Domestic workers look for better status and conditions
In recent years, rising demand for domestic helpers, including nannies, has prompted hundreds of thousands of people to set up agencies.
However, most are small-scale operations and are driven almost entirely by the profit motive, meaning many do not meet industry standards. Members of staff are rarely provided with adequate training and their employment rights are hardly ever enforced.
The situation has resulted in an unstable sector where suitable or qualified workers are in short supply.
Yu Jing used to work as a sales assistant in a store in Changchun, Jilin province. The 46-year-old was made redundant, though, after her employers said she was too old to do the job. Desperate for work, she signed up with an agency in the city that supplies domestic helpers.
Though she could earn about 2,800 yuan ($414) a month, more than most unskilled jobs in her age group, Yu quit in December because the family she worked for refused to abide by the contract they had signed.
“My job was simply to do housework, but they always asked me to do extra work, like looking after their 2-year-old daughter. The parents were out nearly all the time, so I had to do both jobs,” she said.
“As a newcomer, I did a lot of arduous work to gain more experience of the industry so I could earn more later on. What I could not bear was that the husband abused me by using lots of offensive language just because I asked for one day off.”
According to the contract signed by Yu, the agency and the family, she was entitled to one day off per week. She hadn’t had a day off for two weeks, but the first time she mentioned it, her employer shouted at her, saying, “Why don’t you just quit and get out of my house?”
Yu was shocked. “I did nothing wrong. I treated them very well. I earn money through my own efforts, and I am not inferior to anyone,” she said, adding that the agency — which operates out of an office of less than 80 square meters — had provided just one week’s training before introducing her to the client, drawing up a contract and charging both parties a fee. As a result, she felt that the contract was nothing but a piece of paper.
Unlike Yu, Lan Tian, an ex-farmer from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region who works in Beijing as a maternity matron — a shortterm nanny — is prospering.
The 55-year-old, who has been doing the job for four years, said she is popular with clients because of her work ethic and uncomplaining nature.
When caring for a newborn, Lan only sleeps two to four hours a day. Usually the parents are out at work, so she does not have time for lunch. Even so, she offers to do housework when she is not caring for the baby and rarely takes days off.
“You will only receive recognition from employers if you treat them respectfully. If you do that, you will build a reputation and more clients will ask for you,” she said.
According to Lan, there is an unspoken industry rule that nannies who do not complain enjoy longer working lives and earn better money than their more outspoken peers. to provide a person to ensure they don’t have to return the client’s fee. When new job seekers arrive, agencies will give them a job straightaway to earn more commission.”
Askci.com, a consultancy in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, has calculated that a 2017 report on the sector by the Ministry of Commerce showed that about 660,000 agencies offered domestic helper services in 2016.
Only 21.3 percent of the agencies were “large-scale operations” — defined as businesses with annual income of more than 20 million yuan — which earned a combined 214.4 billion yuan, accounting for about 60 percent of the sector’s revenue that year.
However, more than half of all China’s 25 million domestic helpers in 2016 were contracted to smaller outfits, which rarely provide support for their employees. That has seen some domestic workers take matters into their own hands by setting up unofficial networks, such as job seekers’ groups on social media apps like WeChat.
When she worked as a maternity matron, Li Yufen, from Changchun, was a member of a 400-strong nationwide workers’ group online.
She said such loose associations offer an easier, more reliable employment path because no agency fees are charged and potential employers are usually introduced by other members, so “bad” families can be avoided.
“It was not hard to find work through the group. I could have arranged bookings for six months in advance if I had wanted,” she said.
Fu Yansheng, founder of Guanjiabang, an agency in Beijing that supplies domestic workers nationwide, is opposed to such groups, despite their apparent advantages.
He warned that the market could become more unstable and workers would enjoy even fewer rights if they took unregulated jobs via personal introductions or micro agencies. He added that channels such as these will not provide domestic helpers with assistance when they are confronted with unreasonable requests or even maltreatment.
According to Fu, most small agencies only act as middlemen. After receiving the fees and connecting clients with the workers, they rarely monitor subsequent events because they consider their part of the transaction to be complete. As a result, many domestic helpers are perpetually pessimistic and tend to change employers after every disagreement, minor or major.
“Another problem is that in small agencies, domestic workers don’t receive long-term training, and without professional skills they can be easily fired. My experience during the 10 years I have worked in the industry is that many families change domestic workers three or four times a year,” he said.
Despite the ministry’s current estimate that there are about 28 million domestic helpers of all kinds in China, there is still a major shortage of workers for the 70 million households that require such services. The problem becomes especially acute during Spring Festival, when many workers return to their hometowns to spend time with their families.
According to Fu, the only way the sector will become more stable, better regulated and develop into a mature industry is for the bigger agencies to seize a larger share of the market and play a leading role in formulating standards.
The next step would be to improve training for domestic workers, including showing them how to communicate with employers, because few have experienced further or higher education, he said.
“Their confidence needs to be bolstered and they need to adopt the mindset of seeing domestic work as a genuine career. Then we could draw up a career path for them; for example, they could start as domestic helpers before moving on to become qualified housekeepers or maternity matrons.
“The more credibility they gain, the greater their sense of belonging to their job will be. That would create a more stable environment for the sector,” he said.