Hope for domestic workers?
|
COMMENTS 
Karnataka was the first to notify minimum wages and working conditions for domestic labour. But in the six years since, not a single complaint about non-payment of minimum wages has been filed. A recent public hearing in Bangalore proposed several other measures to ensure that domestic workers are not exploited
Life has been hard on Rukminiamma, an orphan at three years. To escape ill-treatment at the hands of her sister-in-law, she took up construction work at the age of 10. She was married at 14, but to escape her husband’s torture she started working as a domestic worker from 6 am to 8 am, before going on to her regular work from 8 am to 6 pm.
Rukminiamma started doing domestic work for a salary of Rs 8 per month, with a yearly increment of Rs 10. Now 70 years old, she has been working in the same house in Bangalore for the last 50 years. Her current salary is Rs 500; there is no weekly off, or sick leave. She remembers with deep sorrow that the day her sister-in-law died, her employer insisted she finish her work and then attend the funeral.
Smitha (11) and her sister Shruti (9) (names changed) were left in a house by their stepfather to work as child domestic workers when they were just eight and six years old respectively. They received only food and clothes, no salary. They would work from 6 am to 9 am, and then attend school. When they returned, they would resume working from 3 pm to 3 am. They were told to massage the feet of an elderly couple in the house late at night. If they said they were sleepy, they would be slapped. If they did not massage properly, they would be kicked. If they were found eating something or talking to the neighbours, they would be kicked or beaten with a belt. They would sleep on the balcony; if it rained they would wake up and go without sleep. If the family went out anywhere, they would lock the sisters inside the house.
Usha Thopna, 20, was brought from Assam to work in Bangalore by a placement agency. For two long years she was made to work from 5 am to 10 pm without proper food. She would do all the housework, look after the children, drop them to school and pick them up. If her employers were unhappy with her work they would beat her with a cricket bat, scar her with a hot iron or stab her with scissors. It turned out that the placement agency was neither registered nor had a licence.
Employer Naveen Shah says there are many placement agencies that take between Rs 4,000 and 10,000 as an initial deposit, which is never returned. They also demand Rs 5,000 as a monthly salary from employers, but pay the domestic worker just Rs 2,500. Some placement agencies exist only on paper -- on a letterhead. They cannot be found at the address given, or they simply pack up and leave after collecting vast sums from employers.
These were some of the cases presented at a public hearing on the plight of domestic workers organised by Stree Jagruti Samiti and the South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM) in Bangalore recently. They showcase the myriad problems domestic workers face -- physical, mental and sexual -- while working behind closed doors in private households.
The National Alliance of Women (NAWO) has held several consultations on domestic workers, in association with the National Centre for Labour (NCL) in Bangalore.
This spurt in dialogue was triggered by the ILO putting on its agenda, at its 99th session in June 2010, an item on ‘Decent Work for Domestic Workers’, with a view to adopting international labour standards, possibly in the form of a convention supplemented by a recommendation. “From small beginnings 25 years ago, when people ridiculed us for trying to organise domestic workers and questioned whether women could lead trade unions, our issue has reached the ILO in Geneva,” says Ruth Manorama, president of NAWO, winner of the Right Livelihood Award and founder of Women’s Voice, one of the first to form a Domestic Workers Union. “Today, if a domestic worker dies in Bangalore, the complaint can be taken up in Geneva,” she adds.
As a result of efforts by unions in Bangalore, Karnataka was one of the first states to fix minimum wages for domestic workers. The minimum wage notification also entitled them to a weekly off, and banned child labour under 14 years. But the wages fixed in 2004, apart from being incredibly complicated to calculate, required one to pay a basic amount of approximately Rs 200 per month for an hour’s work, and Rs 1,600 per month for eight hours of work which, with dearness allowance, amounted to Rs 310.36 and Rs 2,533.30 respectively at 2009 prices in Bangalore. One can see how incredibly low the sums are considering that according to estimates one needs at least Rs 6,000 per month to survive in a city like Bangalore.
The sad part, according to Deputy Labour Commissioner Manjunath, is that in all these six years no one has used the minimum wage notification to file even a single complaint about non-payment of minimum wages. Activists say that if a domestic worker files a complaint, employers are bound to dismiss the worker immediately as the law does not offer protection against dismissal of such workers. They demand that the labour department enforce the minimum wage by inspecting the workplace of the domestic worker. But another perverse aspect of the law is that it does not allow labour inspectors to enter private homes to conduct inspections! They can take action only when someone complains.
Despite this, several draft Bills for a national legislation to protect domestic workers have been framed over the years by the National Commission for Women (NCW), the Domestic Workers Rights Campaign, the National Campaign Committee for Unorganised Sector Workers, the National Domestic Workers Movement, etc. The Centre too has supposedly come up with a draft National Policy on Domestic Workers (2010) which is yet to appear in the public domain.
Most civil society drafts of a policy and Bill on domestic workers call for separate legislation for domestic workers, regulating their employment, work conditions, social security and welfare. They demand compulsory registration of all employers, workers and service-providers, including placement agencies and contractors, and the issuing of identity cards and written employment contracts. They also call for a fixed minimum wage -- a ‘living wage’ -- linked to increases in the cost price index. And they demand core labour standards in terms of regulation of working hours, rest days, annual and sick leave, payment of overtime, proper living quarters and amenities, notices for termination of employment, and occupational safety.
The other demand is for social security comprising medical care and benefits, life insurance, bonus, gratuity, pension, maternity leave and benefits, childcare facilities, education facilities, etc -– facilities that regular workers receive but which domestic workers are denied as they have never been considered workers. Given the hazards faced by immigrant workers whose passports are often seized by employers, special provisions for the protection of immigrant workers are also being sought. A proper grievance-redressal mechanism and penalties for violators of the law complete the demands.
Most drafts call for the creation of a welfare fund to be fed by contributions from employers -- a worker’s monthly salary, a matching contribution from the government, and a small contribution from the employee. They also ask for the establishment of a tripartite domestic workers welfare board, comprising representatives of workers, employers and government, to be set up from central and state level down to district and local body level.
Ram Shankar Tiwari, former Regional Labour Commissioner, Government of India, noted at the consultation organised by NAWO and NCL that there are 169 listed occupations, each with about 10 million workers. He questioned the feasibility and viability of having 169 separate laws and tripartite boards for each of these occupations. He also pointed out that most countries have only 10-15 labour laws. One of the recommendations that emerged from the consultation was that if tripartite boards reached right down to local body level, just three sections within a single board -- for wage-workers, home-based workers and the self-employed -- would be sufficient to deal with all unorganised workers, including domestic workers. While there could be a common law on core labour standards for all unorganised workers, as far as regulation of employment and conditions of service were concerned, a few special provisions could be made for specific occupations, considering their particular work circumstances.
It could also deter employers from employing domestic workers if they had to contribute towards the social security of every worker, even temporary or short-stay ones. One suggestion was that a general cess be levied on high-end consumer items that the rich and middle class (usually the ones who employ domestic workers) buy, in lieu of collecting individual contributions from them.
R K A Subrahmanya, former Secretary General, Social Security Association of India, and former Secretary, Union Ministry of Labour, pointed out that it was possible to cover domestic workers under the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2009. Since there is already this common law for social security, he felt that legislation for domestic workers could be restricted to regulation of employment and conditions of service.
The ILO has made it possible for the experiences of Rukminiamma and others like her to be heard by the rest of the world. But will it change the hearts and minds of those exploiting them back home?
(Kathyayini Chamaraj is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore who has been writing for over 20 years on development issues, especially on unorganised, women and child labour, primary education and urban development for Deccan Herald, The Hindu, India Together, etc. She is also Executive Trustee of CIVIC, Bangalore)
Infochange News & Features, June 2010