Focus on millions of neglected, unorganised maid servants
By Narendra Sharma
India signing the Domestic Workers’ Convention adopted at the recently held 100th Session of ILO’s International Labour Conference, has suddenly brought into national focus this most neglected, unorganised and hard-to-organise sector of female workers’ household service. They are known as maid servants.
The ILO has defined domestic worker as someone who carries household work in private households in return for wages. The domestic worker should mean a person engaged in domestic work “within an employment relationship”. But, a “person who performs domestic work only occasionally, sporadically and on an occupation basis is not a domestic worker”.
In India, domestic work is the largest sector of women employment which is stated to have grown by over 200 per cent since 1999-2000 due to fast changing socio-economic scenario. These domestic workers have limited or no education or skill training; they mostly come from lower caste or ethnic minority communities. In fact, this service is one of the main employment avenue open to poor uneducated women.
Domestic workers in Delhi, for instance, are mostly migrant workers from states of Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Assam, etc. Most of the migration takes place through agents. A matter of greater concern is that these agents of the so-called “placement agencies” are alleged to be trafficking in young girls under the guise of domestic work. These migrant domestic workers remain at a high risk of all sorts of exploitation.
In India, the estimates of domestic workers widely vary. The INTUC fortnightly “The Indian Worker” has placed their number at about 100 million women and girls working across the country. Others estimate their number to be between 3.5 million and 4.5 million. What will this ILO Convention mean in the country? What is likely to be its impact on employers and maid servants? When is the Government likely to ratify it? And, more importantly, when other labour laws are being shelved by the UPA Government, how soon it is likely to ratify it and then enforce it?
These are various questions regarding this ILO Convention which India had signed only after the 2nd reading at the 100th Session of ILO’s International Labour Conference. The answers to these have to be sought after by CTUOs as well as observers in the coming days.
The ILO Convention provides right to form associations and collective bargaining to domestic workers. It also provides for inspection to ensure that maid servants are not exploited and treated lowly. Point is that the convention treats domestic workers as having rights like those of industrial workers. Under the Convention, governments are required to regulate private placement agencies which get female workers recruited for this job, investigate complaints and prohibit the practice of deducting domestic workers’ salaries to pay recruitment fee to the placement agencies.
UPA Government, having signed this Convention, should ratify it and bring forward a law to ensure its implementation. According to ILO convention, once a country ratifies an ILO Convention, it is legally bound to implement it also.
CTUOs have identified the domestic workers’ problems as follows: lack of decent wage and working conditions; no defined work time, no weekly offs; loneliness – separated from families, children and friends; violence, abuse, sexual harassment at work; victimization at the hands of traffickers/placement agencies; forced migration; no health insurance, no maternity protection, no old age security; no skill development, no career growth; and last but not the least – more work for lower wages.
Some Indian States such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra have already adopted legislations meant to provide for better conditions at worksite. Some are said to provide minimum wage, some help them with social security and some help them to register trade unions. Once the Central Government ratifies the Convention, and brings forward a law to improve working conditions of domestic workers, more states may be encouraged to go for their state legislations like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra etc.
The AITUC has put forward a demand : that the private placement agencies for recruiting domestic workers in India should be banned and a national level board should be constituted for regulating the employment of domestic workers on the line of Mathadi workers in Maharashtra.
The central trade union organisations (CTUOs) while supporting this convention, also see quite a few problems in enforcing it even if and when the Government ratifies it and brings forward a law. The middle class in urban centres will be affected by such a law and is likely to be unhappy with it. It is all private sector matter and that too largely a one-to-one case. Therefore, its implementation at ground level will be a Herculean job. Moreover, the UPA Government is hardly interested in enforcing labour laws because of its anxiety to ensure liberalisation and privatisation of the economy.
In this backdrop, it will be largely left to CTUOs to jointly raise their voice for domestic workers: first, to see that the UPA Government ratifies the ILO Convention and secondly, steadily ensure that at least minimum wage issue is enforced. The case of Anganwadi workers and helpers did eventually take shape and the Government was forced to agree to improve their monthly entitlements. Maid servants case too deserves attention of CTUOs similarly.
The adoption of ILO convention on domestic workers should now help to register a breakthrough at the international level, too, so that ILO is able to adopt a similar binding convention regarding contract workers and migrant workers. The developed Western countries have been opposing it earlier. (IPA Service)