INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION (ITUC)

ITUC OnLine 
014/290110

Spotlight interview with Albert Njeru (KUDHEIHA(1)- Kenya)

“Some employers threaten to kill their domestic worker if she talks”

Brussels, 29 January 2010 (ITUC OnLine):  New legislation introduced in 2008 recognises more rights for Kenya’s domestic workers. According to Albert Njeru, general secretary of the KUDHEIHA union, which organises domestic workers, although this is a step forward, we should not forget the many serious forms of exploitation they still suffer.

What are the main difficulties facing domestic workers in Kenya?

Sexual harassment, no employment contract, no freedom of association, very low pay.  Many domestic workers have a low level of education and are not aware of their rights because they are still very young or have been employed since childhood.  Domestic child labour sometimes begins at the age of 10, even though it’s illegal.

We carried out a survey on domestic child labour in Mombasa, in collaboration with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center.  Mombasa attracts domestic workers from across the country because it has a reputation for being better off, partly because there are foreigners there who pay in dollars. The survey showed that most domestic workers are not given food by their employer, that their identity cards are confiscated, that they are underpaid and that many of them are locked in the house when the employer leaves, with the risk of being unable to escape if there is a fire.

The situation there is specific to Mombasa, because it is a coastal town with a big port. Human traffickers seek out vulnerable people and try to send them out of the country, particularly the Arabic countries, where they do not get paid the minimum they were promised.

Apart from the specific situation in Mombasa, how are domestic workers recruited in the cities?

New legislation that came into force in June 2008 provides for the registration of employment agencies. Otherwise, it’s by word of mouth: someone is looking for a maid in the neighbourhood, in the extended family, and often it is girls who drop out of school that are recruited.

But if the employer knows the girl’s family and neighbours so well, how can he or she exploit her so much?

In most cases, they just don’t care: they pay a tiny wage, the maid comes from a poor family, so the employers feel in a position of power.  Some employers threaten to kill the maid if she talks, or to make sure their brother or sister loses their job. Even when the girl gets pregnant as a result of sexual harassment, they don’t dare reveal who the father is, else the employer will sack them, and won’t care about the child.

Has the new legislation improved the situation of women domestic workers?

It came into force in June 2008 and recognises the domestic employment relationship, which is progress. Now we are trying to get it applied, but there are obstacles, the main one being the ability to pay the minimum salary: a lot of people who employ maids are worried about registering the girls’ employment officially because they aren’t able to pay the minimum salary and the social security charges.  The minimum salary applies to all professions. It is 5,500 shillings, about 75 dollars. If you are employed by an enterprise on the salary wage, how can you afford to employ a maid on the same salary?  That’s why people still ask a cousin or a niece to come and help out, and why they are only paid about 1,000 shillings.

What should a decent salary be?

You need about 500 dollars to support a family of four in a decent home.

Are there migrant domestic workers in Kenya?

Yes, a lot of Somalians come to Kenya.  As their country is in ruins, they come and look for work to survive. Some work just for their food and shelter, nothing more, they are not worried about a salary.  There are a lot of Somalian women in domestic work in Nairobi.

Who are your union’s members?

Our union has been organising women workers since 1948, long before independence.  At that time we held meetings in the evenings for the women working for the colonialists, mainly in Nairobi, so they could exchange experiences, and information.   Little by little, the union opened up to other categories of workers and now we have about 40,000 members, nearly 5,000 of whom are women domestic workers.   Domestic work is a difficult sector to organise because the women are not aware of their rights and because there is no collective bargaining.  The 35,000 other members are nurses, non-teaching staff, etc.

How does KUDHEIHA support women domestic workers?

Our priority at the moment is to teach them their fundamental rights, in partnership with the IUF.  We explain to them that if they know of a case of exploitation, they must tell the authorities, the police, because that will spark an outcry, and people will realise that there is a union taking care of women domestic workers.  We have contacts with the police stations who help us, we have taught them about what happens to these workers.  When an employer realises he or she is in the wrong, they may try to bribe their way out, but from then on they usually try harder to respect their maid’s fundamental rights, if only to avoid problems in future.

How do you contact women domestic workers, who are a difficult group to reach given that they work inside private homes?

Before beginning our training we select a number of women in the area, we ask them when they are free and where we could meet them, and we bring them together, group after group. We begin by inviting one, then two, then a whole group.  They prefer Sundays, but some employers lock their maids up in the house, even on that day.  It is also difficult because they are worried about being seen as someone who knows about trade union activities, because in Kenya employers look upon the unions as trouble makers.

Will the possible adoption by the ILO next June of a new international standard on domestic work help you in a practical sense?

As the trade unions, employers and government are partners in the ILO, it will be easier to raise awareness among employers if we have this standard.  A convention would really help us a lot in our day-to-day work when we are campaigning for the remuneration of domestic workers, against child labour, for decent work, for the application of existing legislation... It would provide an international framework that could support our action.

Interview by Samuel Grumiau

(1) Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers, affiliated to the IUF

The ITUC represents 175 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates. http://www.youtube.com/ITUCCSI

For more information, please contact the ITUC Press Department on: +32 2 224 02 04 or  + 32 476 62 10 18

INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION
 
ITUC OnLine
225/191209
 
Spotlight on Claudine Akakpo (CSTT- Togo)

« Confiage » is a modern form of child slavery

Brussels, 4 January 2010 (ITUC OnLine): According to Claudine Akakpo, assistant general secretary of the CSTT(1), hundreds of thousands of children are forced into domestic slavery in Togo.  The trade union movement is mobilising against this exploitation.

The world is finally paying attention to the issue of domestic labour, notably in discussions due to be held at the June 2010 International Labour Conference.  What is this sector like in Togo?

It is part of the informal economy.  Many internal migrants leave the rural areas to work in the big towns.  The recruitment of domestic workers often takes place through the “confiage” (entrustment) system, whereby a parent or an intermediary entrusts a child to a close family friend or another much better off person in Lomé or another big town.  You can find children as young as five or six in this system.  They are not paid anything directly, their parent or an intermediary takes the money then gives it to the family.  The family does not really concern itself with the very difficult conditions the child has to face in Lomé.

The lowest salaries are about 5,000 CFA francs (approximately 8 euros) per month.  As they live with their employer, they can be employed 24 hours day. Many of them get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and they are the last to go to bed. They work constantly: washing the floor, the dishes, going to the market, cooking meals....They are called “girl Fridays” (“bonne à tout faire” or literally “good for anything”) because they really do do everything.  They are supposedly given accommodation at the employer’s house, but while the latter has their own bedroom, the maid has to make do with a mat or a piece of cloth that they roll out in a corner of the kitchen to sleep on...it’s not really accommodation!  It is a form of slavery because the child does not receive a direct salary. We have seen photographs of children who have been burnt, or scarred with knife cuts, it’s horrific.

There are also adults who seek domestic employment for themselves.  Their working conditions are harsh, but we are more concerned about the very young children who have this terrible exploitation imposed on them.

How many children are there in this situation?

Surveys have been carried out by NGOs such as Care International.  In Lomé alone it is estimated that there are 250,000 children, most of them girls.

Is the Togolese government trying to combat this exploitation?

The Ministry for Social Action is running a campaign: a soon as it is suspected that a child is being mistreated in a home, you can call 111 and the ministry will turn up to investigate.  Our trade union is taking part in the campaign, called “Allo 111”.  It has led to a lot of complaints, hundreds of phone calls a day from throughout Togo.  When the authorities find a mistreated child in a home,  they do everything they can to find the child’s family of origin.  The family can receive assistance to help support the child if it was poverty that drove them to send their child into slavery.

Are there sanctions for the partners of this type of trafficking?

For the time being we are at the awareness raising stage. Sanctions may come in a second stage.  Both the parents who subject their child to slavery and the employers should be punished.  We have a law against child labour and child trafficking, but so far no-one has been taken to court for internal trafficking.  There have been court rulings, however, about cross border trafficking.

What action are the Togolese trade unions taking to combat this extreme exploitation of children?

We are increasing the awareness of the parents who accept this kind of thing, both in Lomé and in their home towns and villages.  We did this for example on the last World Day for Decent Work on 7 October.  We show them photos and videos so that they can see just how much their children will suffer in Lomé to persuade them not to send them any more.  Sometimes they plead poverty, but we reply that if that was the sole reason, every poor person would send their children out to work, but it is not the case.  They need to have a greater sense of their own dignity in order to be able to also respect the rights of these children, including the right to education.  The ILO wants to set up a project in association with the trade unions and NGOs to enable us to identify these parents, and grant them small loans for income-generating activities.  Then they can no longer claim poverty as the reason for sending their children into the “confiage” system.

This situation has its roots in the past, in a traditional system that was better:  less well off parents placed their children with better off relations who sent them to school. In return the children would carry out minor domestic tasks.  This traditional system has been completely distorted.  The employers take advantage of it, they don’t give the child a salary, they sometimes promise to enrol them in school but they don’t do it, and it is completely unregulated.

It is quite likely that some of the employers are among your members...

Yes.  In our awareness-raising sessions we tell them that the children who work for them have rights, such as the right to a weekly rest day.  They are sometimes surprised to learn that maids have the right to a rest day and they have to work for themselves on that day! It is difficult to convince them because for them, it is normal that a child who is in their home should work and that they should be able to tell them off as they do their own children.  That is where the ill-treatment begins.  People don’t hit their own children as much as they do a child working as maid, who is sometimes punished with a whip or with a blade.

Would the adoption of an international convention on domestic workers help you in your action in Togo?

It could help us in several ways. First by redefining the minimum age for performing this kind of work.  It is18 in Togo, but as domestic work is in the informal economy, it is not regulated by the government. These are precarious jobs.  A maid can be dismissed for the slightest mistake.  They are not protected the laws guaranteeing a minimum wage, weekly rest or redundancy compensation.

An international standard could also help us on the question of wages.  At the moment, maids don’t even get the SMIG (the guaranteed minimum wage). When we talk to our members about this, they reply that if they had to pay their maids the minimum wage, they would have to be paid more themselves, because they cannot afford to spend half of their own salary on a maid.   We try to make them understand that if they don’t have the means to employ a maid at home, they should do the housework themselves.  It’s a delicate issue, because if people who cannot pay proper wages decide to abandon their maids, what will become of them? We don’t want to find these girls on the street, working as prostitutes or thieving...

In more general terms, what are your union’s priorities for gender equality?

Togolese girls are often deprived of education because traditionally boys have been given priority.  Without any training, many women have to turn to the informal economy, where jobs are precarious, pay is too low, and there is no social protection.  We have programmes to help them find income-generating activities, and we train them to manage their commercial ventures.  To offset the lack of social protection, we have set up mutual health insurance societies. It is not easy, because it is not in our culture to provide for the future, we live from day to day.  People don’t feel the need to belong to a mutual society for health protection, just as they don’t believe in insurance generally.  It is only when they are faced with a problem that they recognise the benefits.  Our national centre has more than 100,000 members, but barely 2,000 of them belong to the mutual society.

Is there a big difference between men’s and women’s pay in Togo?

In law, there is no discrimination, but women workers pay more income tax than their husbands, because under our Code of the Person and the Family a wife is a dependent.  This difference affects family allowances too:  as a woman is a dependent she can receive the family allowance unless her husband authorises it, while he automatically has the right to it.  These discrepancies in income tax and family allowance can make a difference of nearly 15% between the real salaries of men and women in the same grade.

Is it harder for a woman to rise up the hierarchy at work?

Yes, and it is primarily a problem of attitude.  In the sector where I work, communications, there are no women chief editors.  It was not until 2006 that we saw a woman appointed as a director in the media.  Out of 30 media entities, only five women have a management post.  The difficulty women have reaching decision making posts is reflected in political life: there are only seven women in a parliament of 81 members and in the government only four of the 20 posts are held by women.

What is happening in the trade unions?

Of our six national centres, not one has a woman general secretary, but in my confederation we are trying to achieve a better balance.  Two of us are women assistant general secretaries and we are among the four women on the 17-member executive board. Women make up one third of our 100,000 members.

You were one of the delegates at the ITUC’s World Women’s Conference(2), where one of the themes was combating violence against women.  What is the situation in Togo?

Regrettably there is sexual harassment in many workplaces.  As trade unions we try to make the harassers more aware of the implications of their acts, but so far there hasn’t been a trial to condemn these acts or to draw wider attention in the media.  There isn’t even a law against sexual harassment. There are laws against rape and incest but nothing else.  So it means the perpetrator has to go beyond harassment before they can be prosecuted.

What did you gain from this conference?

The conference showed that the problems Togolese women faced are experienced by many women around the world. I learnt a lot listening to others talk about how they fought against violence against women. It was encouraging to hear an ILO official talk to us about what was being foreseen to help child domestic workers in the future, so that we can help them escape this exploitation and help adults obtain a decent job.  I also appreciated the information about climate change at this Conference.  It is a crucial issue and in my country the unions have not taken it fully on board yet, although it is a threat to us all, workers or not.

Interview by Samuel Grumiau

(1)  The Workers’ Trade Union Confederation of Togo (Confédération syndicale des travailleurs du Togo). Claudine Akakpo  is also responsible for gender, equality and women’s issues in the CSTT.

(2) The First ITUC World Women’s Conference, held in Brussels from 19 to 21 October 2009, on the theme “Decent Work, Decent Life for Women”. ( http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/DECENT_WORK_DECENT_LIFE_FOR_WOMEN.pdf

The ITUC represents 175 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates. http://www.youtube.com/ITUCCSI

For more information, please contact the ITUC Press Department on: +32 2 224 0204 or + 32 476 62 10 18

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