ILO praises SA for improving lot of its domestic workers

GENEVA: South Africa has been praised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as one the few countries in the world to legislate minimum wages and rest periods for its estimated 1.1 million domestic workers.

The ILO said in a report this week that there were at least 52 million domestic workers in the world. Most are women, including in South Africa where there are about 879 000, accounting for 75% of all domestic workers, and 15.5 % of the total workforce. There are 261 000 male domestic workers.

The report said the number of domestic workers in South Africa had shrunk from 1.3 million to the present 1.1 million over the past two years, probably because of the global economic recession.

The report praised South Africa and Uruguay for legislating minimum rest periods.

“Labour legislation in both Uruguay and South Africa establishes an uninterrupted weekly rest period of 36 hours for domestic workers.

“In South Africa, wages of domestic workers rose substantially after the introduction of a new minimum wage in 2002,” the report said. But it hinted that South African domestic workers were still underpaid because most were black.

Africa, with about 5.2 million domestics, is the largest employer of domestic workers after Asia and Latin America. Domestics account for about 13.6 percent of the continent’s employed women.

Most domestic workers in South Africa are concentrated in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

About 91 percent are black and the rest coloured, but employers from all races hire domestic servants.

“Working hours of domestic workers around the world are among the longest and most unpredictable for all workers,” said Sandra Polaski, ILO deputy director-general.

In Malaysia in 2008 the average week of domestic workers was 65.9 hours, in Tanzania it was 63.7 hours and in Namibia 62 hours. The ILO did not give figures for South Africa.

The report notes, however, that South Africa regulates working time on an hourly, weekly and monthly basis as well as minimum wage rates, whereas Malaysia and Hong Kong do not.

“The large disparities between wages and working conditions of domestic workers compared to other workers in the same country underline the need for action... to improve the working lives of these vulnerable but hard-working individuals,” stressed Polaski.