPHY
  Bernice Yeung is a reporter for Reveal, covering race and gender. Her work examines issues related to violence against women, labor and employment, immigration, and environmental health. Yeung was part of the national Emmy-nominated Rape in the Fields reporting team, which investigated the sexual assault of immigrant farmworkers. The project won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Yeung also was the lead reporter for the national Emmy-nominated Rape on the Night Shift team, which examined sexual violence against female janitors. That work won an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative journalism, and the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. Those projects led to ​​her first book in 2018, “In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America's Most Vulnerable Workers.”

  A former staff writer for SF Weekly and editor at California Lawyer magazine, Yeung has had her work appear in a variety of media outlets, including The New York Times, The Seattle Times, The Guardian and PBS FRONTLINE. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master's degree from Fordham University, where she studied sociology with a focus on crime and justice. She was a 2015-16 Knight-Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan, where she explored ways journalists can use social science survey methods in their reporting. Yeung is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

• The New Press - https://thenewpress.com/authors/bernice-yeung

  Bernice Yeung
  Bernice Yeung is an award-winning journalist for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. She was a 2015–2016 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Mother Jones, and The Guardian, as well as on KQED Public Radio and PBS Frontline, and she is the author of In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers (The New Press). She lives in Berkeley, California.

• Shonda Land - https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a19484614/in-a-days-work-gives-a-voice-to-the-metoos-in-the-margins/

  Quoted in Sidelights: “they also felt a bit indignant that they had been trying to say, ‘enough is enough’ for a long time but their stories hadn’t been as visible,”
  “I think there’s … just something about low-wage work, where we just aren’t paying attention,”
  “to find a way to humanize people to other people.”
  “It’s a humanizing project, even though I don’t think we often think of journalism as such. How else do we get to know people who are different from us?” \“They just soldier on in this way that is amazing,”
  'In a Day's Work' Gives a Voice to the #MeToos in the Margins
  In her new book, Bernice Yeung amplifies the plights of working-class, immigrant women.

  BY MELISSA HUNG
  MAR 20, 2018
  GETTY IMAGESERIC FEFERBERG
  Last fall the #MeToo movement spread on social media, propelling sexual harassment into a national conversation. But long before the hashtag went viral and famous actresses went public with allegations of assault, journalist Bernice Yeung investigated the sexual abuse of some of America’s most vulnerable and overlooked women.

  Since 2012, Yeung has written about brutal assaults on the immigrant women who pick our produce and clean our offices. Most of them are Latina; some are undocumented. Yeung, a reporter at The Center for Investigative Reporting, worked alongside collaborators from other media outlets to expose the widespread sexual harassment and abuse of women workers in the multi-platform projects "Rape in the Fields" and "Rape on the Night Shift." Each project took more than a year to report and produce, and fueled her desire to bring even more of these stories into the light.

  THE NEW PRESS
  "In a Day's Work," out today from The New Press, is the result of that passion. Yeung’s debut tells the stories of immigrant women who came to America to escape poverty only to face sexual violence. Taken advantage of by employers and supervisors who threaten their lives and livelihoods, the women courageously speak up, organize, and fight back.
  While I’ve known Yeung for more than 20 years, her dedication to making sure immigrant women’s voices are heard never ceases to amaze me. I was thrilled to speak with Yeung about the invisibility of working-class women and how growing up in an immigrant family led her to journalism.

  Melissa Hung: How did you get into pursuing this story? Was this something that was on your radar already?

  Bernice Yeung: Well, I can say that violence against immigrant women was on my radar from my SF Weekly days. In the early 2000s, I did a story about a woman, an Indian immigrant, who was here because of her husband who was working in Silicon Valley on an H-1B visa. Her immigration status was tethered to his. And so, when he was abusive to her, she found herself in a situation where she couldn’t very easily leave or find assistance. She basically had no standing in [America] without her husband. That kind of predicament — around something as clear as needing to get away from violence in your life and being prohibited by immigration status — always stuck with me.

  MH: You’ve been working on the topic of sexual harassment for years. Now, coincidentally, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are happening. What’s it like for you to see this happening with high-profile people when you've been trying to uncover this topic for years about women in the margins?

  BY: When it first started happening, the reaction of most people who care about these issues is that it’s amazing that so many women are coming forward in such a bold way to break some of the taboo around speaking up about sexual harassment and sexual assault. And so there was just this amazement and awe that it was happening at all. And then also amazement and awe that when these women were coming forward, they were largely believed. The accused harassers were actually dealing with consequences. That was just so different from the experience of many of the workers that we had covered over the years, where they felt that they hadn't been heard, they hadn't been believed, and that their employers — and sometimes law enforcement — didn't take their complaints seriously. I called up janitors and farm workers that we had covered in the past and asked them how they felt about #MeToo. They were extremely proud and excited that this was becoming an issue that was so prominent. But they also felt a bit indignant that they had been trying to say, "enough is enough" for a long time but their stories hadn't been as visible.

  I think as time has passed, a lot of credit has to be given to #TimesUp and #MeToo. There is this keen interest in being more inclusive of all women workers and this desire to use fame and access to media to not only highlight the fact that this problem exists, but the fact that this problem exists for women in the margins, women in low-wage work, immigrant women. What I hope to see next is a reckoning around prevention. I'd like to think that the ultimate goal is to make sure it doesn't happen in the first place.

  MH: There were a lot of women that you couldn’t include in your reporting because they felt that sharing their stories would add to their problems. And then, few of these cases even get prosecuted. Why is that and what needs to change?

  I'd like to think that the ultimate goal is to make sure assault doesn't happen in the first place.

  BY: I think this is the fundamental question. At the top level, workers need an assurance that if they're going to come forward with a complaint that it will be confidential and anonymous, and that there won't be retaliation. The number one concern — from people I've spoken to for this book and also some of the reporting I'm doing now — is losing their jobs or being blackballed from the industry, which is not at all dissimilar to what we've heard from women in Hollywood and the media and politics. It's amazingly similar. It's wanting to preserve their financial livelihood.
  When it comes to criminal prosecutions — that's actually an area that I'm exploring now in my current reporting. Why do these cases not make it very far in the criminal justice system? I don't have an answer yet, but hopefully in a year I will. I think it has something to do with the way in which these cases are investigated. There's a lot that’s deep-seated about women's credibility that goes back decades, if not centuries. The default for too long has been that she's not to be believed. I think that's pretty entrenched in our society and in our legal system.

  MH: One thing that struck me was how these women were purposefully made invisible in their jobs. Why are janitors working late at night, which puts them at greater risk? What’s the big deal with someone taking out my trash in the middle of the day?

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  BY: We asked our building to change the hours of the janitors after we did this project because it seemed like such an obvious, easy thing to do. Workers have told us they prefer it because they can spend more time with their families, and it reduces the risk of isolation that can lead to extreme sexual harassment. There's this perception that we don’t want to see the people doing the labor around us, that somehow that would be off-putting. I don't totally understand the logic of that, but it has been the tradition, I guess, for a long time now, and a lot of companies operate that way. But I think there are some ways to shift the hours. When you start to get to know your janitor, when you get to know the other people working in your building, you develop relationships with them that are friendly. And there's just more eyes, so there's less risk and more protection.

  There's this perception that we don’t want to see the people doing the labor around us.

  One of the janitors that we met in Minnesota, we went with her to work one morning. She worked one of these early morning shifts at a mall. We were there with cameras and recording equipment. As it got later in the morning, around almost 10 o'clock, people were preparing the department store to open. Some of her coworkers — the people who were selling watches or makeup — saw us with the cameras and they said, "Oh my gosh, what's going on here? Is this some big fashion event that we're having here later today?" And we said, "No, we're here to do a film about Leticia, the janitor." And everybody that we said that to, said, "Who? Where?" And she literally was standing no less than 25 feet away cleaning a mirror and nobody had ever noticed her. So I think there's also just something about low-wage work, where we just aren't paying attention.
  MH: What is it like to cover sexual assault as your reporting beat? It seems difficult to think about this all the time.

  BY: The fact that this happens still really pisses me off. I'm still really outraged by it. And so for reporting, especially investigative reporting, having that sense of urgency or fire is really helpful in digging into these stories. The other thing — this is very true for putting this book together — is that I am endlessly amazed and inspired by many of the women that I've met in the process of doing the reporting. Such incredibly difficult things have happened to them — and not to diminish or minimize all that they had to experience and all the work that they have done and are still doing to get to a better place — but they still continue on. They get up every day. They take care of their kids. They go to work. They just soldier on in this way that is amazing. So I don't get stuck in the really upsetting details of the violence, even though I think it's important for us to look it in the eye. I'm thinking of the full arc of many of these women’s stories, which is they experienced this horrific thing and they somehow found a resilience and they continue on.

  MH: You’ve done a lot of work in journalism, from serving on the board of the Society for Professional Journalists to co-founding Hyphen and of course, all the investigative work you've done. What is it that keeps you going?

  BY: I ask myself that all the time, to be honest.

  MH: It's almost a question of: Why journalism?

  I guess that's what the motivation is: trying to find a way to humanize people to other people.

  BY: You would probably understand this better than most people I know — which is that there's something about growing up as a kid from an immigrant family who is aware of your outsider status, and feeling that who you are is not represented in the media or in people's understanding of you and your community. Media — journalism — is a way to bring these stories to the fore and to show people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to meet someone like me or somebody that I might write about. Not that it’s perfect — this is my interpretation of these individuals filtered through my lens and my bias and so on. I guess that's what the motivation is: trying to find a way to humanize people to other people. It's a humanizing project, even though I don't think we often think of journalism as such. How else do we get to know people who are different from us? We don't often live in communities that are hugely diverse, economically, racially, religious background-wise. So sometimes it's about meeting people in a movie or on a TV show. And at least through journalism, I feel like we can meet real people who are going through some real quandaries, questions, and challenges.
  This interview has been edited and condensed.

  Melissa Hung is a writer and journalist. Her essays and reported stories have appeared in NPR, Vogue, and Catapult. Find her on Twitter.

• Splinter - https://splinternews.com/talking-with-the-author-of-in-a-days-work-about-domesti-1823924464

  Quoted in Sielights: What we need to happen next is a deeper exploration of the structural and systemic reasons that sexual harassment exists generally, and then also the very particular logistical economic realities within different industries,” the author said.
  “Right now we’re talking about sharing our stories, and that is critical. But the point really is not that we only share stories, it’s that we figure out how to get underneath all of this and start talking about prevention.”
  Talking With the Author of In a Day's Work About Low-Income Workers' Battle to Be Included in #MeToo

  Clio Chang
  3/20/18 2:29pmFiled to: IN A DAY'S WORK
  5.6K
  17
  22

  Photo: AP
  It has been nearly six months since the women who stepped forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein helped start a national conversation on sexual harassment. Yet while we’re only just now being forced to reckon with our most famous predators, the women working in our country’s most vulnerable industries—domestic workers, agricultural workers, janitors—have been fighting the same battle on the sidelines for years.

  Journalist Bernice Yeung chronicles the insidious ways in which working class women are uniquely vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse. In her new book, In a Day’s Work, which is out today, Yeung finds that the women who do the essential jobs of caring for our children and elders, cleaning our offices, and growing our food, are often undocumented, working for low pay, and in isolated environments.

  Bernice Yeung
  Photo: Rachel de Leon
  These are the very same factors that make it difficult for these women to organize. In some instances, government policies actively work against them, such as the fact that domestic and agricultural workers—jobs historically held by black Americans—were left out of New Deal era labor protections as a way to maintain racial hierarchies. In other cases, unions have been slow to see sexual harassment as a workplace issue, instead defining it as a “women’s issue.”

  But as In a Day’s Work documents, women have been working for years to change this dynamic. I spoke with Yeung about sexual harassment in low-wage industries, the challenges organized labor faces in addressing this issue, and how the women she spoke to feel about the Me Too movement.

  This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

  Your book goes through women in low-income industries facing sexual harassment in fields as varied as agriculture and domestic work, and as janitors. What were some of the common threads you found?

  There are some circumstances and dynamics that are similar across the board. These are jobs primarily taken by immigrant workers, immigrant women, where the wages tend to be low. If they’re dealing with an unscrupulous, exploitative supervisor, they’re set up to be particularly vulnerable to various types of abuses including very extreme sexual harassment, assaults, and rape. For a lot of these women workers, there were circumstances that were used against them to coerce them into unwanted sexual behavior at work by their supervisors or their co-workers. And then those same circumstances were used to keep them quiet.

  Specifically, they might have tenuous immigration status and so threats of deportation and calling immigration authorities were often used against them. Then there’s the fact that these are paycheck-to-paycheck jobs and these women might be supporting families, kids, and maybe extended family back in their home country. So a lot of people are dependent on their paycheck and they were very mindful about what would happen if they made a complaint or if they tried to quit.

  And finally the other element that’s really significant across these industries is isolation. We’ve heard stories from farm workers who said that their supervisors would, under the pretense of moving them from one field to another, make them get into their truck. That’s where the assaults happened, and then they would take them out even further to more remote areas and again, terrible things would happen. Literally one farm worker said that her supervisor said to her, “If you scream, no one will hear you.” Similarly in janitorial work, we heard reports of women being assaulted in supply closets and in bathrooms where they said that the supervisors knew there would be no security cameras. For domestic workers, these are people who are working literally behind closed doors and in people’s homes and they might be the only employee in someone’s house.

  All of these factors—poverty, tenuous immigration status, isolation—conspire against these workers.

  We also see that there’s evidence that across the board that women are often not believed when they come forward with their stories. In what ways are there even more barriers for low-income workers when they actually do decide to come forward?

  Many of women that I’ve spoken to feel that their cases are not taken seriously when they do try to report. They feel that their their complaints are diminished or that they might be received but then nothing is done.

  For many of the workers in this book, there are additional issues as simple as language barriers. It’s already difficult enough for most workers who have experienced sexual harassment to report—there’s feelings of shame and embarrassment, all of those unwarranted, but very real reactions. Then you layer on top of that the fact that maybe the worker not only doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it, but also doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it in a language that she doesn’t really speak very well.

  Literally one farm worker said that her supervisor said to her, “If you scream, no one will hear you.”
  We’ve also heard frequently from many of the workers that they weren’t sure what the laws were around sexual harassment. And then there’s this element of subcontracting, these third party entities that have often hired these workers, so when something bad happens at work there can also be confusion around who is responsible and who they should complain to.

  It struck me how little information that we have on these cases. Even people who are actively trying to help and uncover sexual harassment can only really reach a few workers when there are, say, janitors in every commercial building in the country. Do you think we have any sort of clear sense as to the extent of this problem?

  I think this is one of the hardest questions. Having done this reporting I think it would be overstating it to say that we have any idea how often this happens. The ultimate point is that this is a critically underreported problem. Sexual violence as a general matter is so deeply underreported that when it comes to the more extreme end of the spectrum—sexual assault and rape—only one-third of people actually ever go to authorities about it.

  Any time we’re talking about formal complaints, we’re talking about a deep undercount. So I think anything that we see at an official statistical level is really just the tip of the iceberg. The number that has really surprised me, which is some kind of reference point, is that when it comes to very extreme sexual harassment, the Department of Justice estimates that on average about 50 workers are sexually assaulted or raped at work every day. That’s coming from all industries, clients, co-workers, supervisors. But this is not an isolated situation.

  We hear about how isolation makes these workers vulnerable to sexual assault and harassment. But can you talk about how it also makes it difficult for these women to organize?

  Traditionally you would organize within a workplace to get everybody in one warehouse or one factory to all join the union. But what do you do when it’s just one janitor in one building in a huge city working in the middle of the night? How do you get critical mass and how do you reach all of these individuals to to get them organized? I think that’s one of the challenges that organized labor has really faced with some of these industries. Same with domestic work.

  There have been some really interesting strategies. For instance, the National Domestic Workers Alliance has partnered with a lot of local domestic worker organizations throughout the country and is meeting workers where they are. They’ll go to the parks where nannies or domestic workers are bringing the kids that they’re taking care of and talk to them there. And then for janitors there are organizations like the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund in California that literally go into the buildings at night undercover, make contact with janitors, and start to develop relationships that way.

  One scene you describe in your book that I found really interesting was a meeting in Southern California where a female union member was announcing issues that membership had voted on as strike priorities. Everyone agreed on wages and workload, but when sexual harassment and came up the men there actually started booing. What are the ways in which the labor movement itself has failed to prioritize sexual harassment?

  What’s been a really interesting dynamic is the role of the union on this issue. The truth is the union has to walk a narrow line and their responsibility is to represent their members and sometimes it’s one member accusing another member of misconduct. They are duty bound, as they should be, to making sure that each member gets fair representation and fair treatment.

  I think also there might be a hesitancy to address this issue more directly because of resistance from male leadership and male membership, as that anecdote from the California janitor’s union demonstrates. They were in a circumstance where they had many female leaders who were sensitive to this issue and a male union president who believed that this was an issue that the union should take on. It took that kind of commitment from the top because there was resistance.

  As you noted, the men booed one of the women who tried to raise [sexual harassment] as a priority. It took union leadership tamping that down and saying, “no, this is not acceptable, let’s go back to our values as organized labor, we believe in safe workplaces.” They had to bring it back to core values as opposed to these issues that are often perceived as “women’s issues.”

  There has definitely been a shift and there have been some unions that have been really outspoken on this issue. They tend to be unions where there are more women in their membership.

  We often think of the labor movement as white male industrial workers rather than the people of color and immigrant women in your book, who increasingly make up the bulk of the working class. Do you think this image has stymied progress when it comes to seeing sexual harassment as a workplace issue?

  Yes, the kind of prototypical model of who is a union member, you think about manufacturing, you think about construction. Those who make up the majority of the workers in these industries are men.

  But there was also a little bit of a sense that they felt left out, that they had been trying to raise their issue for a long time and that nobody had paid them any attention.
  It’s not surprising, perhaps, that this is the lens through which a lot of these issues are viewed. Traditionally too, unions have focused on wages and workplace conditions from a very specific point of view. Wages everybody understands, but working conditions, you’re thinking about maybe your hours and your physical safety around heavy machinery, things like that. Now as more women are entering some of these fields there’s greater awareness that part of workplace safety is a safety from physical violence, including sexual violence.

  You’ve been working on this reporting for years, but the Me Too movement in the last several months has really pushed this issue to the national forefront. How have you seen this affecting the workers that you’ve talked to?

  When Me Too first started, I talked to some of the farmworkers and janitors who are featured in the book and I asked them how they felt about it. Initially they were so excited to see that this issue was coming to the forefront. It was, for them, a really powerful moment. But there was also a little bit of a sense that they felt left out, that they had been trying to raise their issue for a long time and that nobody had paid them any attention.

  This movement has begun to shift to a place where everybody is seeking a greater sense of inclusion for workers like those featured in this book, which is really great to see. You’re seeing farm workers marching in unity with Hollywood women. I know there’s been some non-public events between workers of all industries and there’s been a great effort to include low-wage and immigrant workers. That’s all part of a really important push and groundswell.

  In terms of how it will impact these workers, that remains to be seen. But it’s really critical that they’re being included, because as similar as many of these dynamics are across industries, the dynamics play out differently. The workers in this book, their circumstances are different than women working in the media or politics or Hollywood. Their considerations are different. So while we need this overarching unity among female workers, we also need to pay attention to the differences within industries.

  Are you optimistic that this movement will continue to include low-wage workers in a meaningful way?

  I think there’s clearly a sincere intention to make sure that all workers are included. What we need to happen next is a deeper exploration of the structural and systemic reasons that sexual harassment exists generally, and then also the very particular logistical economic realities within different industries. Right now we’re talking about sharing our stories, and that is critical. But the point really is not that we only share stories, it’s that we figure out how to get underneath all of this and start talking about prevention.

Quoted in Sidelights: “a timely, intensely intimate, and relevant expose on a greatly disregarded sector of the American workforce.”

Print Marked Items
Yeung, Bernice: IN A DAY'S WORK
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Yeung, Bernice IN A DAY'S WORK New Press (Adult Nonfiction) $25.99 3, 20 ISBN: 978-1-62097-315-8
An investigative report exposes rampant workplace sexual abuse against female immigrant workers.
Yeung shares the illuminating and often shocking stories of harassment against low-wage, at-risk workers deemed vulnerable due to the nature of
their immigration status and their dependence on their employment in order to support a family. Based on three years of reportage through her
work with the Center for Investigative Reporting team, the author documents and updates several case studies of workplace abuse against
domestic workers. During her research, Yeung accompanied an undercover investigator checking in with night-shift janitors embroiled in a "black
vortex" of rampant abuse and unaccountability due to the silencing of those terrified of termination or worse. She met farmworkers, domestic
help, and hotel and janitorial workers, many of whom shared stories of sexual assault and personal threats. These compelling examples of
exploitation and dehumanization represent a pattern of abuse and a silent epidemic affecting (mainly) female immigrant workers across the
country. The author notes how many are motivated by fear and a hostile anti-immigrant political climate to reluctantly accept the "open secret" of
their fate as abused employees: "The combination of undocumented immigration status and worries about losing a job serve as a powerful
muzzle." Yeung also spotlights a wave of recent protective legislation and lawsuits brought against companies who are aware of the allegations
against them yet choose to remain neutral and of the serpentine legal strategies involved in sexual harassment cases. These statistics alone point
to an epidemic problem in dire need of outside intervention. In continuing to expose these atrocities, Yeung and those like her hope to call muchneeded
attention to the toxic environment these underserved workers are subjected to and bring about an end to their maltreatment. A hopeful
chapter on the inroads made toward training workers on how to identify and report workplace violence signals a new understanding and valuing
of domestic employment.
A timely, intensely intimate, and relevant expose on a greatly disregarded sector of the American workforce.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Yeung, Bernice: IN A DAY'S WORK." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248120/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7e86db51. Accessed 2 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248120

"Yeung, Bernice: IN A DAY'S WORK." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248120/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 2 July 2018.

• San Francisco Chronicle
  https://www.sfchronicle.com/books/article/In-a-Day-s-Work-by-Bernice-Yeung-12885369.php
  Word count: 590

  Quoted in Sidelights: “provides crucial information and insight about this ‘long-held open secret,’ making it a must-read for union organizers, advocates, policy makers and legislators—and all of us.”
  ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT // BOOKS
  ‘In a Day’s Work,’ by Bernice Yeung
  By Elaine Elinson May 3, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2018 11:42 a.m.
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  “In a Day’s Work”
  Photo: The New Press

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  Bernice Young
  Photo: Rachel de Leon / Reveal
  Georgina Hernandez was constantly shortchanged on her wages cleaning a movie theater, so she was grateful to be offered a job with a janitorial company at a hotel. But Hernandez, a single mother with little schooling, was terrified when her supervisor sexually assaulted her. “There’s no way to defend yourself,” she said. “You deal with it because you need the job.”

  Bernice Yeung relates stories like Hernandez’s with candor and compassion in her new book, “In a Day’s Work.” She balances them with comprehensive research on labor law, rape and sexual assault legislation, and the additional burdens borne by undocumented women workers.

  This is an opportune time for the book to be published — with headlines about harassment from Hollywood to high tech — but Yeung and her colleagues at the Center for Investigative Reporting have delved into this issue for the past decade.

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  Though she was initially shocked by their findings, Yeung writes that the danger of sexual abuse was common knowledge among female farm workers. From the lettuce fields of Salinas to the apple orchards in Washington, they all told similar stories. One woman was raped by a supervisor who held pruning shears to her throat. Another, desperate for the $250 paycheck she was owed, was sexually assaulted by her boss when she tried to retrieve it from him.

  Yeung focuses on three groups of workers: farmworkers, domestic workers and janitors. The first two groups were specifically excluded from federal labor laws. Though some legal protections have been expanded — including in California — much of the abuse still goes unreported.

  That’s because many women face an additional peril: poverty. The workers Yeung profiles were frightened of losing their jobs if they reported their attackers. Many are single mothers, the sole support of their children. For undocumented women, “The stakes are often impossibly high,” she writes.

  Though these stories are heartbreaking, the book ends on a hopeful note: a combination of support from advocacy groups and grassroots organizing efforts has led many workers on a “trajectory from resignation to resistance.” At a Sacramento rally celebrating the recent passage of legislation to prevent sexual assault at the workplace, Hernandez stated, “It was not easy to break our silence, but I’m not afraid anymore, I survived. ... We did it.”

  Yeung’s book provides crucial information and insight about this “long-held open secret,” making it a must-read for union organizers, advocates, policy makers and legislators — and all of us.

  Elaine Elinson is the coauthor of “Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California.” Email: books@sfchronicle.com

  In a Day’s Work

  The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers

  By Bernice Yeung

  (New Press; 225 pages; 25.99)

• Publishers Weekly
  https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-62097-315-8
  Word count: 264

  Quoted in Sidelights: “the ubiquity and severity” “mitigates the difficult material by bringing humanity, empathy, and hope to each page,
  In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers
  Bernice Yeung. New Press, $25.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-62097-315-8

  In this exposé of workplace sexual violence against women, Yeung, a journalist from the Center for Investigative Reporting, amplifies the voices of some of the American economy’s most marginalized workers. As in the companion radio and television series, Rape in the Fields, the book breaks ground by exposing the ubiquity and severity of the abuse leveled against female farmworkers, domestic workers, and janitors by their employers. The author mitigates the difficult material by bringing humanity, empathy, and hope to each page. There are plenty of heroes to celebrate, such as Vicky Márquez, a former janitor who now does site visits for a nonprofit with the mission “of fighting labor exploitation among janitors working the graveyard shift,” and the women who testified against Evans Fruit for overlooking information that their orchard foreman was sexually harassing female farmworkers. Moments of indignation in Yeung’s writing feel completely justifiable. “Though these cases are described as he-said, she-said cases, the woman’s account is seldom given equal consideration,” she notes. The book concludes with guardedly hopeful descriptions of workplace training programs, government regulation, and union advocacy. Even more moving, however, is the sense of a reporter deeply committed to her sources and her material. (Mar.)
  DETAILS
  Reviewed on: 03/12/2018
  Release date: 05/01/2018

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