GENEVA – In the week that the Department of Labour is hosting its first summit of domestic workers in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, the International Labour Organisation has decried the conditions under which they work saying worldwide, only ten percent are covered by the same laws as other workers.
The ILO says many of them are also subject to deplorable working conditions, labour exploitation and human rights abuses. But there are signs that this is changing. At its Governing Body meeting this week, the organisation noted that there was an uptake in ratifying the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) and the conclusions were quite encouraging.
“To date, ten ILO member States (Bolivia, Germany, Guyana, Italy, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa and Uruguay) have ratified the Convention. Several other member States have started ratification procedures or have stated their intention of doing so.
“Since June 2011, interest in improving the living and working conditions of domestic workers has spread across the regions. Legislative reforms regarding domestic workers have been completed in numerous countries, including Argentina, Bahrain, Brazil, Spain, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam,” says the organisation.
In taking forward this programme, the Minister of Labour will this week host a summit of domestic workers in Khayelitsha – the first of many that Mrs Mildred Oliphant wants to host all over the country.
“We have heard the cries of our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. We realise that domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to all sort of abuses. During the summit, we want to use the opportunity to engage them on their rights in terms of the Basic Conditions of Employment, Labour Relations as well as the Unemployment Insurance Acts.
“In our engagements, this is an area that was identified as lacking and therefore we are responding to the need as identified by the workers themselves,” she said.
It was also important for domestic workers to organise themselves so that they will have a bigger and much more significant voice and they could fight for their rights as a collective, she said.
In several other countries, new regulatory and policy initiatives are being taken, including in Angola, Austria, Belgium, Chile, China, Finland, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Morocco, Namibia, Paraguay, United Arab Emirates and United States.
The global “12 by 12” campaign to promote the rights of domestic workers and the ratification of Convention No. 189, launched by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in partnership with the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and the International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN), has contributed to these developments.
International agencies, such as the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), international dialogue processes such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also helped draw global attention to domestic workers.
“All this shows that the ILO Convention on domestic workers and its accompanying Recommendation have effectively started to play their role as catalysts for change,” said Manuela Tomei, Director of the ILO’s Conditions of Work and Equality Department.
There are currently some 53 million domestic workers worldwide and their number is growing, both in developed and developing countries of which 83 per cent are women. Many delegates attending the Governing Body discussion also referred to the challenge of informality. Domestic work is among the sectors with the highest share of informal employment and it accounts for a substantial portion of total informal employment in many developing countries.
“Facilitating the transition of domestic workers from the informal to the formal economy should be a key driver in our efforts,” Ronnie Goldberg from the United States said on behalf of the employers’ group. She added that such efforts should be mindful of the need to protecting domestic workers, while not destroying job opportunities for them.
The Governing Body discussion also highlighted that domestic workers are highly vulnerable to unacceptable forms of work, including child labour, exposure to sexual abuse and other forms of violence, slave-like conditions and forced labour. Domestic workers’ vulnerability to rights abuses and the informality of employment relationships in domestic work reinforce each other.
Speaking on behalf of the workers’ group, Helen Kelly said that formalization of employment, rights for domestic workers including freedom of association and collective bargaining and hours of work were still important challenges to be tackled with respect to domestic work.
At the end of the discussion, the ILO Governing Body announced that it would organise a high-level global conference on decent work for domestic workers. The date is yet to be determined.
For more information, contact:
Musa Zondi
Cell: 082 901 8081
E-mail: musa.zondi@labour.gov.za
