Hidden slavery, absent state

When a full-time domestic “help” enters the home of her employer – for her a workplace – she becomes isolated and invisible to the outside world. Sometimes, however, a few full-time domestic workers become visible in the glare of the media, when they are fortunate enough to be rescued from the confinement of their abusive employers.

Beaten, abused, bruised, famished and traumatised – these are the typical conditions of those who happen to come out of such an ordeal. The state authority remains outside this employer-employee relationship by refusing to regulate the work arrangement, creating a highly privatised workplace where the employer’s writ runs large.

The nearly absolute invisibilisation of this workforce, comprising largely impoverished women and children, is also evident in the conflicting data produced by different state agencies on the actual number of domestic workers in the country.

Nevertheless, the number of paid domestic workers is estimated as the third largest female workforce after agriculture and construction. Given the burgeoning numbers of domestic workers and their abject vulnerability, there is an urgent need to address the factors that breed their overexploitation.

In full-time, paid domestic work arrangements, employers expect the worker to be available virtually round the clock. There is no start and end time to the work. Correspondingly, many are restricted by their employers as to when they can leave the household, and for how long. Even during their daily or weekly rest, if any, employers may not allow domestic workers to leave the household. Therefore, the work regimen is unpredictable, open-ended and spread out longer than what is considered a normal workday blurring the line between rest time and work time. This means that live-in domestic workers work more than any category of workers.

The very identity of the modern-day worker is built on quantifiable labour time. Correspondingly, the minimum wage for any work is based on quantifiable time, which is calculated on the basis of a workday.

However, in full-time, paid domestic work, there is no legally defined workday, and workers end up getting less than the minimum wage simply because they are working more.

The spread-out work regimen of live-in, full-time domestic workers constitutes more than the normal workday since the working time and on-call or standby time, all included, amounts to more than what is considered, legally or otherwise, the normal workday.

Continuously at work, these full-time workers are clearly paid less than the minimum wage for a nine-hour workday. In fact, the spread-out and largely unquantifiable work done for low wages constitutes actual wage theft in the case of full-time domestic workers, as a large component of their labour stands unpaid.

The scope for this is huge, considering such arrangements are made mostly between impoverished migrant workers who are unorganised and, thus, docile.

A full-time, live-in, paid domestic work arrangement is ironically ascribed a certain benevolence on the part of the employer, who provides food and lodging to the worker.

However, the work arrangement in real terms is heavily tilted in favour of the interests and convenience of employers. It is only a small part of the wage theft that goes into sponsoring the food and lodging of the worker.

Moreover, it is not the act of benevolence but the low wages for part-time domestic work which manufactures a worker’s consent to enter into a full-time, live-in domestic work arrangement. If the country’s domestic workers could easily access minimum wage for a normal workday, and if the abysmally low minimum wage was itself enhanced to accommodate the actual costs of living, the compulsion to take on 24x7 work arrangements would dissipate. It is the compulsion to work despite a significant portion of labour going unpaid, or no payment for overtime, that brings full-time, paid domestic work within the ambit of forced labour as per Article 23 of the Constitution. It is apt to say that full-time, live-in, paid domestic work arrangements are a form of forced labour wherein the word ‘forced’ must be construed to not only include physical or legal force but also force arising from economic compulsions.

The latter leaves no choice of alternatives to persons in need, compelling them to provide labour service despite wage theft and remuneration less than the minimum wage.

Notably, Article 23 is clearly intended to be a general prohibition and wide in its scope, because of the inclusion of a broad spectrum of exploitative work arrangements termed as “forced labour”. Supreme Court judgements like in PUDR vs Union of India 1982, Sanjit Roy vs State of Rajasthan 1983 and so on highlight that labour being paid less than the minimum wage constitutes forced labour.

These Supreme Court rulings have emphasised that the State is obliged to protect citizens from forced labour and to take positive measures to prohibit it.

Thus, these judicial interventions establish that forced labour is to be identified not only in the case of absolutely no payments made for work extracted, but also where there is compulsion to work even when paid less than actual entitlement.

Unfortunately, there is a marked hesitation within policy framers and government officials to prohibit 24x7 paid domestic work contracts. Correspondingly, we see that the Indian State has not ratified Convention 189 on Domestic Workers of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

However, irrespective of the ILO Convention, the State is under obligation to act as per Article 23 of the Indian Constitution.

Nonetheless, the commitment to prohibit this forced labour, which is in reality an extant form of slavery, is absent. It is important to underline the larger context of the steady withdrawal of the State from regulation of employer-employee relations, as evident in the falling numbers of labour inspectors and the massive push towards self-certification of employers’ compliance with statutory labour laws.

Active State regulation of even the formal sector has become fleeting. Considering the nature of the highly privatised domain of paid domestic work, where the regulation of the employer-employee relationship is difficult, and in the case of the live-in domestic work contract, where the concept of the normal workday is missing, the only way to bring scores of hapless citizens out of extant slavery is to prohibit full-time, live-in, paid domestic work, and provide a sufficient amount of money for the legal workday so that domestic workers are not compelled to work under solitary slavery.

(The writer is a labour historian and convenor of Gharelu Kamgar Union)