Being concerned with organising unorganised workers and having made significant progress, of late, in the capacity building of organisers and in increasing union membership, the efforts of AITUC have also shown the importance of solidarity among union members of various sectors, especially those in which employers of domestic workers are likely to work themselves. Amarjeet Kaur writes about the efforts, achievements and insights of AITUC in organising domestic workers.

For several decades, AITUC has been intervening in the interests of domestic workers as and when cases of abuse and assault have come to its notice. The organisation has often succeeded in ensuring justice for the victims and their families. In several cases, children in very distressing domestic work situations have also been rescued by AITUC. AITUC believes that children have no place in the world of labour, and that their place is in the school and the playground-places that contribute to their healthy intellectual and physical growth as citizens of the country.

AITUC has been pushing for an amendment to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 so that its stated objective becomes the total abolition of child labour (of course, gradually). It lobbied along with other organisations for including child labour in domestic work and in the hotel industry in the list of prohibited occupations for children. This collective effort by concerned organisations and citizens ultimately led to the inclusion of these two areas of work in the Act in 2007. Thus, when we speak of the rights of domestic workers, we are speaking not of child labour in domestic work but of just rights for adult labour engaged in domestic work.

The work of organising domestic workers in unions became very important for AITUC when the slogan `Organising the unorganised` became its central theme in the mid-1980s. This does not mean that AITUC had not been organising the labour in the unorganised/informal sector earlier. This slogan gave an added impetus to the efforts, making AITUC venture into many more areas of labour in the informal economy. Various sectors have received attention. Domestic workers, who were not legally recognised as workers and were not covered by the minimum wages Act, however, found themselves being included in the organising endeavour, under the Trade Union Act, rather late.

Concerted efforts over the last six years have paid significant dividends. Today, AITUC has successfully formed unions of domestic workers in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Assam, and preparatory work is underway in several other states. On 4 December 2009, AITUC organised a massive rally of working women. About 20,000 women from the formal and informal unorganised sectors participated from almost all corners of India. Domestic workers were present at the rally in good numbers. The charter of demands submitted to the Prime Minister and the President of India, and the Speaker, Lok Sabha, that day included several demands of the working women, one of these being social security coverage for domestic workers.

AITUC organised its national consultation and experience sharing meeting on 6 and 7 December 2009 in New Delhi. It invited detailed discussions on organising and unionising domestic workers, to push forward, consolidate and expand work in the states in which unions have been formed, and to target other states for organising domestic workers by forming unions.

The current proposal of the ILO for a convention on domestic workers in its next ILC in June 2010 was discussed in the national-level AITUC meeting in which AITUC leaders and activists from 15 states and ILO representatives from the sub-regional office, New Delhi, participated.  The experience of AITUC organisers reveals clearly that the task of organising domestic workers is tough because the workplace is a family-mainly middle-class families, in addition to the wealthy households, who employ domestic workers. Experience also shows that full-time workers are the most difficult to organise because they are migrants with no relatives or friends in the city/town where they work. Those working part-time usually work for more than one employer. Organising part-time workers at their workplace or in their housing complexes is difficult because of the active opposition from the employers and the fact that the domestic workers fear they will lose their jobs. Most of these women domestic workers are the sole bread-earners of their families, and cannot afford to lose work.

Efforts to organise these workers at the clusters/colonies in which they live or at other locations where they visit have succeeded to some extent. The unionised employees from the middle class unions (banks, LIC, oil, coal and other public sector), committed to the Left unions, have to come forward in helping the domestic workers to get organised. Such initiatives have already begun in Maharasthra. Middle-class employees, who are better placed, and also understand the strength and need of unions, can contribute in a better way for the well-being of the domestic workers. They, by paying the domestic workers decent salary, allowing them freedom to form unions and making them realise the need for being unionised, can serve as the model employers for domestic workers. Once unionised, it is not difficult to find strong organisers and role models for others from amongst these workers. Their demands concerning ration cards, education of their children and their health needs must be addressed. Social security is a very important component of their demands to the government.  Experience shows that the resistance from employers lessens when they understand that social security is a requirement of the governments.

With full-time, live-in workers, who are often migrants, AITUC realised the need to undertake simultaneous work in the areas of supply of such workers. In its national strategy meeting, AITUC decided to explore the possibility of reaching live-in workers through the already organised, part-time workers, working in the same homes.

The experiences shared by the domestic workers in the national meet of AITUC were varied. Some had good employers whereas for others their experience was a nightmare. There were complaints of sexual advances and sometimes actual abuse, which had remained unreported out of the fear of losing jobs. Sexual abuse is more rampant with full-time workers because they do not have anybody to look to for help. Sometimes, the threat of filing false theft cases is used against domestic workers to keep them quiet. Instances of framing of workers are common. This is not to deny instances of actual crimes of this nature. However, the general tendency to view domestic workers as criminals needs strong rebuttal and opposition. Of late, the media is being used to tarnish the image of domestic workers by showing them as criminals. Civil society has to take note of the fact that those with intentions of committing a crime, be it theft or dacoity, will use any disguise to pursue their goal. The attempt to criminalise a whole set of people in a particular profession is dehumanising and against civil ethics.