DWU’s role as a leading social movement

In the early 2000s, two alarming stories about the precarious and hazardous plights of domestic workers circulated the plantation community in the Kandy district, eventually reaching organizers at the Ceylon Workers Red Flag Union (RFU). The first was about the death of a domestic worker in a gas explosion that had occurred in the house in which she worked in Colombo, and the second was about the suicide of a domestic worker who had an unintended pregnancy at the hands of her employer. Given the informal and unaccountable broker system functioning from within the plantation, in which numerous girls and women would be taken to the commercial capital together and distributed to employers, the parents of both of these young women had no idea as to where exactly in Colombo their daughters had been working at the time of the incidents. 

On hearing these stories Menaha Kandasamy, working as an organizer with the RFU at the time, was fueled to take action to address what she realised was not the occurrence of isolated incidents, but a widespread social problem. How prevalent were cases such as these, and how many remained unreported and hidden from public view? What kind of incidents actually took place? Domestic workers experienced numerous problems in their living and working lives which were not addressed by any legal framework within the country. Social attitudes were such that this group of workers were not considered legitimate labourers who required the rights and protections that other workers were granted; they were referred at the time only by the degrading terms servant or velakari  and there appeared to be no significant efforts on the part of civil society to bring these workers within the scope of legal protection and safeguard them from discrimination. Considering the situation such as it was, Menaha realized that here existed a significant working class problem that was in need of redress. Domestic workers needed to be organized. They needed a union.

Advised against organising workers

Menaha recalls her first time speaking with the Commissioner General of Labour on the subject of registering a domestic workers’ union. Her vision was dismissed, and she was advised against attempting to organize workers who were isolated in private households. 

Balasingham Skanthakumar, Senior Programme Officer at the ILO Country Office in Sri Lanka, explains how the workers that have been most difficult to safeguard through national legislation have been those in the informal sector. “Sri Lanka has a comprehensive and progressive set of labour laws. Yet what has happened over time is that the scope of coverage, and the number of people who enjoy these protections, has decreased to a small proportion of the active labour force.” Skanthakumar explains that this is due to the fact that jobs are increasingly undertaken outside the formal sector, and domestic work, because it is work that occurs inside the home, “behind high walls and closed doors” he quotes, has historically been regarded as domestic service. 

Skanthakumar sheds light on a key aspect of domestic work that makes it difficult to be regulated like other forms of work that occur in a shop or office. “Unless one is able to enter the home,” he comments, “these workers remain invisible. The understandable fact that labour inspectors do not have the lawful authority to enter the home makes monitoring and regulating this form of work a challenge.”

A number of organisers initiated the process of mobilizing domestic workers through the Red Flag Women’s Movement (RFWM) 

Having received such arguments from state officials, Menaha approached trade unions individually, yet many told her the same thing: you can’t organize informal workers. The reality was that the majority of working women worked in informal forms of employment. Unions needed to look into matters concerning women who worked; beyond cases of wages and termination, and into the more specific issues that women had, such as harassment, issues pertaining to pregnancy and motherhood, and other specific needs that they had at the workplace.

Rather than attempting to organise these workers directly through a union, a number of organisers initiated the process of mobilizing domestic workers through the Red Flag Women’s Movement (RFWM) – an offshoot of the Red Flag union that focused its efforts on bringing women into the union and into leadership positions. In 2005, organisers were able to work with the RFU to get in contact with, and speak with tea plantation workers in Maskeliya, in order to identify domestic workers in the community. Using street dramas and public discussions, they approached these workers, and shortly afterwards, a small group of domestic workers had a get together at the red flag union branch office. Here, workers began to discuss the range of problems they faced in their working lives, and all complaints were recorded. 

In 2007, having initiated organising activities through the RFWM, the organisers embarked on a research study on domestic workers’ working conditions, and began trade union education programmes, which discussed the intersections of gender, class, and workers’ rights. They networked with regional groups whose missions were relevant to that of empowering domestic workers, and they expanded their efforts at community mobilization. They began consulting legal experts and they lobbied other trade unions, the Labour Commissioner, and the Ministry of Labour, and in 2008, the Department of Labour took on a first legal draft to bring domestic workers within the scope of labour legislation. This draft includes the provision of accepting domestic workers as legitimate workers so that they will be viable for the protections that other workers have. 

Social Attitudes towards Domestic Work

Social attitudes in Sri Lanka consider domestic work of low-value, carried out by those of low-status. Acknowledgement of these individuals as providing a service is often obscured by ideas that workers are ‘aides’ or ‘helpers’ rather than legitimate labourers. Ambika Satkunanathan, a Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, points out that in the past domestic workers were never viewed as people whose rights needed to be protected, but that, “people would even employ children who they said would be treated ‘like family’ but were ultimately never really considered or treated as family.” Satkunanathan notes that, “domestic work is an invisible form of labour, mostly done by women, which forces us to question how much value we place on women’s labour that occurs within the house – cooking, cleaning, and other such tasks that are rarely remunerated.” 

DWU a guide

The Domestic Workers Charter  (DWU) has been lobbying ministers and the Labour Department for a range of legal protection mechanisms for domestic workers. Currently, the provisions requested are in the legal drafting section, following which they will go to Parliament. The legal draft contains the following stipulations: that domestic workers be included in the Minimum Wage Act, that they be included in the EPF and ETF Acts, that they be included in the Gratuity Act, that they come under the Maternity Benefits Ordinance, and that employers officially register with the labour department. 

Although this is a grand achievement for the DWU and for domestic workers across the country, these four areas alone will not ensure that domestic workers will have all conditions of decent work satisfied. For this reason, unionized domestic workers have compiled The Domestic Workers Charter, which is a document detailing the aspects of domestic work that are in need of redress, relating to Freedom of Association, Wages, Terms, and Conditions, and Inspection and Dispute Resolution. Menaha explains that this charter has been created by domestic workers, and is intended to be a guide for Sri Lankan activists to lobby the government. She says, “it can be considered a working document to be built on and given life to.” The DWU will distribute the Charter to relevant ministries, such as the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs, the Ministry of Labour, and the Commissioner General of Labour, and other stakeholders interested in acquiring a copy of the Charter, they can do so by contacting the DWU on (81) 2235670. 

Whereas trade unions have traditionally excluded informal sector workers, the Domestic Workers’ Union demonstrates the success that can be achieved when organizers and workers come together under structures of collective leadership to fight for their labour and human rights. Whereas everybody may have different tasks within the union, a leading principle of the union is that power be shared equally among the members, and that leadership be rotating, “as it should be in any organization” Menaha comments. The efforts and successes of the Domestic Workers’ Union have grown and developed thanks to a range of contributors, both within and outside Sri Lanka. Organizers, activists, and most importantly, the workers themselves have put into motion a social movement that is increasingly seeing significant gains in legitimizing a sector of work that has up until now been considered of low status and value. They are on the way to formalizing this sector of work, organized and functioning effectively as a union. They continue fighting to secure legal rights that have for so long excluded them from the scope of labour and human rights protection.