Foreign domestic helpers: modern day slaves

Since the eighties, we in the women's movement have been decrying the lot of domestic helpers, how they are the modern day slaves of the world. Can you imagine working more than 12 hours a day without overtime? And some of them get flatironed on their backs, slapped, raped, and even forced to jump from high rise buildings just to escape from further oppression. Yet the International Labour Organization seems to turn a blind eye to their plight.

Domestic helpers are most women and they would enter this domestic job simply because there are no other opportunities for them in their home countries. Now what is wrong with their going abroad? There is nothing wrong except that the ILO does not look at their working conditions if the countries follow humane rules and regulations. Any employer who has a servant/s at his or her beck and call would be apt to or be attracted to order them around any time of day. Many of these employers would not have read the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and so they are bound to oppress their servants. The Middle Eastern countries have the greater number of employers who really go beyond the norm of what could be said to be humane treatment of domestic helpers. Reports are replete of wives of Arab men feeling jealous over Filipino maids who then suffer the brunt of their rocky marriages.

Unfortunately, not even the presence of labor attaches in those countries could help the maids when they run into problems. Instead they even become victims of these officials, charged with or raped just so they could be given shelter. Sick.

Moreover, the low self-esteem that domestic helpers suffer from could run for generations. They could carry that to their deathbed or they could suffer from so much psychologically that they would commit suicide to end their suffering.

The domestic helpers are in a very sick workplace, a very traumatic situation. The time is over ripe to address their problems. Their situation will improve only if their working conditions are changed, overhauled, revolutionized!

I think that it is high time that the ILO put its foot down and say stop to all this modern day slavery. The ILO is in the best position to mediate, intervene and put an end to the sufferings of domestic helpers. Let domestic service be onely 8-hour a day job, and with free vacations every months. Then require all receiving countries to provide dormitories for them to retire into every day. Let no domestic helper work overnight in their employer's home.

Let this labor organization acquire a meaningful existence by showing its sympathetic arm to our sisters in the domestic service.