Why Domestic Workers, In A Unique Labour Market, Need Their Own Labour Law
Since 1959, multiple bills have been introduced to provide legal protection for domestic workers, but all of them have failed. Lack of political will and conflict of interest erode the rights of the most marginalised women in India
The unique and complicated nature of domestic work in India, combined with social and legislative apathy, have been barriers for a rights-based legislation for domestic workers since Independence. The recent Supreme Court verdict could be the catalyst in bringing in dedicated legislation to protect the rights of domestic workers, say worker collectives and labour activists.
On January 29, the Supreme Court directed four ministries–labour, social justice, women and child development and law and justice–to create a joint committee to “consider the desirability of recommending a legal framework for the benefit, protection and regulation of the rights of domestic workers”.
For decades, legislators have been indifferent to the idea of bringing in unique laws to protect the rights of domestic workers, especially their remuneration, claiming that such a law would be unenforceable and would impact their livelihoods, as we elaborate later. But this lacunae also leaves workers open to discrimination, abuse, and violence.
Domestic work is distinct from most other forms of unorganised labour, as we detail in the story. It usually comes with little or no proof of employment, is carried out in the employer’s home, often involves care work and the relationship between the employer and the worker is described as personal or familial. The existing labour laws applied to domestic work thus fall short on multiple counts because they do not recognise these factors.
The first Bill for the rights of domestic workers was introduced in 1959. Since then, successive bills were introduced – in 1972, 1977, 1989, 2004, 2008, 2015, 2016 and 2017 – but none were enacted. Researchers and union leaders are of the view that this is because of a lack of political will and empathy, especially because lawmakers too are employers of domestic workers.
Scholars such as historian Shireen Moosvi have pointed out that domestic work in India is rooted in caste-based occupational segregation and historically emerged from a bonded slavery system where women were vulnerable to abuse and violence. This social history and the fact that most of the domestic workers are Adivasi or Dalit women, has impeded the recognition of their rights as workers, union leaders told Behanbox.
Need For Separate Law
Shireen Moosvi, documenting the pre-colonial history of domestic work, begins with the Manusmriti, written around 1800 years ago, which describes service as a “dog’s mode of life”, wherein those from the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy must serve “meekly”. By 300 AD, legal texts started distinguishing between “clean” and “unclean” domestic labour, reflecting the theory of “pollution” embedded in the caste system. This caste-based distinction continues to date where people from lowered castes are assigned cleaning jobs while those from oppressor castes are given other kinds of work.
During the colonial period, domestic work became an important source of livelihood for lowered caste women and simultaneously, an important marker of middle-class domesticity and status. But it is the economic changes in the 1990s that fuelled the sector and led to increased feminisation, says a research paper by Neetha N, a professor at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS).
As India opened up to privatisation and liberalisation, it became more unequal. As some sections of the population saw increased incomes, others faced deprivation, especially in rural areas. The share of the top 10% in total income almost doubled, from 30% to almost 60%, in four decades between 1982 and 2022, found an analysis by the World Inequality Lab. In contrast, the income share of the bottom 50% went down, from around 23% to 15% in the same period. This is the highest rate of inequality in a century, worse than the inter-war colonial period, per the report.
This led to rural women from marginalised communities migrating to cities to work in rich and middle-class households. “The fact that it is the inability to take up other employment either because of non-availability of jobs or non-suitability of a potential employee complicates the analysis of its feminisation,” wrote Neetha.
But the lack of data has meant that estimates of the number of domestic workers in the country range anywhere from 20 million to 90 million. The only official data is from a National Sample Survey conducted in 2011-12, which puts the number of workers at 39 lakh, of which 26 lakh are women.
In August 2021, the government launched the e-shram portal to create a national database of “unorganised workers”. As per the dashboard, 28.9 million domestic workers have registered in the portal, of whom 95.8% are women. But access challenges and a tiresome registration process limits access to the portal, Behanbox had reported in May 2024.
“I know many workers, especially live-in workers, who have not signed up for e-shram cards,” said Anita Kapoor, an activist with Shahri Mahila Kaamgar Union, which represents over 10,000 domestic workers in the National Capital Region (NCR).
In November 2021, the government launched an All India Survey on Domestic Workers, the result of which was expected to be out within a year. The labour ministry, in July 2024 said that the fieldwork was completed but the report is yet to be released.
When Care Enters Domestic Work
The specific nature of the employment of domestic workers and the social relations which are a part of the employment relationship merits a separate engagement in terms of law, said Neetha.
The nature of domestic work is complex and varied: for one, the workplace here is a private space, the home of the employer. Some workers live with the households that employ them, others work in multiple households. All these factors exclude domestic workers from being covered under existing laws.
Domestic work is also fundamentally different from other kinds of labour because it has a critical element of care involved. Care work, which plays an important role in development and maintenance of human capabilities, has always been gendered labour and undervalued. Policy makers also tend to ignore the fact that domestic work often also involves emotional labour.
This unique structure of care work and cultural constructions based on class, caste, and gender creates power hierarchies between domestic workers and their employers, and in the absence of a national legislation, leads to abuse and harassment. Many employers describe their relationship to their domestic workers as “familial”, eroding the status of the employee.
“Domestic workers are not your mausi, dadi, nani or didi. You can call them that out of respect but you shouldn’t call them family to exploit them and deny them their rights as workers,” said Anita.
When asked about the status of a national policy for domestic workers, the labour ministry, in July 2024, said that “the Code on Social Security, 2020, provides for social security to all unorganized workers including domestic workers”. However, Aditi Yajnik of Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) pointed out that the government maintains that domestic workers are classified as “wage workers” in labour codes but the question is of definition.
“The labour codes by definition are very inclusive,” reiterated Neetha. “But the main problem is that when there are issues, it depends on how they are interpreted.”
Shreya Ghosh, a member of the Sangrami Gharelu Kamgaar Union based in Delhi, pointed out that without legislation, resolving disputes becomes tricky. Anita echoed this – most domestic workers who seek her help complain about the non-payment of wages and the lack of proof of employment is a stumbling block in her effort to help them.
“Sometimes employers threaten us, asking us ‘What proof do you have that she works at my home? What proof do you have that we have not paid her?’,” said Anita adding that in most cases the employers pay up after a few phone calls from her.
There are those who also ask her: “Why should I give her minimum wages when she is not considered a worker?” Or “I have paid her agent. Where in the law does it say that I have to give her the money?”
Early Movements And Policies
Domestic workers began to organise as early as the 1950s but these earliest unions were affiliated to political parties and focused on male workers, overlooking to address the sector’s gendered nature.
The first domestic workers’ protest can be traced to 1954, when members of the All-India Domestic Workers Union demonstrated before the Delhi State Assembly demanding that laws be passed for the rights of domestic workers.
Two years later, in November 1956, Shyam Singh Pawar and 11 other members of the union went on a 12-day hunger strike in front of the home minister’s residence. Three years later, Pawar, a former domestic worker, again went on a hunger strike, vowing to starve to death. The strike that stretched for 26 days received immense support from domestic workers from Delhi who on March 19, 1959 went on a one-day strike.
That year, two private members’ Bills were introduced in the Parliament–one in the Lok Sabha in April and another in August in the Rajya Sabha. Both pushed for minimum wages, fixed working hours and off days.
While lawmakers publicly sympathised with the problems faced by domestic workers, neither Bill was passed. The deputy labour minister Abid Ali said that state governments feared that such legislation could lead to the retrenchment of domestic workers and the shrinking of employment opportunities for them.
Since Independence, “domestic workers” have been mentioned 732 times in the Lok Sabha and 657 times in the Rajya Sabha. A significant number of these mentions (589 in Rajya Sabha and 273 in Lok Sabha) were answers to questions asked by members to the government.
The remaining instances include requests by members to the government to draft bills and discussions of the bills that were introduced. Between 1959 and 1990, eight private members’ Bills were introduced in the Parliament and all of them were withdrawn.
The pattern of most of these discussions was similar – a member would express the need for a legislation protecting the rights of workers and the government would, while expressing sympathy, list reasons why it would not do so.
In 1975, Gyan Singh, the general secretary of the Gharelu Karamchari Ekta Union, approached the committee on petitions requesting the government to make laws for domestic workers that mandate minimum wages, fixed working hours, weekly holidays, gratuity and a three-month notice for termination. The government, in response, said this would not be possible “because of the difficulty of enforcing any such law and the possibility of such an enactment resulting in large-scale retrenchment of domestic workers”.
Local Movements Pushing Change
By the 1980s, local movements erupting across the country, with groups forming in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Bengaluru and in the Vidarbha region and the movement also became more gendered, highlighting the unique plight of female domestic workers. Earlier these unions were led mostly by men like Gyan Singh and Shyam Panwar.
“As all the cities in India started employing more domestic workers, the number of women increased because women found it easier to find work as domestic workers,” said Kiran Moghe, an activist, politician and president of the Pune Zilla Ghar Kamgar Sanghatana.
One of the first resistance movements led by women domestic workers was in Pune. In February 1980, Khandarebai, a domestic worker returned to her workplace after a leave of sickness, and realised that she had been replaced by her employers. Angered, she spoke to other domestic workers in the locality and a group of women confronted the replacement worker and demanded that she leave. But she refused.
The women’s group tried lodging a complaint against Khandarebai’s employers but were refused, with the argument that these events unfolded in a private space. The women requested the employers to restore Khandarebai’s employment and this appeal too was dismissed. As they left the area, the women encountered other domestic workers and this on-the-spur mobilisation resulted in a strike. Within an hour, around 150 women from the city’s Karve Road were agitating.
The agitation was rooted in longstanding neglect, low wages despite rising inflation and poor treatment of workers, Lokesh, a researcher, writes in a chapter in the book Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers.
The workers, with the help of local Lal Nishan Party, held daily meetings and put forward their demands to the employers. The strike that lasted up to 20 days in some areas ended only after employers agreed to increased wages.
It was extensively covered by local media and that was “because suddenly groups of women, nobody thought about them as workers, were right on the streets”, Kiran told Lokesh. The agitation led to the formation of Pune Shahar Molkarni Sanghatana and soon two other organisations – Pune Zilla Ghar Kamgar Sanghatana and Baba Adhav’s Molkarni Panchayat – were formed.
By 1994, after multiple protests and strikes, left-wing affiliated unions affiliated to both the left and right wing parties, church-based groups and voluntary organisations in the state came together to demand legislative protection. The struggle led to a discussion in the legislative assembly which ended in the passing of the Maharashtra Domestic Workers Welfare Board Act in 2008, making it the first dedicated legislation in the country for domestic workers.
Stronger Collectivisation
In the early 2000s, more unions and collective groups were formed across the country, providing further impetus for the movement. As per the data collated by the authors of this 2018 paper, most of the 69 registered domestic workers’ organisations in India were formed in the 2000s.
“We formed trade unions for domestic workers in most of the southern states from 2002 onwards,” said Sister Lissy, a union leader from Telangana. In 2006, the unified Andhra Pradesh government included domestic workers in the Minimum Wages Act and this was because of the agitation by workers, said Lissy.
“Through collectivisation, workers presented their issues and in the beginning the wage was very low, at Rs 1,950. We said we do not want this wage and went as a union to the minimum wage board. They increased the wage to Rs 2,600 in 2006,” said Lissy.
These unions also started coordinating and advocating for legislation at a national level. Pressure also started to mount at an international level. In 2006, the International Domestic Workers’ Federation (IDWF) held a regional meeting for Asia in Amsterdam in preparation for the 2011 International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention and in 2008, the ILO said that it would include “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” in the agenda for the convention.
With a new-found global voice, the issue also gathered pace nationally. In 2008, the National Commission for Women drafted a Bill. While it was put aside within a few months, the mounting national and international pressure forced the labour ministry to constitute a task force in 2009. This led to the introduction of a draft national policy on domestic workers, which also led nowhere.
The only change was that domestic workers were included in the Unorganized Sector Workers’ Social Security Act that was passed in 2008 and that too based on a Supreme Court directive.
Shifts In Approach
The 2000s, when at least nine Bills were introduced, showed a distinct shift in the legislative approach to the regulation of domestic work. the subject. This “could probably be traced to the progress made in the discourse in civil society circles, and to the domestic workers’ rights movements which is gaining momentum steadily,” write Mihika Poddar and Alex Koshy in this paper.
However, none of these Bills became Acts.
The three Bills introduced in 2001, 2008 and 2009 had the same provisions, demanding application of the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, fixed wages, leave entitlement, maintenance of registers and a notice period.
In 2012, when the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Bill was introduced, domestic workers were left out of it. The National Platform for Domestic Workers, created that year, campaigned for the inclusion of domestic workers and this was achieved.
The Bill introduced in 2015 was the first to mandate an agreement between the employers and the workers. The next Bill that came a year later was the first to talk primarily about ensuring the rights of the workers, expanded the definition of domestic work to include child care and “old-age care”. It also pencilled in various kinds of arrangement — part-time work, full-time work, casual, temporary, contractual and migrant workers. The Bill mandated that district boards and not inspectors ensure the implementation of the law and sought the inclusion of workers in a host of existing legislations, including the Employee’s State Insurance Act and Maternity Benefit Act.
The 2017 law added specific definitions for part-time, full-time and live-in workers. In addition to district boards, it mandated the constitution of state boards and establishment of a welfare fund collected using a proportion of house tax, registration fees from employers and workers and budgetary allocations.
When Lawmakers Are Employers
While legislation at the national level was being stalled, smaller victories were being seen in some states.
Like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, several states including Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha, have brought domestic work within the legal framework of the Minimum Wages Act.In addition to Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Kerala also set up welfare boards for domestic workers. These boards, made up of representatives of workers, employers and the government are meant to create policies for the welfare of the workers.
But these measures are not enough, particularly since the existing policies do not have a rights-based approach and focus instead on providing welfare. This approach denies domestic workers agency in asserting their right to decent work.
The Maharashtra Act came after CPI(M) MLA Narsayya Adam pushed for a protective rights-based legislation for domestic workers. But certain demands relating to working conditions were met with resistance because of apathy and “vested interest that originates directly from their own homes”, wrote Kiran. “They were not willing to give that kind of rights because they were worried that if they give domestic workers rights, everybody will have to recognise them as workers,” Kiran told Behanbox. But even after the Act was passed, it was not implemented until 2011, she added.
“Every time there is a Parliament session, we, under the aegis of National Platform for Domestic Workers (NPDW), go to the lawmakers and put forward our demands,” said Anita. “And they ask us, ‘What do you want to do? Invite the police into our homes?’ No one will want that. The people that we go to with the demands are employing 4-5 domestic workers in their homes.”
Lissy also spoke of the apathy she routinely faces when she approaches lawmakers. “All these officials have domestic workers in their homes. So they don’t want to recognise [their rights],” she said. “Once, a group of workers and I went to meet the principal secretary of labour in Andhra Pradesh and she told us that we are doing robbery. Then, the domestic workers told her: ‘You are robbing our country’,” recalled Lissy.
Inadequate Approach
Currently, a few labour laws have been extended to include domestic workers, but they are oriented towards providing welfare support and are inadequate.
For example, the notifications under the Minimum Wages Act define domestic work as a sum of the tasks undertaken, and not in terms of an employer-employee relation. And because the quantification of tasks is complicated based and dependent on working situations, this is inadequate. Moreover, the wages systematically devalue the labour and are often lower than that for similar tasks performed outside homes, as illustrated in this paper.
Around 2014-15, Neetha’s field work in Kerala looked at how inclusion under Minimum Wages Act has helped domestic workers and she found that the state considerably underestimates the work.
“Even in a state like Kerala, the minimum wage that the state has fixed for domestic workers is far lower than that for other informal sector workers. This shows that the state’s understanding of the nature of work is that it is not very skilled and that like any other informal set of work, there can be a fixed eight hours or an hourly fixation. It doesn’t understand the kind of intensity that could go into the part time nature of that work,” said Neetha.
Another issue with the minimum wages inclusion is that with no proof of employment, there is no way to enforce it, added Neetha. “Even active organisations have not been able to take up cases of violation because of no proof of employment,” she said, pointing to the need for registration of employers and workers.
Also, state governments have imposed limitations on inspections within the home and might require additional requirements such as specific directions from the commissioner or a written complaint.
The labour boards also fall short because of resource crunch. “The contributions from domestic workers should not be the main component to run these boards. The state has to pitch in or the employer’s contribution has to come in,” said Neetha, adding how these factors minimise the number of workers who have benefitted from boards in Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu.
An ideal policy for domestic workers needs to be rights-based but also needs to understand the human element of the care work that goes into it. Extending the existing dehumanised regulatory framework that is largely meant to cater to mechanical work to the care industry is not a well-deliberated legislative response, write Mihika Poddar and Alex Koshy, students of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences.
An ideal law, the scholars pointed out, must recognise the social and economic realities around domestic work, acknowledge the peculiarities of care work, frame a nuanced enforcement mechanism and provide a supportive grievance redressal mechanism.
The union leaders Behanbox interviewed said that the Supreme Court directive will be the push that will lead to a legislation that will recognise and protect the rights of domestic workers.
“The order gives us hope and energy to carry on the pressurising work,” said Shreya.
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