In an era of multi-million-dollar lawsuits, an award of $47,000 may seem insignificant, but this one marks a breakthrough for the most invisible sector of the workforce. The case is a victory for a law office dedicated to defending immigrant workers -- an office which has just been put out of business by funding cuts. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes widely on immigration and labor issues.

Yuni Mulyono (l), the domestic worker from Indonesia who worked for two and a half years almost without wages for a family in Los Angeles, and Marco Rodriguez (r), a former student activist and immigrant from El Salvador who helped her escape. Photo by David Bacon.

LOS ANGELES -- Lost in the jubilation over an unprecedented $47,000 back pay judgment for a domestic worker held in semi-slavery for three years is a darker reality: the case of Yuni Mulyono will be the last brought to court in defense of the rights of low-wage immigrant workers by the Labor Defense Network, once a division of this city's Legal Aid Society. The Network, which handled Mulyono's case, fell victim last year to Federal budget cuts for legal aid to the poor.

For years, L.A.'s low-wage workers found their way to the Network office in a nondescript building on Crenshaw Avenue. Bitter stories poured across the desk of attorney Michelle Yu of unpaid labor, work without overtime pay, wages below the minimum, and of the wholesale denial of conditions most people take for granted.

Not only did the Federal cuts close the Network office; what little government funding is left for legal aid programs now contains another killer provision. It prohibits aid to undocumented workers. Yu estimates that the undocumented made up a large percentage of her cases. "That's who low-wage workers in Los Angeles are," she says. "And that's especially those who wind up being cheated, and even held to work against their will."

In the future, Yu points out, workers like Mulyono are unlikely to find legal advocates. "We'll have a law," Yu says, "but no one will be there to fight the cases needed to enforce it."

Mulyono was the last of Yu's clients. She was recruited in Indonesia by a wealthy fellow countrywoman and her American husband and brought to Los Angeles to do housework. "I began working when I got up in the morning," she says, "and I worked until it was time to go to bed at night. I prepared the family's breakfast and lunch, cleaned the kitchen and living room ... I had to wake up their daughter, get her dressed and ready for school. After they left the house I had to clean up the back yard. I had to feed and clean up after their two dogs. Every day I did laundry and washed the bathroom. I fixed the dinner and served it and washed the dishes. Sometimes the wife would ask me to give her a massage in the evening, and I would do that too."

For this Mulyono was paid $100 a month -- and that only after she complained. Her situation was made possible because she was invisible to the outside world, like thousands of other low-wage workers in and around Los Angeles. Domestic workers are the most invisible of all.

After almost three years, Mulyono, a slender woman who looks younger than her 27 years, was helped out of her bondage by Marco Rodriguez, a Salvadoran she met at the weekly English language class she was allowed to attend after her first year here.

In court, the family that employed Mulyono denied paying her at all. Rather, Lina Nilam and her husband Reginald Hall testified, Mulyono was simply a guest in their home.

To disprove this scenario, attorney Yu called in experts who testified that powerful class and caste attitudes in Indonesia made it extremely unlikely that a wealthy family like Nilam's would have forged an intimate friendship with someone from an impoverished background as Mulyono -- let alone bring her to the United States for a visit lasting two years and nine months.

In the end, Judge Jack W. Morgan rejected the claim that Mulyono had been a houseguest on an extended stay and awarded her wages calculated at the legal minimum of $4.25 an hour for an average of 65 hours a week (including overtime) for two years and nine months.

Yu and Mulyono both believe her situation is quite common. Mulyono, who is now studying cosmetology, her life-long dream, has become active in the Domestic Workers Association which seeks to organize and inform domestic workers of their labor rights.

Christina Riegos, of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, says the $47,000 award is the largest ever granted in such a case in southern California. "We hope this will encourage other domestic workers in the same situation and serve as a warning to employers that this abuse cannot go on," she says.

But without any formal channels to publicize the case, let alone lawyers to serve as advocates, Riegos is pessimistic the case will mark a real breakthrough for the rights of domestic workers here or anywhere else in the country.