In India, domestic helps need protection and respect

But Sengupta, who is 46 and has worked more than 30 of those years as a domestic worker in various households, has no trouble understanding the issues involved.

“Because it’s women’s work, and it’s the dirty household jobs, the work we do is not taken seriously—even though people wouldn’t  be able to run their lives without us,” she said. “But unlike the norms in offices, every house I have worked in has had different ideas of what I should be paid, how much time off I can have, how much sugar I can put in my tea. Maybe people won’t follow the laws overnight, but if there are laws in place protecting workers like me, people might think before they treat us badly.”

The platitude most commonly heard in India is that domestic workers are part of the family, which belies the depressing slew of stories about underpaid or physically abused workers. A 2005 National Human Rights Commission study and a 2008 study by the women’s support group Jagori have documented how this section of the Indian labour market is especially vulnerable to trafficking, financial and sexual exploitation and forcible confinement.

The ILO estimates that there are at least 4.75 million domestic workers employed in private households in India, of which 3.4 million, or roughly 72 per cent, are women. Until a few years ago, domestic workers in India had few rights and were poorly organised. For some, the sense of powerlessness is still strong.

Gita, who works as a household helper in Gurgaon, voiced the frustrations of many when she said: “Tell me, will the government tell my employer to give me a day off every week and a salary raise? Because if I tell her, she will fire me.” For the same reason, she did not want her full name to be published. Gita’s 10- to 14-hour daily shift nets her Rs 5,800, less than $130, a month.

Other people in India are more aware of shifts and changes in the laws, which may parallel a rising discomfort among members of the middle class with the often feudal ways in which domestic workers have historically been treated.

Sister Jeanne Devos, a Belgian-born Roman Catholic nun and national coordinator for the National Domestic Workers’ Movement, has been monitoring the situation of such workers since the mid-1980s.

“The situation is changing rather fast, and in the last five years we have seen great improvement,” Sister Jeanne said. Seven Indian states have passed laws bringing domestic workers under the Minimum Wage Act, a small but significant recognition of basic rights.

Health benefits

Social security benefits will be available for the first time soon, with the government announcing health insurance coverage for domestic workers and three family members. And Sister Jeanne hopes that the norms set by the ILO convention will be accepted by individual Indian states, even if it takes a few years for the Central government to ratify the convention.

One of the more contentious issues for domestic workers in India is the question of workplace safety. A landmark bill in 2010 tackling sexual harassment in the workplace was criticised for omitting domestic workers. The argument of its framers was that it would be difficult to police private homes.

Reiko Tsushima, senior specialist on gender equality and female worker issues at the ILO, offers a nuanced perspective. “Domestic work has often been considered an extension of women’s work, and there needs to be a consensus that the home is also a workplace,” she said. If all Indian states accept the labour ministry recommendation that domestic workers be covered under the Minimum Wage Act across the country, said Tsushima, this would underline that the home is a workplace.

“It has been a very exciting time in the last five years,” she said. “The hope is that domestic workers will have ground to stand on with the new policy and legislative developments, and that the idea that they are entitled to rights will take hold. A significant part of policy and legislative focus up to now has been on social
protection/welfare, but it’s shifting towards rights and regulating working conditions.”

One of the strongest voices among domestic workers is that of Baby Haldar, whose best-selling memoir, “A Life Less Ordinary,” was published in 2002. Haldar, 37, has been fine-tuning a sequel and continues to work as a maid in the house of a professor she considers a mentor and friend.

“There needs to be a change on the ground,” she said. “I am treated with respect, but so many other women are not. The courts and the government pass many, many laws. What we really need is an acknowledgement that the work we do in a household is important.”

In her memoir, Haldar wrote about the households she’d worked in before she found her present employer, where the dignity and rights she felt entitled to — good working conditions, free time — were denied, as they have often been to domestic workers in India.

“Some people understand that we are looking after the most precious things in their lives — their homes, their children, their parents, their mental peace is in our hands,” she said. “That attitude among employers needs to spread. “Changing the law is good, but the real change we want, it starts with respect.”