Domestic workers’ rights in global development indicators

abstract

The United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, the largest-ever gathering of world leaders, representing 189 member states arrived at an internationally-agreed upon agenda. The agenda was a set of development indicators, which albeit with good intention, did not take into account the working conditions of vulnerable workers within either the formal or informal employment sectors. No specific goal on labour rights was included-a pressing concern, in particular for those who are treated unjustly in the workplace. At an international level, the vulnerability and exploitation of women in informal employment, has received increased attention in the last ten years and more recently within the sector of domestic work. One of the concerns has been that a number of domestic workers work under some of the most unprotected work conditions and suffer some of the worst forms of gender exploitation. Noting the omission of marginalised and vulnerable groups from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) there is a need for civil society to respond to their understanding of the MDGs so that poverty as it relates to the experience of marginalised working women is not overlooked in national plans to implement the MDGs. This Focus makes an argument for the rights of domestic workers to be integrated into the implementation programmes of MDGs. Domestic workers, comprising mostly women, face a range of workplace abuses as both family unpaid labour in some countries and as cheap labour, particularly in countries like South Africa where domestic employment practices have their roots in colonialism, and migrant labour under apartheid.

Keywords:

• Human rights
• labour rights
• ILO Convention for the Rights of Domestic Workers

Notes

1. International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN) is a labour union organisation comprising of domestic workers’ unions and associations from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America and Europe.

2. Undated interview with Hester Stephens, President of South Africa Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU) by Samuel Grumiau of ITUC Press Department, see http://www.ituc-csi.org/spotlight-interview-with-esther.html.

3. See a multi-country study by Budlender (2010) in which she discusses the fact that, in relation to their male counterparts, most women within households spend a lot of time on domestic work, taking care of their families. For women whose occupation is domestic work, there is a double-load of domestic work, ie for their families as well as for their employers.

4. The South African Domestic Workers Act known as ‘Sectoral Determination 7’ regulates a maximum working week of 45 hours, stipulating that any additional hours of overtime worked must be remunerated.

5. Hence these activist organisations have emphasised the need for strong unionisation and equitable representation of women domestic workers in union structures.

6. Hemson (2011) is of the view that much more decisive action is necessary to achieve essential progress with MDGs.

7. The ILO uses the term vulnerable workers to include the widespread use of informal work arrangements where workers lack social protection and social dialogue mechanisms, in circumstances that are associated with conditions of low pay and difficult work conditions, including unpaid family contributions (ILO, 2010a).

8. Precarious work from a worker's point of view is related to uncertain, unpredictable and risky employment such as part-time, temporary and casual work without protection. Women are disproportionately represented in precarious work. Precarious work is recognised as contributing to the global pay gap between men and women (Evans and Gibb, 2009).

9. According to the report, the number of people living in extreme poverty (ie on $US1 a day or less) rose from 217 million in 1990 to 290 million in 2000.

10. The East African Report (Kakande, 2010) also acknowledges that within the region women are disproportionately represented in poorly paying precarious jobs.

11. See Tom Hertz's (2004) research that reports that the increase in wages of domestic workers following the introduction of the regulation of domestic workers’ employment in South Africa. He notes, whilst on the one hand the wage increases in line with the regulated minimum wage is evidence of the impact of law to mediate exploitative work conditions for the sector, on the other, the number of wrongful dismissal cases doubled.