There are estimated to be over two million domestic workers in Bangladesh. They deserve better legal protection. Since the ILO Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers was adopted in 2011, many countries have taken action ahead of the Convention coming into legal force last month.
Bangladesh lags behind and according to the International Domestic Workers Network and International Trade Union Confederation is one of only three countries that deny domestic workers the right to form trade unions.
Even the other states named as denying unions for domestic workers, Thailand and the US, have enacted laws in the past two years confirming weekly wage and holiday entitlements, as have countries like India and the UAE.
It is not good enough to hope that domestic worker rights can be protected by other national laws. Underpayment and over long hours are commonplace and instances of abuse and harassment are not unknown. Too many people turn a blind eye to exploitation in private homes and domestic worker rights are sometimes hypocritically ignored by people who speak up for workers in other sectors.
Allowing domestic workers to form unions would not only help to stamp out the worst abuses but would raise awareness of the need to ensure basic rights to minimum wages and paid holidays for domestic workers. Both employees and employers would be better served by a legal structure regulating wage rights and benefit entitlements.
Workers in other low-skilled sectors would also benefit from the government ensuring better pay and minimum standards for domestic workers, as it would set a minimum expectation of decency for all low paid workers in the nation.
