IDEALS

GUATEMALA CITY, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – Indigenous women in
Guatemala suffer discrimination and ill-treatment on a daily basis
because there are no laws to protect the rights of domestic
employees, although they contribute to higher standards of living
for the families that employ them.

“What really hurt was that they refused me my right to rest before
and after I had my baby. Even when my contractions started, they
wouldn’t let me go to the hospital,” said Mildred D¡az, a
Guatemalan domestic employee, talking about the worst aspects of
her job.

D¡az’s story is typical of thousands of mainly indigenous home care
workers.

According to the 2006 Survey of Living Conditions, there are close
to 183,000 women working as domestics in family homes, 72 percent
of whom are paid an average of 75 dollars a month, when the minimum
wage is $170 a month.

D¡az, who is now head of the Support Centre for Domestic Workers
(CENTRACAP), says their greatest achievement was winning
affiliation to the social security system. “After 12 years of
struggle, we are finally taking this step which makes us very
happy, although there is a lot that still needs to be done,” she
said.

The Secretariat for Social Welfare (SOSEP), run by the president’s
wife, and the Guatemalan Institute for Social Security (IGSS)
signed an agreement in July under which domestic workers will have
access to some social security services starting Wednesday, Aug.
12.

The agreement established a Special Programme for Protection of
Domestic Employees (PRECAPI), which makes them eligible for
maternity services, medical care for their children under five, and
hospital services in the event of accidents, none of which they
previously enjoyed.

Domestic workers are still not eligible for invalidity, old age
and widows’ pensions, nor for ordinary sickness benefits arising
from routine medical visits, but D¡az says “a first step” has been
taken.

Not everyone is entirely happy, however. Hortencia G¢mez, the
coordinator of the women’s office at the Guatemalan Workers Union
Federation (UNSITRAGUA), told IPS that “the agreement does not live
up to our expectations.”

Not offering health insurance for ordinary illnesses “is deeply
regrettable,” said G¢mez, because “it is the service most
frequently needed by domestic workers who, just like other human
beings, have heart problems, hypertension, diabetes and other
ailments.”

Another topic arousing controversy is the structure of payments
for the PRECAPI programme. The cost is 12 dollars per month, of
which 40 percent is payable by the employer, 40 percent by SOSEP
and 20 percent by the domestic worker.

“The state has accumulated a debt of some 1.8 billion dollars that
it owes to the IGSS, which it hasn’t been able to pay off, so how
on earth is it going to fund this new programme?” asked G¢mez,
referring to the 40 percent contribution payable by SOSEP.

In the view of Marco Vinicio Hern ndez, a labour lawyer with the
Ombudsman’s Office, the structure of the contributions “is in
complete contrast with the proportional mechanism for calculating
social security contributions payable by workers in the formal
sector, who pay 4.83 percent of their monthly wages.”

Hern ndez said he thinks the new PRECAPI programme represents
“progress,” although “it appears to be a short-term measure that
is not based on a sound actuarial study.” He pointed out that
domestic employees are not included in the social security pensions
system, and that their situation as a whole has not been addressed
in a comprehensive fashion.

There has been no visible coordination between institutions to
improve the design of the PRECAPI programme, in spite of the fact
that in the first half of this year a multi-sector group met to
discuss a draft law to protect domestic workers.

“But we were never told about PRECAPI, and as a result the issues
have not been addressed comprehensively, to include essential
matters like child labour,” Hern ndez said.

The reason for that is simple. Guatemala is the Latin American
country with the highest proportion of under-age girls working as
domestics, who make up 14.4 percent of the total number of these
workers, followed by Honduras with 10.3 percent, Nicaragua with 9.8
percent and El Salvador with 6.7 percent.

These figures are from a report published in early 2009 by the
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and
the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) regional office.

Delia Back, a lawmaker for the centre-left National Union for Hope
(UNE) party of President lvaro Colom and chair of the
parliamentary Commission on Women, told IPS that the multi-sector
group mentioned by Hern ndez had worked on several reforms to the
Labour Code aimed at protecting domestic workers.

“What we did was to look at previous initiatives that had been
shelved, and we worked on several reforms to protect vulnerable
workers such as domestic employees, agricultural labourers and
those who work in the ‘maquilas’ (export assembly plants), the
transport sector and others,” Back said.

Worst of all, the current Labour Code, instead of protecting
domestic workers, actually undermines their rights. Article 164,
for instance, states that “domestic work is not subject to regular
hours or to limits on the working day,” which is used to justify
working days longer than 12 hours for many employees.

The proposed reforms to the code would include regulations on daily
working hours, a minimum wage, holidays and all the benefits that
legally recognised workers enjoy.

Back said the reforms will be presented for debate in parliament
during its second legislative session, which began Aug. 1.

Meanwhile, the PRECAPI programme is under way. For the first year
it will operate only in the department (province) of Guatemala,
which includes Guatemala City and has the highest concentration of
domestic workers. According to IGSS authorities, it will later be
extended to the rest of the country.

The country’s main radio stations are already broadcasting an
information campaign calling on domestic workers to register with
the PRECAPI programme, and raising awareness among employers. D¡az
is not completely satisfied with what has been achieved, but she
hopes that the union’s demands will be fully met in future.