WUNRN
ILO - International Labour
Organization
DOMESTIC WORKERS - 6 MONTHS AFTER
ILO CONVENTION ON DECENT WORK FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS - NEED TO
SPEED UP COUNTRY RATIFICATION,
COMPLIANCE, WORKERS' AWARENESS, & CHANGES TO INCREASE PROTECTION
© Saeed Khan / AFP
2014
By
Malte Luebker, Wage Specialist, ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
4 March 2014
- BANGKOK (ILO News) – Over the course of two years, Kartika Puspitasari, a
30-year-old Indonesian domestic worker, was assaulted by her Hong Kong
employers, who would burn her with an iron and beat her with a bike chain. The
trial judge called her treatment “cruel” and “inhumane”.
Her plight has stirred public outrage. But unfortunately, it’s far from being
an isolated case. Far too often, there are reports of violence and gross human
rights violations against domestic workers.
But violations of the rights of domestic workers extend well beyond the cases
of extreme abuse. They occur every day and around the world in the form of
excessive working hours, with no rest time and insufficient pay.
However,
there have been some positive developments since ILO
Convention 189 came into force six months ago, on September 5,
2013. Ratified by 12 Member states, the landmark convention created a strong
momentum towards recognition that the world’s 53 million domestic workers are
employees entitled to full labour rights, and not second class workers.
Countries have begun to act, some of them taking small, others bigger steps in
the right direction. In Thailand, for example, domestic workers no longer have
to work on public holidays, while in Singapore, they are guaranteed a weekly
day of rest, and Namibia is setting a minimum wage for domestic workers. In
Bahrain, the new Labour Code includes a number of provisions for domestic
workers.
In the Philippines, the new Domestic Workers Act sets out detailed rules and
protection for domestic workers. The United States has extended wage and
overtime protection to the nearly 2 million direct care workers who help
elderly or disabled people in their homes. And a few weeks ago, the European Union called on its members to act and to implement Convention
189.
But many governments still exclude domestic workers from the scope of the
labour laws that provide other workers with basic rights and protection.
The 21.5 million domestic workers in Asia, and at least 2.1 million of their
counterparts in the Middle East, are generally least protected.
Latin America, where there are 19.6 million domestic workers, has shown that
better legal protection is feasible. All but a few of the region’s domestic
workers are at least partly covered by labour legislation that entitles them to
annual leave, a minimum wage and a day of weekly rest. Three quarters are
protected by a limit on weekly working hours – although these laws in some
cases demand longer hours than for other professions. Nine out of ten domestic
workers in Latin America are entitled to maternity benefits under national law.
Does
such protection matter to the daily lives of domestic workers?
Granted, compliance with the law is often weak and enforcement needs to be
strengthened. Only a third of Brazil’s domestic workers are enrolled under the
social security scheme. But this is a huge improvement over the mid-1990s and
much better than the blanket exclusion in many other countries. The wages of
Brazil’s domestic workers have doubled in real terms over the same period,
largely due to substantial increases in minimum wages, which, unlike in most
Asian countries, also cover domestic workers.
While labour rights are being strengthened for many domestic workers, there are
some worrying signs at the other end of the spectrum; for example domestic
workers who remain trapped in child labour and forced labour. While child
labour has been on the decline since the turn of the century, the number of
children in domestic work has grown from approximately 10.6 million to 11.5
million between 2008 and 2012 (See ILO report "Global
estimates and trends 2000-2012: Marking progress against child labour").
We need to step up the speed of change, and the ILO is playing an important
role in this, helping formulate necessary reform, raising awareness of workers’
and employers’ rights and duties and supporting ratification of Convention 189.
Kartika Puspitasari’s former employers have been jailed for their repeated
physical assaults, but much remains to be done to prevent such abuses in the
first place – and to make sure that domestic work is decent work.