Introduction:
Domestic workers, estimated to be around 5 crores, are found in almost all the urban and semi-urban households in our country. Even if the concept of male domestic workers or helpers (E.g., Rama Gadi in Maharashtra) has been present for a long time, it is the women who make up to 80% of domestic workers because of the gendered notion of housework.
In current times of the pandemic, according to UNDP and UN women estimates, 72% of domestic workers lost their job due to the lockdowns and social distancing protocols. Given this background and my recent visit to a union meeting of domestic workers, this seemed like a good time to bring this issue up for discussion.
A family member or a worker?
We all have, at some point in our life, seen and interacted with a domestic worker; either at our own house or our relatives’ or our neighbours’. What do you call your domestic worker? -Bai? Mavshi? Maid? Servant? Didi? Akka? Ramu? I am sure there must be many other names in different regional languages to refer to the domestic workers.
The first fight of these workers starts right here - to be seen as workers! It's not only about the names by which they're addressed (sometimes, the employers use names like didi, mausi, akka as they're thought to be more respectful than bai, maid or servant). However, the justification used by the employers that “she is just like our family member”, may have other implications. If he/she is really considered as a family member, why does the domestic worker sit on the floor instead of a sofa or a dining table (if at all the household is ‘kind’ enough to offer her food or at least a lunch break) just like other family members? Why isn’t he/she allowed to use the washroom at her employer’s place? Why the worker is invited only for the preparation of the ceremony and not to the actual celebration in the household? Why isn’t he/she allowed to use the same lift that is used by the residents of the society? Why isn’t he/she given a bonus instead of a baksheesh that essentially is useless to them?
We easily forget the fact that OUR household is their WORKPLACE. It is because of them that the women from the upper class and caste, who can afford to keep a domestic worker, can now go out and work in their offices (since unfortunately the burden of the household chores is still not divided equally between the sexes). That is to say that one of the reasons behind the increase in the FLPR (female labour force participation rate) in the formal sector is the domestic workers. Then but obviously the domestic workers should also be seen as workers; workers with rights! Unfortunately, even the domestic workers have internalized this attitude that has its origin in the tradition of bonded labour; where it is the duty of one particular household (mostly from the lower caste) to serve the other upper caste household in return for food and sometimes a room (corner would be more appropriate) to sleep. This internalization of the age-old attitude and tradition stops them from asking for their rights such as pay-raise, bonuses, weekly offs, paid sick leaves, lunch breaks.
The domestic workers go out of their way and do chores that aren’t even assigned to them in the first place, they keep working even if they’re treated poorly and are kept at the same wage rate for years, they keep looking after the children in the household like their own even if the children curse them when they grow up - all this just because of the emotional appeal and the internalised attitude of ‘they being an extended member of the family’. Therefore, the first struggle for any domestic workers' union is for the recognition of domestic workers as 'workers working in a workspace' by both – the domestic workers themselves and the employers.
Why the traditional trade unions won't work?
One such union fighting for domestic workers' rights is Bangalore’s Domestic Workers Rights Union (associated with Stree Jagriti Samiti). I recently got a chance to have a dialogue with Geetha Menon, the secretary of Stree Jagriti Samiti, and attend the monthly meeting of the union. Geetha was talking passionately about why there was a need for such unions and why traditional unions (usually associated with political parties) have not been able to give justice to this issue. According to her, domestic workers cannot be unionized under one big union since their workplace and employers differ. It is easy to mobilise the factory workers and protest against one employer (the factory owner or the government in the case of PSUs), but how can domestic workers from different areas of a state/region come together and against whom will they protest for their rights if there is no single employer?
For long, neither the traditional trade unions nor the government had recognized the domestic workers as workers. As Geetha Menon puts it, “even after so many years of independence, domestic workers have been invisible slaves. In spite of their contribution to the GDP, as enabling workers, they have been left out of the legal framework”. The first legislation - ‘Domestic Workers Welfare and Social Security Act, 2010’, drafted by the National Commission for Women was brought in 2010. But little progress has been made in passing this bill so far. To date, we didn’t even have the exact figure of the domestic workers since there is no law mandating any registration process. It is now (2021) that the central government has launched the first-ever ‘All India Survey on Domestic Workers’ that will cover all 742 districts in 37 states and Union Territories. However, the definitional issue still persists. Domestic workers are not included in the scope of several labour laws because of the constraints in definitions of “workman”, “employer” or “establishment”. Nature of their work, specificity of employee-employer relationship and their workplace being a private household instead of a public place/private establishment, excludes their coverage from the existing laws.
Given these limitations of the Indian legislation and the limitations of the traditional trade unions in raising issues of the domestic workers on a national platform, forming a different type of union was necessary. Bangalore’s Domestic Workers Rights Union hence mobilizes domestic workers in small groups in each ward and demands legislation for the protection of their rights from the state. The traditional trade unions only look at the economic questions of the workers and their rights at the workplace (mostly factories); The union of domestic workers, however, cannot limit itself only to that. We all have heard about the domestic violence faced by the domestic worker and the husband snatching away all the money earned by the woman. Many times, these precisely are the reasons why the employers refuse to give bonuses in cash and resort to giving a `baksheesh’. Therefore, the union also intervenes in the household matters of a domestic worker. Such interventions include prevention of domestic abuse, awareness among the employers, giving scholarships to their children (there have been many cases where especially the girl child was very ambitious but had to become a domestic worker like her mother because of their economic condition) etc. As part of the International Domestic Workers' Day (June 16) programme, the union has also launched an initiative called `Adopt a Granny’ for the elderly domestic workers who are sacked from the work and have no other source of income to spend the rest of their lives. Many such elderly women (above 60-65) have no one to look after them, no old-age security such as a pension, no alternative employment because of their age and the muscle pain incurred due to the extensive physical labour. This is the category that has lost its jobs during the lockdown and has been pushed out of work permanently. The fund generated under this initiative is used for such women. Even during my visit to the union meeting, I came across one such case of a domestic worker who was 65 years old, her muscles were all sore but she still had to work as she didn’t have anyone to look after her.
“We demand our basic rights as workers”:
The primary demands of the domestic workers are -
Registration of domestic workers and their employers with the Board (labour department of the state)
The effective implementation of the ‘Unorganised Workers Social Security and Welfare Act, 2008’: An Act enabling the central government to formulate welfare schemes for unorganized sector workers that include health and maternity benefits, life and disability cover, old age protection etc.
Access to toilets at the workplace: In a very heart-wrenching incident in Bangalore, one domestic worker had to pee on the doormat outside her employer’s house since she was not allowed to use the toilets in society and she lost her control after working for many hours straight. Shockingly, after viewing the CCTV footage of the incident, the society members held the victim responsible and blamed her; completely ignoring the reason which compelled her to compromise on her dignity like this! Thereafter, the union has been demanding that access to toilets within the households should be seen as a fundamental right of a worker.
Bonus and pay-raise: In many cases, the domestic worker keeps working at the same wage rate for many years in a household. A pay-raise (at least) every year or six months according to the inflation rates is one of the primary demands by these workers. The domestic workers’ unions in Bengaluru have also been encouraging the workers to ask for a cash bonus instead of a baksheesh (gift of a sari or sweets) around the festival season. The workers say that the extra money is much more useful to them than a sari as they can use it for additional household expenses and children’s education. The workers demand bonuses in cash as a recognition of their labour. However, most of the employers give baksheesh as ‘charity’ (daan) rather than ‘a tip for the good service’. In many places, the employers don’t pay bonuses saying that “anyways her drunkard husband snatches it all away”. Another popular argument by the employers is: “Akka” is our family member, we give her Sari out of love, how can she ask for a bonus in cash and monetise our relationship? The implicit assumption that sari as a gift is purer than the commodified bonus is evident in this type of argument. The following video (hardly 5 mins long) ‘what happens when a domestic worker asks for a bonus instead of baksheesh’ explains this very well, do watch it for a better understanding of this demand.
Struggle on two levels:
The struggle of domestic workers works on two levels – at the employer’s level and at the state level. As seen earlier, having a dialogue with the employer regarding the rights of the domestic worker is one of the means of reducing the exploitation. Fighting against the state to demand rights like formal registration, issuance of minimum wage, social security benefits etc has also been an important means of struggle. Recently, on 20th November 2021, Bangalore’s Domestic Workers Rights Union had organized one such Morcha in front of the labour commissioner’s office in Bangalore to demand answers about the social security measures offered during the Covid times.
Sometimes, the pressure to live up to their social status itself can push the employers to bring a change in their behaviour. In one instance in Bangalore, a domestic worker wasn’t offered a lunch break, let alone any food or water in the household she used to work. This made her extremely dizzy. After a few days, she brought a small tiffin from her house and sat in the passage outside her employer’s house in a way that the neighbours can see her. As expected, the neighbours did see her and asked why she was sitting outside; to which she immediately replied: “wo andar khane nahi dete” (they don’t let me have food). Since the very next day, her employers started offering her food and a lunch break!
हम लड़ेंगे कि लड़े बग़ैर कुछ नहीं मिलता (We shall fight comrade because one gets nothing without a fight)
The struggles of the domestic workers' union by far have been successful to some extent, but we still have a long way to go! Apart from the issues discussed above, caste discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace, victimization at the hands of traffickers or the placement agencies, forced migration, abuse, exploitation in times of gig economy are also very pertinent issues when we talk about the domestic workers; each of which will require a separate dedicated post.
Coming back to the union meeting in Venkatapura, Bangalore (entirely in Kannada, but we could understand a little and the rest was translated for us by Geetha), the one thing that stayed in my mind was the sheer persistence and courage of these women! The women who earlier couldn’t even raise their voice against their husbands, now mobilize other women, lead the protest and raise their voices so loud and clear that even the state is compelled to take a note of it! I strongly believe that the struggle of the domestic workers can be made heard and successful just like the recent successful struggle at ‘Urban Company’ (again, led by women); and we all have a crucial role to play in it - as an employer as well as their ally!
