Domestic workers still outside the ambit of minimum wages, finds study

‘Live-in workers faced additional challenges of work conditions akin to forced or bonded labour’

With multiple employers and the non-applicability of labour laws, domestic workers struggle to access minimum wages, social protection or workplace safety and health, all of which are integral to the decent working conditions of a domestic worker as stated in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Domestic Worker Convention, 2011, a recent study has found.

The study, ‘Road Map for Developing a Policy Framework for the Inclusion of Internal Migrant Workers in India’, observed that live-in workers faced additional challenges of work conditions akin to forced or bonded labour, including a lack of privacy, defined working hours, and access to trade unions or other organisations working with domestic workers. The study was brought out by the ILO in collaboration with Aajeevika Bureau and the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development.

By packaging accommodation as a “perk”, migrant workers living in their employer’s residences are put to highly exploitative circumstances where they are available to the employer for work round-the-clock. Deceptive or coercive recruitment without revealing the nature of work, wages or working conditions, excessive deductions purportedly for food and accommodation, forced migration on account of an often intergenerational debt bondage even amounting to human trafficking were other issues faced by migrants, including domestic workers.

The study observed that though the coverage of the provisions for minimum wages and payment of wages had been legally extended to all employees under the recently introduced labour code on wages, it did not explicitly include in its ambit several vulnerable segments of the workforce, such as domestic workers, home-based workers or workers in the gig economy.

Women migrant workers also face lack of safety and frequent sexual harassment by co-workers and contractors and lack of access to basic services and infrastructure means that they end up working longer hours to overcome the poverty experienced by their households. Migrant women have poor access to antenatal and postnatal care and often come back to work within 15-20 days of delivery as they cannot afford to lose wages.

The study recommended effective implementation of the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act of 2013 for protecting the rights of women migrant workers in the informal sector. Local bodies must also set up women’s resource centres near informal settlements in migrant dense clusters, so that women workers have a safe space to seek counselling and support for reporting cases of domestic violence or sexual harassment.