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Marcelina Bautista is general secretary of the
Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Domestic Workers (CONLACTRAHO),
formed at the First Latin American and Caribbean Meeting of Domestic
Workers celebrated in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1988.
She has known firsthand from a very early
age what the working conditions of domestics are like in her native
Mexico, and from her position as head of CONLACTRAHO she has also
learned that the situation of these workers is not much different
throughout the region.
The interview was scheduled for 9 a.m. at the
Training and Support Center for Domestic Workers
in
Mexico City. We arrived there with Héctor Martínez Mora,
of the Sole Union of Restaurant and Hotel
Workers and Employees, an IUF affiliate.
Marcelina
greeted us warmly and answered our questions as she took a call and
gave out advise over the phone. Along with the advice, we heard her
repeat a reassurance:
“You’re
not alone. We’re here to help you.”
-Let me guess… the woman calling is a domestic who’s been fired,
right?
-Yes. We receive several calls a day from women who have been fired.
Workers who are let go after years of working in a household and who
find themselves out on the street with nowhere to go…
-Do
you have a record of how many domestics are employed by Mexican
households?
-According to the 2008 National Employment and Occupational Survey,
there are 1.8 million women working as domestics.
-Are there any men?
-Yes. Male workers make up approximately three percent of all
domestics.
-What can you do for them from here?
-Like you heard just now, we try to listen to these workers, we
offer our help, give advice and counsel women on what their rights
are as domestics. The greatest difficulty we face is that domestic
work is taken for granted by our employers, by the State and by
society as a whole. It’s not recognized as work.
-Employers don’t see themselves as hiring a service, but rather as
doing domestics a favor by giving them work…
-That’s right, that idea is widespread in society. And because they
expect us to feel grateful, our work is not recognized and our
rights are not respected. That situation is compounded by the lack
of legislation regulating this type of work in many countries of
Latin America.
We
know that the way to demand and enforce our rights is through
collective action, by organizing and forming unions.
-Does the invisibility and lack of recognition of domestic work
foster all kinds of abuses?
-First we have to bear in mind that domestics start working at a
very young age…
-Was that your case?
-Yes, I started working at 14, after I finished elementary school.
So, as I was saying, we start out very young, many of us have to
drop out of school, leave our families and our culture behind and
move into a new world, with different values.
Right from the start we are thrust into a process of submission,
because we are forced to adapt to the dynamics and culture of the
family we work for.
Because we need the job -and in many cases our families also need
the money we bring in-, we tend to put up with a lot of abuse. As
you pointed out, there can be no worker-employer relationship when
the employer’s attitude is:
“I’m
being generous just by giving you a job. So be grateful and do what
you’re told.”
-And that message is internalized by the worker, who incorporates it
unconsciously…
-Yes, that happens a lot. Many women, when they come to us, start
discussing their situation by saying,
“My
employer was very kind, she was really good to me…”.
When you have that kind of relationship, it’s not easy to make any
demands. For example, many of us live and eat in the same house we
work at, and that’s not seen as part of our pay. When we demand
improvements, our employers usually refuse and retort with,
“That’s
the thanks I get?! After we opened up our home to you and treated
you like one of the family!”
-And if you unionize, they act like you’re betraying them…
-Exactly. And if we even mention a work contract, they take it as a
threat that we’re going to report them, when that’s not necessarily
the case. A contract allows us to establish an employment
relationship, with rights and obligations, where we can also
accumulate years towards retirement.
You wouldn’t
believe how many women who’ve worked their entire lives can’t retire
because their employers failed to pay their social security
contributions.
-So
it’s ‘I give you a job, but don’t demand any rights’…
-Something as common in other fields of work as demanding your
rights is seen as a provocation in domestic work, as ingratitude and
thoughtlessness towards our employers. All this makes it easier for
us to be exploited, marginalized and abused. For example, in
Mexico most workers put in 14- to 16-hour workdays.
You always know
when you have to start working, but you never know when you’re going
to be off.
-What other problems do domestic workers face?
-One of the most common problems is unjustified dismissal. Domestics
can be fired whenever their employers feel like it, at any age, with
no apparent reason and without severance pay.
Another common problem occurs when a domestic gets pregnant. The way
it’s usually dealt with here is that employers will tell pregnant
women,
“Go
home and come back when you’re fit to work again.”
For that reason, many domestics don’t inform their employers they’re
pregnant, or they only do so when they’re into their sixth or
seventh month, for fear of being fired.
-What advice do you give women who are looking for work?
-We
ask them to fill out a form indicating how much they want to earn,
what tasks they’re good at and what sort of work they’re looking
for. Many women want to be hired as day workers, realizing that as
sleep-in domestics they’ll have to work many hours a day and that
that situation exposes them to greater exploitation. But as day
workers they face other problems, because employers refuse to pay
the day wage these workers ask for, and many domestics are hired for
one day a week only and are expected to do a week’s worth of
cleaning in that one day.
-How do you support the workers?
-We
have our networks. For example, employers learn through the media or
through other employers that a network of domestics has been formed
and they form their own communication networks. So when a woman
comes to us looking for work, we try to place her in a job with the
best conditions; we talk to the potential employer (usually the lady
of the house), asking her about working hours, holidays, etc., and
telling her how much she’s expected to pay for the work she wants
done.
-Doesn’t that drive employers away?
-Yes, a lot of the time they tell us: “I have to discuss it with my
husband, because it seems like a lot of money,” and if they don’t
like the wage we asked for, they never call us back.
-But there must also be a lot of people who want to do the right
thing.
-Yes, that's also true. We offer employers security, but we demand
the same for workers.
-In
a way, the State contributes to this situation of exploitation…
-The State knows that domestic workers are a significant part of the
economy, because we’re not talking about a thousand workers, we’re
talking about almost 2 million domestics.
So, yes, I think
we’re also belittled by the State.
We’ve found support in some government agencies, like the Mexico
City Human Rights Commission, which sponsored our campaign for
domestic workers’ rights, and has enabled us to strengthen our
organization. But we demand that the authorities as a whole assume
the responsibility of defending the rights of domestic workers.
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