LUKE KANNEMEYER: Whose job is it to protect the dignity of domestic workers?

From colonial rule to the apartheid government, black SA women have long been told that their place within society lies in a life of servitude. Mission schools, government-run schools and churches all supported the notion that domestic labour was what young black girls were meant to accomplish.

At the same time, domestic workers were afforded no dignity within the role they were confined to. These women were treated with no respect, subject to poor working conditions and given no chances to bargain over pay or even provided yearly leave or holidays off work.

With the extensive employment protections introduced in 2002 by the post-apartheid government, as well as the more recent enshrining of the new national minimum wage, we’d like to think conditions have improved for domestic workers.

However, for many of the more than 850,000 domestic workers in the country who are responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of households — from cleaning to cooking and childcare — this is still not truly a reality.

According to the latest SweepSouth Domestic Worker Pay & Working Conditions report, the median earnings of the average domestic worker in the country currently sits at R2,992 per month — well below the national minimum wage of R4,067.20 a month and the R4,999 average earned monthly by domestic workers registered on the SweepSouth platform. 

Juxtaposed against the rapidly rising cost of living (which has seen the average monthly expenditure on items such as food, housing and transport rise by 3% since 2022 to R3,745 per month) domestic workers are experiencing a reduction in their disposable incomes and an inability to save money or pay-off debt.

In fact, 75% of domestic workers noted that they do not make enough money to put away any savings, with only 9% saying they have any savings or a pension, while 35% are currently saddled with debt. More worrying than this is the fact that a substantial number of domestic workers are also falling short of being able to afford these monthly basic necessities at all. 

The stress of being unable to meet basic needs can lead to significant adverse physical and mental effects on these workers who are, on average, 37-year-old African women and are often the sole breadwinners supporting four or more dependants within their households.

It is therefore clear that neglecting the wellbeing, dignity and social standing of domestic workers is tantamount to neglecting women in this country. The indignity of letting so many women work a full-time job where they are taking care of other people’s households and families when they can’t afford to do so for their own, can simply not be allowed to continue.

As such, it is time that the more privileged of us in SA (and if you can afford to employ a domestic worker you are certainly privileged) to take an introspective look at what we are doing to ensure that the women who keep our homes and economy running smoothly are protected and fairly compensated.

Pivoting our perceptions around domestic work

Domestic work is usually seen as informal, unskilled labour. But this isn’t actually true. Domestic work is certainly skilled, with workers carrying out a range of exhaustive and draining tasks from cooking, cleaning and looking after children to managing a household or caring for the elderly and disabled. Outside of domestic labour, each of these tasks is a single, individual job or career path — for instance a chef at a restaurant cooks, a janitor’s entire job is to clean, and nannies are childcare professionals who supervise children in their care.

A recent study by the International Labour Organisation compared the tasks performed by domestic workers against the International Standard Classification of Occupations and found that nearly all domestic workers are operating at a medium skill level (far higher than unskilled) using key transferable skills not particular to domestic work such as managing theirs and others’ emotions.

It’s clear then that we need to change the way we see domestic work in SA. One way to shift this perception is to approach employment of domestic workers the way that any other employment is handled in the country. For example, employers of domestic workers could draw up employment contracts that stipulate the protections, requirements, compensation and benefits such as days of leave within said contract.

Better enforcement of labour protections

Although government has made a concerted effort to ensure domestic workers are protected and fairly compensated through labour policies and wage regulations, domestic workers continue to constitute one of the most disempowered sections of our workforce. 

There’s an inherent power imbalance between domestic workers and their employers, which is certainly reinforced by factors such as the high cost of living as well as the high rate of unemployment. This means many workers feel they have to take whatever they can find or should silently deal with mistreatment as they are “lucky” to be employed. That’s why we need to do more to protect domestic workers beyond the creation and adoption of laws and regulations.

We need to take the next step into action. From the public sector, this means finding better ways of enforcing these laws and regulations. Meanwhile, employers of domestic workers need to really take ownership and responsibility for ensuring a good, happy, healthy working environment that pays the women who truly carry our society on their back, without complaint, their full worth.

• Kannemeyer is MD of SweepSouth.