Yes, we did it! Domestic Workers Launch an International Federation

Chris Bonner

Barbro Budin

Karin Pape

“Yes we did it!”[1], a statement that best captures the jubilant mood on the last day of the Founding Congress of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) in 2013. It is also the title of a new book launched at that Congress, which tells the story of how domestic workers organised to win the Domestic Workers Convention, C189, at the International Labour Conference (ILC) of the ILO on 16 June 2011. 

Just over two years later, domestic workers have done it again. Another milestone has been achieved through the formation of a fully constituted, democratic federation of 48 membership-based domestic workers’ organisations representing around 300 000 domestic workers globally. This will ensure that the Convention is not forgotten, and that the struggle for “decent work for domestic workers’ continues in a coordinated and sustained manner.

The launching of the IDWF has wider implications because it marks an important moment in the history of the Labour Movement. For the first time a global union organisation has been formed by women from the poorest sections of society, with an all-women elected leadership. The transformation from a network to a global federation was decided upon by representatives of 48 domestic workers’ organisations, from 42 countries.

“We need to back that Dialogue with some Action” – Programme and Practice of Decent Work in Ghana

Joyce Abebrese

The rise of globalisation and economic growth, evolving throughout the last decades, brought about several forms of inequality and injustice among and within the different countries of the world. Not all economic growth can be assigned to decent and productive employment for the people, since it has not led to a reduction of poverty and informal labour (International Labour Organisation (ILO) 1999). Developing countries, in particular, struggle because they often lack efficient social security and social protection systems to care for the unemployed, diseased and vulnerable parts of society. Jütting and de Laiglesia (2009, 9) find that “informal employment is the norm, rather than the exception, in most developing countries”. Poverty reduction and creation of decent employment need to be followed by national strategies to achieve better economic and social development.

Informal workers show a high risk for poverty
The ILO finds that in many African countries, farmers and informal workers are the groups which are affected most by poverty (ILO 2004). In sub-Saharan Africa, countries show infor-mal non-agricultural work proportions of more than 80% (Jütting/ de Laiglesia 2009, 18). As opposed to the formal economy, informal workers have little or no social security, battle with lower incomes, and deal with precarious work. Most of the newly created employment in the informal economy inserts people into a “vicious circle of low pay, high risks and limited mobility” (ibid. 18).