Bitter stories pour out of them - of work without overtime, of wages lower than the minimum, and of the general denial of conditions most people take for granted. Sitting across the desk, attorney Michelle Yu takes careful notes, preparing case after case in a stream that seems to have no end. These are the invisible workers. Their work is done below the radar screen - necessary jobs that make the world function but which are hardly noticed at all. Their very invisibility makes a commonplace occurrence of the violation of standards and rights most people don't even think about.
Domestic workers are the most invisible of all.
For almost three years, Yuni Mulyono , a slender woman, seeming much younger than her twenty-seven years, lived in this hidden economy. She was finally helped out of its modern bondage by another immigrant, Marco Rodriguez, a stocky man from halfway around the world who sits protectively beside her as she tells her story. I became a domestic worker in Indonesia because my family is poor. I didn't have a good education, so I had no choice. In the little town where I grew up in Sumatra, my father is a farmer and furniture maker.