11) DOMESTIC WORKERS WIN NEW LABOUR STANDARDS

     In June 2011, the international labour movement, working closely with domestic workers around the globe, brought the voices of these mostly women workers to the International Labour Organization in Geneva where a new convention was passed.

     The ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers sets out specific standards for the treatment of Live‑In Caregivers, which includes giving domestic workers employed in people's homes the right to form unions. It also establishes standards such as working hours, maternity leave and minimum wage.

     The Canadian Labour Congress funded women to attend the ILO meeting, including four domestic workers' advocates from Canada. CLC Vice-President Barbara Byers indicated in a press release that, "Having these women present made it a different discussion, because when employers and governments have said `we don't have problems in our country', there were domestic workers there who would say `actually, you do have problems in your country, and we've seen many cases where people come from our country to your country and experience serious workplace abuses'."

     One result already seen in Canada by the passing of this Convention is that on Dec. 15, 2011, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced the federal government will finally allow Live‑In Caregivers to benefit from open work permits after completing nearly 4000 hours of work. This long overdue change for these predominantly female workers ends the lack of choice that required them to remain tied to an employer who could easily abuse labour standards, while the worker waited for the permanent residency application to be reviewed. The previous process was lengthy and contributed to a situation of indentured servitude, where if a worker registered a complaint against their employer, they risked losing their work visa and their job.

     The new ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers is an important and historic victory. The CLC has stated that the next step is to ratify and implement the Convention within Canadian labour law, so that the 150,000 Live‑In Caregivers currently working in the country can have access to what the rest of the world has now recognized as basic labour rights for domestic workers. The CLC is now calling on the Canadian government to ratify and implement the ILO Domestic Worker Convention.

(The above article is from the March 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)