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Min wages for domestic workers? by Subodh Ghildiyal


There may be succour in store for the exploited lot of `domestic workers' with a key government panel recommending that `placement agencies', which work as mediators in employment of helps, should be regulated. It has also decided that government should ask states to declare minimum wages for these workers.

The panel said that the Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1953, should regulate placement agencies. If this is implemented, the agencies will have to maintain records of domestic helps placed, details of employers, wages, mode of payment, working hours, nature of work, and will have to keep them open for scrutiny.

These recommendations come from a central task force which, noting that `domestic workers' such as `maids' are overworked and underpaid, said that agencies were exploiting them.

It recorded, "There are a large number of placement agencies who engage in fraudulent practices, mobilize large number of vulnerable and tribal population for work... they regulate the conditions of work, wages and service agreements with the employer in lieu of commissions."

Domestic helps, mostly women from states like Jharkhand and Orissa, have been slogging as migrant workers without a protection umbrella. But there are signals of concern for them now. The National Social Security Board, which looks at unorganized workers for targeted welfare schemes under the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act, 2008, has identified `domestic workers' as the first occupation for redressal.

In its report, the NSSB task force has recommended that Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana and National Pension Scheme should be extended to domestic helps. The RSBY is a health insurance benefit upto Rs 30,000 for BPL. It said that benefits for health and maternity, death and disability, and old-age, should follow.

The extension of RSBY is significant. The task force said as the RSBY is run on biometric cards, its extension to helps will give them a permanent identity and later benefits can be better targeted without fears of leakage.

While recommendations on benefits are likely to be implemented, those on regulation of agencies and amelioration on working conditions of domestic helps will have to be examined by the government.

The `household' will continue to be private space without any legislative intrusion, but the regulation of agencies will force better working conditions for the helps.

`Domestic work' is a vast employment area without any sense of its exact size and nature. The task force said the number of workers varies from 4.75 million to 6.4 million. The sector is said to have grown by 222% since 2000.

As most of the workers come from vulnerable sections, they do not understand the urban labour market and are exploited.

The task force has recommended that the Centre direct the states to include domestic helps under state minimum wages Act. AP, Bihar, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Dadar and Nagar Haveli have already moved in this regard, and the Central panel now wants it to become a nationwide feature.