Domestic workers face abuse

JULIEN NEAVES

DIRECTOR of the Service Workers Co-operative Society Ida Le Blanc is calling on Government to ratify an International Labour Organisation (ILO) to help provide legal protection for thousands of workers who face abuses such as being paid under minimum wage and being forced to do additional duties without additional pay.

She said this country had signed ILO’s Convention 189 on domestic workers but had not ratified it like Guyana and Jamaica. Le Blanc said most of the members of the co-operative were from the National Union of Domestic Employees and continued to fight because domestic workers were not recognised as workers in the Industrial Relations Act. She said workers could work for an extended period for an employer and if they were fired they had no recourse. She said another issue was national insurance and some employers did not pay it despite it being mandatory.

“They say every creed and race find an equal place. Why domestic workers can’t find an equal place?” She was speaking with Sunday Newsday yesterday, during an ILO Decent Work Team and Office for the Caribbean Tripartite Validation of Domestic Workers’ Model Contract workshop held at the Bureau of Standards, Macoya. The purpose of the workshop was to present a model contract to assist the thousands of workers who have no protection or recognition under the law. She said they invited the trade unions to the workshop but none attended and she was disappointed by the lack of support. Asked about the number of domestic workers in the country Le Blanc said there were different figures but her organisation believed it was 30,000.

Attorney and industrial relations practitioner Vanessa Thomas-Williams explained she was hired to prepare a model contract to be used by the co-operative to facilitate an arrangement to provide services to clients, whether homeowners or companies. She is also developing an employee agreement which will be between the domestic workers and the co-operative.

“The intention would be to ensure that there is adequate protection for domestic workers in Trinidad and Tobago.”

She said, within a week, the model contracts would be available for use once approved by the co-operative and from input by the ILO. She explained the contracts had offered the co-operative the unique opportunity to operate as a recruitment agency acting on behalf of domestic workers.

Althea Coombs-Rivas, co-operative vice president and a domestic worker for more than 20 years, said she had been taken advantage of by employers. She recalled one instance of going to work for one woman and then being made to work for a number of families in the home. “Is not like she will raise the salary for the extra work (sic). You have to do the extra work without a complaint either. You just can’t say anything. And that is not fair.”

She was threatened with termination and told if she wanted to leave she could leave. She said, like many domestic workers, she was the family breadwinner and took the money although it was small.

She said the contract would be a big protection for domestic workers. Coombs-Rivas added, however, that some domestic workers were ashamed to come out and identify themselves.