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The Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) and Recommendation (No. 201)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Adelle Blackett
Adelle Blackett*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, McGill University
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Extract

The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) (the Domestic Workers Convention or Convention), as supplemented by an accompanying non-binding Recommendation (No. 201), on June 16, 2011. Both instruments were immediately hailed as historic. Two years later, on September 5, 2013, the Domestic Workers Convention entered into force, thus bringing the fifty-three to 100 million predominantly women workers—many of whom are migrants—squarely within the corpus of international labor law, with due attention paid to the specificity of their human rights claims.

Type
International Legal Materials
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 250 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2014

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References

* This text was reproduced and reformatted from the text available at the International Labour Organization website (visited March 31, 2014), http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C189 and http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:55:0:::55:P55_TYPE,P55_LANG,P55_DOCUMENT,P55_NODE:REC,en,R201,/Document.

1 In addition to the works cited elsewhere in this note, a few of the many leading studies include: Cynthia, Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (1989)Google Scholar; Mary, Romero, Maid in the U.S.A. (1992)Google Scholar; Bonnie, Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (1994)Google Scholar; Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada ( Abigail, B. Bakan & Daiva, Stasiulis, eds., 1997); Grace, Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy (2000)Google Scholar; Pierrette, Hondagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (2001)Google Scholar; Global Women: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy (Barbara, Ehrenreich & Arlie, Russell Hochschild, eds., 2002)Google Scholar.

2 International Labour Organization [ILO], Resolution Concerning the Conditions of Employment of Domestic Workers, June 30, 1948 Google Scholar. A listing of ILO resolutions is available at Resolutions Adopted by the International Labour Conference (1919-2011), ILO, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/leg/resolutions.htm (last visited Apr. 25, 2014).

3 ILO, Resolution Concerning the Conditions of Employment of Domestic Workers Preamble, June 23, 1965, ILO, Official Bulletin (Geneva), Vol. XLVIII, No. 3, July 1965 Google Scholar, Supplement I, 20-21. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/lib/resource/subject/resolution_dw.pdf.

4 See International Labour Office, Date, place and Agenda of the 99th Session (2010) of the International Labour Conference, GB.301/2 (Feb. 7, 2008)Google Scholar, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_090361.pdf.

5 See International Labour Office, Minutes of the 301st Session of the Governing Body of the International Labour Office, GB.301/PV(Mar. 20, 2008)Google Scholar, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_097016.pdf.

6 For a discussion of the limits, see Shireen, Ally, From Servants to Workers: South African Domestic Workers and the Democratic State (2009)Google Scholar; see also Exploited, Undervalued – and Essential: Domestic Workers and the Realisation of their Rights (Darcy du, Toit, ed., 2013)Google Scholar.

7 International Labour Conference, Decent Work for Domestic Workers, 99th Sess., Rep. IV(1) (2010), http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_104700.pdf Google Scholar [hereinafter Law and Practice Report].

8 See generally Celia, Mather, “Yes, We Did It!” How the Worlds Domestic Workers Won Their International Rights and Recognition (2013)Google Scholar, available at http://wiego.org/sites/wiego.org/files/resources/files/Mather_Yes%20we%20did%20it!_2013.pdf.

9 See, e.g., ILO, Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers art. 10, June 16, 2011, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p_NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:2551460:NO Google Scholar.

10 Janie, Chuang, Rescuing Trafficking from Ideological Capture: Prostitution Reform and Anti-Trafficking Law and Policy , 158 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1655 (2010)Google Scholar.

11 See, e.g., Convention, supra note 9, art. 18.

12 See Domestic Workers – 12 x 12, International Trade Union Confederation, http://www.ituc-csi.org/domesticworkers-12-by-12.

13 A regularly updated list of ratifications is available on the ILO’s labour standards database at Ratifications of C189 – Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), ILO, http://www. ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p_1000:11300:0::NO:11300:P11300_INSTRUMENT_ID:2551460 (last visited Apr. 25, 2014).

14 See, e.g., Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, General Cmt. No. 1 on Migrant Domestic Workers, UN Doc. CMW/C/GC/1 (Feb. 23, 2011), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cmw/cmw_migrant_domestic_workers.htm; Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, General Recommendation No. 26 on Women Migrant Workers, UN Doc. CEDAW/C/2009/WP.1/R (Dec. 5, 2008), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/GR_26_on_women_migrant_workers_en.pdf.

15 See International Labour Office, Follow up to the resolution concerning efforts to make decent work a reality for domestic workers worldwide: Progress report, GB.319/POL/1 (Sept. 10, 2013)Google Scholar, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_222102.pdf.

16 Hierarchies of race in domestic work and ensuing differential treatment require further study. See, e.g., Bina, Fernandez, Cheap and Disposable? The Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on the Migration of Ethiopian Women Domestic Workers to the Gulf 18 Gender & Dev. 249, 251 (2010)Google Scholar; Adelle, Blackett, Domestic Workers at the Interface of Migration and Development: Action to Expand Good Practice (Global Forum on Migration and Dev., Background Paper for Reg’l Meeting, Sept. 21-22, 2011)Google Scholar, http://imumi.org/attachments/26_2.pdf.

17 See Rhacel, Salazar Parrenas, Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes 10 (2005)Google Scholar.