ILO Caribbean Office Director's message to mark the milestone and support decent work for domestic workers

Today we mark the 10th Anniversary of Convention No. 189 - the Domestic Workers Convention . This landmark international labour instrument recognised domestic workers as workers that have the right to decent work, enabling them to enjoy their rights fully and given that the majority of domestic workers are women – advancing gender equality.

It is thus important on this day to emphasize the significant contribution of domestic workers to the global economy, which includes increasing paid job opportunities for workers with family responsibilities, greater scope for caring for ageing populations, children and persons with a disability, and substantial income transfers from within and between countries.

In the subregion of Latin America and the Caribbean over 14.8 million people are employed as domestic workers, 91.1 percent of them are women. Overall, domestic work represents 5.1 per cent of total employment and 8.4 per cent of employees.

 

Though generally labour legislation does not exclude domestic workers from its scope in Latin America and the Caribbean, it is worth noting that enforcement remains a challenge for a number of reasons including the fact that household are typically not classified as workplaces.

The impact of COVID-19 has further exacerbated the vulnerabilities of domestic workers. Compared with the last quarter of 2019, the number of domestic workers in the second quarter of 2020 decreased by about 50 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean with job losses that were higher for domestic workers in informal employment.

The ILO Office for the Caribbean has been supporting domestic workers organisations for decades. In the Caribbean, Grenada, Guyana and Jamaica have ratified C189. The ILO has been working with these three countries, as well as other countries to implement policies and actions that protect the rights of domestic workers. I would therefore encourage other countries in the region to consider ratifying this important Convention. To mark this tenth anniversary of C189 the ILO launched the report “Making decent work a reality for domestic workers: progress and prospections ten years after ratification of C189 ”.  The report reflects the ten years of implementation of the convention in its quest of making decent work a reality for domestic workers – the principle objective and title of Convention no. 189. Specifically, the report looks at progress in legal coverage over the last ten years, but also estimates the extent of effective coverage in 2020. The report provides an estimate of the size of legal and implementation gaps, and suggests practices to close those gaps.

Lastly, let me use this opportunity to restate ILO’s commitment to working with tripartite partners and organisations representing domestic workers in the region towards making decent work a reality for domestic workers.