Long
overdue rights for domestic workers
Sohoon
Lee and Nicola Piper ; The
writers are re from the University of Sydney and are members of the Sydney
Southeast Asia Center; They wrote Contribution of Migrant Domestic Workers to
Sustainable Development, published as a policy paper for the Global Forum on
Migration and Development by UN Women
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JAKARTA
POST, 18 Juni 2014
Stories
of domestic worker Erwiana Sulistyaningsih made headlines when she spoke out
against her employer’s abhorrent abuse while working in Hong Kong. Gruesome
cuts and burns on her body were so bad that she was unable to walk when she
returned to Jakarta.
Details
of her case reveal more than the beating and physical abuse she suffered
during the eight months she was in Hong Kong. She was not able to sleep or
eat adequately, had to work as long as 20 hours a day and was not allowed a
day off.
However,
the Indonesian public, who were indignant at the sight of Erwiana, may be
ignoring an even more marginalized group of domestic workers. Those within
their own borders, who face the same level of contempt and abuse as
experienced by their counterparts who go overseas, if not worse.
Just a
month after Erwiana’s return to Indonesia, Yuliana Leiwer fled the home of
her abusive employer Mutiara Situmorang in Bogor, West Java. Not only was she
the wife of a retired police general, the report attracted attention as there
were 15 other domestic workers in the same household who reported physical
abuse and forced servitude. Yuliana and the other domestic workers had not
been paid in months. According to the Bogor Legal Aid Institute (LBH Bogor),
seven of the 16 workers were 17.
Yuliana’s
story may be an extreme example, but domestic workers here often face
abusive, degrading and disrespectful treatment from their employers. Part of
the problem is the lack of legal mechanisms that regulate domestic work,
which leaves domestic workers in legal limbo. The labor laws exclude domestic
workers and politicians have been dragging their feet for years finalizing
the draft of the domestic workers law. This means employers are free to set
the rules.
According
to the National Labor Force Survey, there were 2.6 million domestic workers
in 2012, 75 percent of them were female. Together with 3 million women
migrant workers abroad, by 2012 there were at least 5 million Indonesian
women and girls working as domestic workers.
What links
the stories of Erwiana and Yuliana and the millions of domestic workers here
is the long-overdue recognition of domestic work as proper work and their
rights as workers. Such recognition would be important because better labor
protection for migrant domestic workers in destination countries translates
into more remittances and better development prospects for countries of
origin, as we argue in our report for UN Women. This is true for Indonesia
where domestic workers comprise almost 50 percent of all migrant workers but
are paid substantially less than their male counterparts.
Likewise,
local domestic workers in Indonesia come primarily from poor families in
rural areas and their income is usually vital for their families’ survival.
Better working conditions for them would, therefore, improve the lives of the
poor.
June 16
was International Domestic Workers’ Day, which marks the adoption of the
International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 189 on Decent Work
for Domestic Workers. This convention is a landmark treaty that set standards
for the treatment of domestic workers, finally giving a largely invisible
workforce the same level of protection formal workers have benefited from.
The convention affirms that domestic workers are not “helping hands” but workers who should be able to work under
conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.
At the
time of its adoption, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono showed his support
for protecting all domestic workers by stating at the ILO Congress in Geneva
that in addition to migrant domestic workers, “those domestic workers who work within their own countries must also
be given the same protection”.
He
stated that voting in favor of the adoption of this convention would help
Indonesia “formulate effective national
legislation and regulations”. It has, however, been three years since his
explicit support of the convention and four years since the deliberation of
the draft domestic workers law began.
In the
meantime, 14 countries have ratified convention No. 189. Indonesian domestic
workers, by contrast, are still waiting for the long overdue respect of their
rights and recognition of their contribution to society. ●
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