Jun 14, 2013
Workers this week are marking the second anniversary of the historic passage of a global standard covering the rights of domestic workers. The International Labor Organization (ILO) “Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) covers written employment contracts, protection from harassment, abuse and violence, hours of work, job safety and other workplace safeguards.
As in many countries around the world, domestic workers and their supporters in the Dominican Republic are campaigning for ratification of Convention 189. When a country signs the convention, it agrees to abide by its rules. Seven nations have ratified it in the past two years, a number that illustrates the challenges domestic workers face in achieving their rights on the job. In the Dominican Republic, domestic workers’ struggle for recognition of their rights on the job has involved decades of hard work, strategic coalition building, broad public outreach and much perseverance.
In 1989, the Asociaciün de Trabajadores (Domestic Workers Association, ATH), a non-governmental organization, sought to modify the nation’s employment law to include domestic workers. Early on in that campaign, ATH reached out to numerous women’s rights group for support and built a strong coalition which engaged in widespread media outreach—through posters, leaflets, seminars, workshops and press coverage. The campaign enlisted the backing of popular television personalities who served as well-known proponents appreciated by Dominican decision-makers and the populace.
Passage of the law in 1992 culminated “an arduous struggle” to convince members of Congress “that domestic workers were a fundamental part of society,” says Elena Andrea Pérez García, ATH organizational secretary. ATH, which now represents more than 3,500 members, affiliated in 2010 with the Confederaciün Nacional de Unidad Sindical (National Confederation of Labor Union Unity, CNUS).
One of the main roadblocks for domestic workers in the Dominican Republic, as elsewhere around the world, is overcoming the perception that because their labor takes place within a home, it is not “real” work. Some 90 percent of the 300,000 domestic workers in the Dominican Republic are women, and female immigrants, primarily from Haiti, comprise between 10 percent and 33 percent of domestic workers.
“In remunerated domestic work, which is performed mainly by women, social subordination and machista cultural stereotypes play a major role, as does the social devaluation of domestic work,” says Max Puig, who served as Dominican Republic Minister of Labor from 2008 to 2011.
In 2011, CNUS and a coalition of other unions and organizations helped move a bill to Congress that would provide domestic workers with social security coverage. Eulogia Familia, vice president of the 500,000-member CNUS, said getting the bill introduced involved “one-on-one interviews with key legislators to raise awareness” and meetings with government agencies responsible for shaping the legislation. Domestic workers’ participation was fundamental to these meetings, enabling legislators and policy-makers tolearn firsthand about the often daunting working conditions the women face. Further, says Familia, domestic workers could convince legislators “that they and their families are an important social group and that their vote will help elect” them. Following this outreach, the National Social Security Council issued a resolution to conduct studies on the best way to incorporate domestic workers into the social security system.
Domestic workers, energized by passage of Convention 189, are pushing hard for its ratification in the Dominican Republic—and are well positioned to do so. They are the women who leafleted, held meetings and reached out to the public for years in multiple campaigns, becoming empowered in the process.
Isolated behind the closed doors of private households, domestic workers are difficult to locate and gather in networks where they could learn their rights as working people, share experiences and gain confidence in their ability to improve workplace conditions. Outreach to this overlooked workforce by ATH and CNUS and their partners changed all that.
This report is an excerpt from the report, Dominican Republic: Domestic Workers Struggle for Rights. The report is part of Catalyst for Change, a Solidarity Center series supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The series features the working people, their unions and activists who are advancing worker rights and greater equity in their societies. Their experience and efforts provide real, transferable lessons for others seeking to affect positive change.
Feb 15, 2013
Dominican unionists and Haitian workers seek justice for unpaid coconut plant workers. Credit: Geoff Herzog
The National Confederation of Labor Unity (CNUS) and its member unions and federations called on the Dominican Republic government to respect the human and labor rights of Haitian migrant workers in the country and to put an end to human trafficking.
In a press conference this week, a dozen Dominican unionists accompanied representatives of the 84 Haitian coconut peelers who were fired last fall from Kilometer 5 Coconut Farm after seeking to form a union. After firing the workers, the plant owner closed the facility and cannot be located.
One of the workers, Francisco Ojilou, asked the Dominican government to assist in locating the owner, who left the plantation without paying wages for the last two weeks in September. The workers also say the owner, Rafael Emilio Alonzo Luna, did not pay them severance, which, for some workers, would cover 13 years of employment.
“We back the struggle of migrant workers affiliated with the union of coconut peelers of the Kilometer 5 of San Cristobal to demand payment of the salaries left unpaid by the company,” Mariza Vargas said at the press conference in Santo Domingo, the nation’s capital. Vargas is finance secretary of the National Federation of Workers in Free Trade Zones, Diverse Industries and Services (FEDOTRAZONAS).
Documents provided to the Ministry of Labor and the Solidarity Center by an attorney representing the fired men show that the workers signed for the days they worked—and for which they were not paid. The documents also listed the daily pay rate—which the workers say they never received.
Said Vargas: “Their employer made money from their labor for 13 years in poor conditions. These workers say they were brought illegally, some as children, to work in inhumane conditions and no one has done anything to carry out a real investigation and bring Alonzo Luna to justice.”
A Labor Court hearing is scheduled for March 21 in San Cristobal on the severance pay issue. The workers filed the case after the Ministry of Labor failed act, according to the unionists. “On January 4, we submitted the complaint on trafficking. Nothing has been done, and we are outraged,” said attorney Carlos Manuel Sanchez Diaz. He urged the government to ensure the workers receive their unpaid wages and to take steps to halt human trafficking across the nation’s border.
Globally, human trafficking is a $32 billion industry involving 161 countries. While many people are aware of sex trafficking, human trafficking that involves forced labor is far more prevalent. The Solidarity Center has worked to combat human trafficking in the Dominican Republic since 2007.
Jul 9, 2012
Two groundbreaking pieces of legislation are poised to bring 300,000 domestic workers in the Dominican Republic into the national social security system, providing them for the first time with a minimum wage, health care, pension, and other social protections to which formally employed Dominican workers are entitled.
Dominican domestic workers—the vast majority of them women—do not earn a living wage; indeed, 50 percent of their meager earnings are often received as in-kind goods, food, and lodging at their place of work. They have no maternity leave, pension, health care coverage, or vacation time. Under the new plan, they would be entitled to receive a pension as well as disability, survivor, family and occupational health insurance, and other basic benefits.
“In the labor movement, we are confident that the Social Security system will cover domestic workers,” said Eulogia Familia, vice president and coordinator of policies for gender equity of the National Confederation of Unions (CNUS), a Solidarity Center partner. “The best way to begin to lift domestic workers out of exclusion and poverty is by affiliating them to the social security system. The approval of these laws will generate an advance for women and men who are domestic workers.”
Famila was referring to the likely ratification of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 189, Decent Work for Domestic Workers, and to legislation drafted by Sen. Adriano Sánchez Roa. Sánchez Roa’s worker rights bill, first presented last year, includes establishing a minimum wage for domestic workers and health coverage by the Dominican Institute for Social Security. Sánchez Roa has not yet introduced his bill in this session of the Senate, as he is waiting for ratification of Convention 189, according to Familia.
In a July 5 meeting with Familia, other labor leaders, and domestic workers, Dr. Reinaldo Pared Pérez, president of the Dominican Senate and secretary general of the governing Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), told the unionists that the Senate is going to support the ratification of Convention 189. He went on to say that on Tuesday July 10, the Senate will discuss Convention 189 and later send it for study in the appropriate commission of the Senate.
His announcement comes on the heels of a public commitment by the minister of labor, Francisco Domínguez Brito, at the National Forum on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, held on June 28. At the forum, organized by the Inter-Union Committee for the Woman Worker (CIMTRA), Domínguez Brito pledged to lobby senators for passage of the convention. CIMTRA brings together women from this Caribbean island’s three labor confederations. Also present at the forum were Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation; Dominican labor leaders; representatives of various NGOs; governmental offials; and local representatives of the ILO.
The Solidarity Center’s partners in the Dominican Republic, who have been advocating for many years for the rights of all informal workers, continue lobbying to make these protections a reality. With Solidarity Center support, they have conducted public awareness campaigns, organized domestic workers, and educated Haitian migrants on their rights as domestic workers.
The government pledged to ratify Convention 189 after its adoption more than a year ago, but the legislation had stalled. While ratification of the convention and the Sánchez Roa bill is likely to move forward in the Senate, it may run into trouble in the House of Deputies, according to Familia, as a result of one influential legislator’s resistance to sections that specifically address migrant workers.
