Domestic workers suffer as professional jobs fall

As households continue to chip away at their budgets to make ends meet, increasingly even employing a domestic worker can be counted as a luxury.

That is if statistics published in the third Quarterly Labour Force Survey on Tuesday are anything to go by.

South African consumers have weathered a harsh year with economic growth withering and the economy slipping into a recession.

The impact of this on employment in private households should hardly surprise but it is difficult to ignore that 30,000 jobs were lost in private homes in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. These jobs mostly comprise domestic work, the sector responsible for the single largest decline of all the sectors surveyed.

Year on year this sector has shed 46,000 posts, according to the labour force survey.

In that period there were 1,26m domestic workers employed compared to 11,25m professionals, according to Stats SA.

Many professionals have relied on domestic workers, which include gardeners and drivers in private homes, to keep their households running smoothly. But in tough times, domestic workers are often seemingly disposable, especially this year as higher administered prices, including fuel prices, have battered household budgets.

The reality is that domestic workers’ skills, in many cases, cannot be easily transferred to other sectors — besides in frail care for the elderly, hotel and restaurant work, or as entry-level security guards.

And without formal qualifications these workers are likely to struggle to find jobs or will find equally lowpaid work.

But what happens to those who, with their dependants, face an uncertain future given the economy is not creating jobs fast enough?

Many may already have ended up in other parts of the informal economy. In the third quarter, the informal sector showed gains in employment of 188,000. Employment in the formal sector declined by 65,000 jobs.

But for low-paid workers there is little protection. Some years ago the government created the Training Layoff Scheme, to which distressed companies could apply in lieu of retrenching staff. Staff would then be reskilled and receive a stipend for the duration of the programme.

Surely something like this could be created for domestic workers, albeit in a modified form, given that those retrenched can apply to the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF)?

Last year, at the commission of inquiry into higher education and training, a commissioner at the UIF said the government recognised that the future of work was changing, so schemes such as the training layoff one were being investigated to protect vulnerable workers, including domestic helpers.

But seemingly not much has happened since and one wonders when the plight of vulnerable workers will become serious enough for urgency to be applied.

In tough economic times, domestic workers are seemingly disposable