Reversing a History of Exclusion through International Labour Law

Claire Hobden

Although domestic workers provide crucial care services that make all other work possible, their labour too often is not seen as real work meriting legal protections. This view has resulted in 100 million women and girls left unprotected by national labour law in nearly half the world’s countries. Until recently, domestic workers were excluded even from international labour laws, which is symbolic of the slow evolution of social perceptions of women’s work generally and of domestic work in particular. Reducing the exploitation of domestic workers will therefore require both normative change to reverse the history of exclusion, and social change to actualize their rights. An international labour standard on the rights of domestic workers is essential to achieve both.

Time for a new Paradigm

Sharan Burrow

These are truly times for anger.

The world is barely re-emerging from the deepest economic crisis in a century, yet the very policies and mindset that caused the problem in the first place are back with a vengeance. Indeed, the world economy risks sliding back into crisis as dangerously short-sighted policies are put into place. The brave words of reform from world leaders in the G20 meetings of 2009 are now largely forgotten and have been replaced with the old scriptures of fiscal consolidation and calls to address the “fundamentals”.

And thus the world is fast slipping into a self-defeating round of “competitive austerity” where everyone seeks salvation from austerity at home through export-led growth. This is a strategy that might have worked for some for a time, but those days are gone: credit-driven consumption in a few key countries can no longer make up for the lack of wage-driven consumption worldwide.

Europe’s Hidden Inequality

Michael Dauderstädt

The European Union (EU), in its founding treaties, set itself the aim of economic, social and territorial cohesion. This aim is generally interpreted to mean that the EU will strive to reduce income inequality within its area of integration. Reducing inequality is, as recent studies continue to show, an important and just goal since inequality blights the lives and prospects of those affected.

Unequal Income Distribution in Europe
As a result of a number of enlargement rounds since 1972 the EU consists of member states at widely varying stages of development and divergent income levels: besides small, rich countries, such as Luxembourg (annual per capita income: around 60,000 euros), there are also large, poor countries, such as Romania (annual per capita income: around 2,900 euros). A comparison of Europe’s regions reveals even more egregious differences between the richest region (Luxembourg) and the poorest: annual per capita income in the poorest regions of Bulgaria and Romania is even lower than the national average.

Domestic Workers in Switzerland protected by the Country’s first Sectoral Employment Contract

Mauro Moretto

Vania Alleva

In Switzerland as elsewhere, the State has been retreating on social policy in recent years. This is leading to a decline in social service provision and, consequently, to an increase in demand for domestically based services. Nobody knows exactly how many waged employees are currently at work in Swiss private households (as many are unreported), but statistical estimates suggest that their numbers are continually increasing. At the end of 2007, the Unia trade union, on the basis of various studies(1), put the number of full-time jobs in the sector at about 125,000 (approx. 4 per cent of the total workforce). More than 90 per cent of these employees are women. Many are migrants, often without any legal residency status. They come from a whole range of countries where they had often previously gained academic qualifications and worked in other occupations. Recently, increasing numbers of women from the new EU member states have been finding jobs in Swiss private households.