Hamilton Gramajo said his mother, Erica, earned enough from housekeeping so he and his sister could concentrate on academics during high school rather than take after-school jobs.

"I graduated from the University of Houston because of her efforts," said Gramajo, whose family came from Guatemala in the mid-1990s.

Sometimes the employer-employee relationship blossoms into something deeply and mutually rewarding. In San Francisco, for example, Steve Goldberg and Sandee Blechman — both busy professionals — hired a Nicaraguan woman, Marta Castillo, in 1982. It was shortly after the birth of the first of their three children.

During more than two decades with the family, Castillo helped all three children learn Spanish, attended their bar and bat mitzvahs, attained U.S. citizenship and encouraged the Goldbergs to establish lasting bonds with her own children and grandchildren.

When the Goldberg children were young, Castillo accompanied the family on vacations as baby sitter. Later, she joined them as a guest — not an employee — on a trip to Rome and Israel, enabling her to realize her dream of seeing the Vatican and the Holy Land.

San Francisco is one of several cities — New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. are others — where campaigns to organize household workers are more advanced than in Houston.

However, Ai-Jen Poo, lead organizer of New York's 1,700-member Domestic Workers United, said housekeepers and nannies face unique hurdles in trying to collaborate.

"In other workplaces, you can get together with your co-workers to bargain collectively or to withhold labor," she said. "A domestic worker has no negotiating power — she can just be fired."

Domestic Workers United and its allies in New York are lobbying for state legislation to improve working conditions. The Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights would provide for paid sick days and vacation, advance notice of termination, and severance pay.

In California, a bill giving nannies the right to overtime pay cleared the Legislature last year but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The bill resulted from years of work by groups like CHIRLA — the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. Its fieldworkers try to educate women on their rights before they start household jobs and conduct awareness campaigns aboard buses carrying housekeepers to work.

Angelica Salas, CHIRLA's executive director, estimates there are at least 90,000 domestic workers in greater Los Angeles, perhaps 70 percent of them illegal immigrants. Even those without legal residency are entitled to California's minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, but enforcement agencies are understaffed and exploited women are often too scared to report abuses, Salas said.