Protecting domestic workers

MANILA, Philippines – Among the female workers who comprise 60% of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), the majority are household service workers or domestic workers. Unfortunately, however, domestic work is hardly recognized even in the laws and standards of international labor organizations. As anthropologist Dr. Nanette Dungo wrote in a recent paper for a workshop on “Promoting the Welfare of Overseas Domestic and Service Workers” conducted by the Center for Research and Communication, it is only very recently with the globalizing currents which brought on the international trends of the feminization of labor that ILO began considering a rethinking about the condition of female domestic workers.

Whether in the Philippines or abroad, these domestic workers are highly vulnerable to abuses of labor standards and other human rights violations.

Despite this new recognition of domestic/household work locally, there are still no standards that will provide the basis for determining the specific tasks, duties, and work conditions of household service workers. There is ordinarily no formal contract signed between the employer and employee that defines the terms of work, including the wage, much less the benefits such as health and pension with which other contracted workers are provided. The employer’s family may be large or small, which can have implications on the volume of work to be done by the household service employee.

There are some countries that provide domestic workers some benefits such as tax exemptions, health benefits, transportation, cultural information, and hotline services. Among them are Bahrain, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. These benefits, however, do not include protection guaranteed to other workers such as working hours, day-offs, access to labor courts, and other measures that ensure protection and security. There is increasing pressure for all countries to develop an annex to their existing labor laws that would cover household service workers. As of 2008 only Hongkong, Italy, South Africa and the Philippines have laws specific to domestic workers.

For this reason, it is important for the Philippine government, through several of its agencies such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of Labor, to actively work for multilateral or bilateral agreements among receiving and sending countries for the protection of domestic helpers. In a research efforts to give guidelines to policy makers and legislators about the rationalization of the deployment of domestic workers to the Middle East and East Asia, Dr. Trinidad Osteria of De La Salle University identified some key areas where multilateral or bilateral agreements should be pursued for the welfare of Filipino domestic helpers abroad:

1. Simplification of immigration procedures and regulations pertaining to the hiring and deployment of migrant workers. This can be complemented by harmonization of procedures and protocols among countries that are considered source areas (i.e., Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines) and the receiving areas (i.e., Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Middle East countries).

2. Regional consolidation of regulations governing the migrant labor recruitment industry. Placement agencies and labor brokers need to operate under consistent and coherent protocols and standards adopted by the region whether they are in sending or receiving areas. Eventually these can be harmonized between sending and receiving areas.

3. Improvement of the capacity of public authorities to generate, share, and utilize relevant labor market information as inputs to policy planning. Basic research ought to be shared which can be exchanged and utilized both by sending and receiving countries to develop effective policy responses. Standardization of reporting is required.

4. Establishment of effective mechanisms to monitor the implementation of regional agreements and commitments. This presumes that constituent countries in the sending and receiving clusters have agreed to such agreements. Regional concurrence to these protocols is sought and national authorities need to be convinced of the harmonization of their respective national policies with regional standards.

5. Accommodation of a multi-level and multi-stakeholder approach to decision-making. This process involves not only the official public authorities but also intergovernmental, civil society or non-state players and stakeholders and researchers at the regional levels; and

6. Promotion of wider and deeper cultural and information exchanges between sending and receiving countries. Such links provide the bases for bridging the differences that push the negative perceptions against domestic migrants.

Unilateral moves of the Philippine government will have very limited effectiveness if the receiving countries do not cooperate in the protection of OFWs in the area of household service work. In the absence of multilateral agreements, the Philippine government should pursue the bilateral route in attaining the maximum protection of our OFWs. The highest priorities should be given to bilateral agreements with the biggest importers of Filipino domestic helpers: Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Kuwait, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, and Cyprus.

In the meantime, the Philippine government should be very cautious about implementing knee-jerk reactions such as setting minimum wages, banning workers from going to specific countries, and mandating insurance and other transaction costs. For comments, my e-mail address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph. –BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS, Manila Bulletin