ILO meet in June next to debate plight of domestic workers

Bangalore: The 99th conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), scheduled for June 2010, will debate the plight of domestic workers and set standards on their entitlement to decent work conditions and pay.

N.M. Adyanthaya, member of the ILO governing body, revealed this at the two-day workshop on protection of domestic workers, organised by the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) here on Thursday. He said the conference would be attended by Labour Ministers from 186 countries.

Sanjiv Kumar, national project coordinator of ILO in Karnataka, said that though the State had set minimum wages for domestic workers in 2004, it was hardly being implemented. Workers were themselves unaware of its existence, he added. He also emphasised the need for a system for skill upgrading and certification for domestic workers.

‘Service’

Geetha Menon, secretary of Stree Jagruti Samiti, said domestic workers were not only badly paid and disorganised, but also suffered from a poor notion of self worth. Workers should recognise domestic work as “service”, she added.

“Though pay has gone up for a section of workers, the basic power relationships have remained unaltered,” she said.

Big apartments had a system of separate entry and toilets for servants and treated them as second-class citizens, she said. She suggested that registration of workers and proof of service be made mandatory.

Placing the demand for decent work conditions and pay for domestic workers in the global context, Raghawan from the Bureau of Workers’ Activities, Asia and Pacific, ILO, said there was a spectrum of responses across the globe on the issue of domestic workers. The very idea of a day’s off for domestic workers was an abhorrent idea in many countries, he added. “Even if an international convention is passed on domestic work, it is for individual governments to make suitable laws to enforce it,” he said.