Amelita King-Dejardin
By Amelita King-Dejardin, ILO Domestic Work Specialist
I’ve done hundreds of interviews with domestic workers and their employers, and alarm bells always ring whenever I hear the statement: “I treat her like a member of the family.” In my experience, this declaration, with its vague cultural notions, often means that the domestic worker relies on the benevolence of the employer and not on her rights as a worker.
Paradoxically, I also worry about the emphasis – by journalists, government officials, employers and researchers in various countries – on the horrors suffered by migrant domestic workers – beaten to death, burned with a hot iron, raped, locked in. Of course, these extreme forms of abuse do occur and should be prevented and punished, but there’s a danger that attention is diverted from the much more widespread, subtle, daily forms of abuse that domestic workers bear while working as ‘part of the family’ in their own countries:
It’s the exceedingly long working hours, with days that can begin as early as 4 in the morning; the short, interrupted sleep time and seven-day working weeks with no day-off; the need to be available at all times, whether it’s day or night – the so called “service on demand”. And it’s the lack of paid leave and the very low wages they receive.
I see these situations in places I visit in my role as the ILO’s expert on domestic work. In India, I met a woman who was expected by her employer to clean the toilets with her bare hands; another who had to bear constant verbal abuse from the family. Almost everyone I met talked about long back-breaking hours.
Many of us employ domestic workers. In Tanzania, I was told that almost everyone has a domestic worker. But often we are blind to the abuses of their rights or take them as “normal”, without appreciating that we ourselves would suffer physically and psychologically if we had to endure such conditions.
Fair remuneration that allows decent living, rest, leisure and reasonable limits on working hours, are universal human rights which most of us believe are just. Yet many who hire domestic workers often fail to acknowledge that they’re abusing their rights.
This directly concerns us all and begins “at home” – in our families, in our communities. We need better laws that set clear ground rules for our employment relationships with the domestic workers we hire. But the fundamental change of mind and behaviour rests with us.
An argument I often hear is that limiting daily working hours and paying better wages are not feasible or affordable. We need to look at how much of this is myth and how much fact.
In the Philippines, 81 per cent of households that employ domestic workers belong to the top 20 per cent of the income ladder. For low-income working women who need people to care for their young children or sick, the domestic worker should not have to bear the cost. Governments and communities should find ways to address this need.
Read the ILO’s new report on domestic work
Work In Progress 
I am delighted to hear about the campaigning whcih ILO is starting to address the issue of migrant domestic workers. We hear about the cases involving industrial workers such as the Chinese cockle pickers killed in the UK and the recent case here where Lithuanian workers were kept in “slave conditions”. Unfortunately it seems to take sensational cases like the beheading in Saudia Arabia, last week, of a domestice worker before the plight of this group reaches public consciousness.
I write a monthly article in Health & Safety at Work magazine whcih goes to our members and I would like to refer in my next articel to the campaign and your article. I hope that this will be in order.
Barry Holt
Director of Policy & Research
International Institute of Risk & Safety Management
Being Tanzanian, I grew up with domestic workers in our household and up to this day. Most domestic workers in Tanzania are those from rural areas whose parents cannot afford to pay for them tuition fees for secondary schools. Recently, the government introduced localized secondary schools of which every child can attend after primary school and as a result domestic workers are hard to find. But that does not mean they do not exist anymore. I once asked for reasons of poor payment to domestic workers and was told if well paid they get enough money and neglect the job, thus to keep them at work is by paying them so little that they have no savings at the end of the month which makes no sense. Most other workers in informal sectors working for private individuals work long hours, receive no written job contracts and get low payments for same reasons, are referred to as daily laborers so that the government does not force the owners to pay them minimum wages, claim employment taxes and pension for these workers. Things have to change now or poverty and social inequality will never be eradicated in the developing countries.