ON OCTOBER 15, THE GOVERNMENT OF KARNATAKA published a draft of the Domestic Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2025. The proposed Bill aims to guarantee minimum wages, extend welfare benefits, and formalise protections for thousands of household workers in urban areas.
The draft legislation seeks to create a rights-based contributory framework under which all domestic workers, including maids, cooks, drivers, and nannies, along with their employers and service providers, will be required to register. A dedicated Karnataka State Domestic Workers Social Security and Welfare Board will be set up to implement the law, frame schemes, and resolve grievances.
The proposed Board will be structured as a tripartite body, ensuring equal representation from government officials, domestic workers and their unions, employers, service providers such as agencies and digital platforms, as well as representatives from resident welfare associations.
The draft bill says that, “The employer or the service provider or the placement agency including the platforms engaged in the services of providing employment or work opportunities to the domestic workers within the state of Karnataka shall be liable to pay up to 5 percent of the wages or remuneration as welfare fee through digital transaction to the fund so created.”
The contribution must be made digitally. The state is also considering a tripartite contribution model, where domestic workers, employers, and the government will each share responsibility for funding, though the exact ratios are still being discussed.
Registered domestic workers will be entitled to minimum wages and overtime pay. They will also have the right to reasonable working hours, with a cap of forty-eight hours a week.
Domestic workers will be eligible for weekly holidays, annual paid leave, and maternity benefits.
In addition, they will gain access to social security and welfare schemes, including healthcare, accident compensation, pensions, and educational support for their children. The law also promises protection from forced labour, discrimination, abuse, and sexual exploitation.
Employers and agencies that fail to register, pay minimum wages, or comply with the Act may face imprisonment of up to six months and fines of up to Rs 50,000. Severe offences such as employing child workers, trafficking, or abuse will attract jail terms of three to seven years and higher fines.
The law also proposes district grievance committees to resolve disputes related to employment, termination, or welfare contributions. However, cases under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 will continue under the existing framework.
This proposed piece of legislation has very significant repercussions on the Indian labour market which is predominantly informal. Informal work space is characterized by hazy and ambiguous employment relations. Employers do exist in many cases, but their existence remains hidden in the labyrinth of intermediaries and outsourcing. In the domestic work context, employers do exist but the workspace is not a usual one.
Implicitly recognising domestic space as work space
The significance of this proposed legislation is that it is defining the employment relation in domestic work and by doing so it is implicitly defining domestic space as workspace also. By mandating a written contract between the household employer and domestic worker, this proposed legislation is recognizing the elusive employment relation in domestic work.
This is important since applicability of any labour law is based on the preexistence of employment relations. For example, many states had notified minimum wages (after incorporating domestic work in the schedule of employment) for domestic workers in the past but could not implement that in the absence of an explicit employment relation. In that context, this proposed piece of legislation makes a pioneering contribution particularly in the informal workspace.
The novelty factor here is enhanced because of insistence of a written contract between the household employer and domestic worker. This is definitely a move towards formalizing an inherent informal labour force. The mandatory contribution of 5 percent to be made by the household employer towards the welfare fund is a step in the right direction as it sets employers’ accountability and rightfully makes them pay for the productivity of domestic workers that they are getting.
Administration of minimum wages needs an ecosystem of enforcement and right to inspect premises. This Bill would help this process as it is defining employer’s responsibility and with that giving domestic space a recognition of work space. Carrying out inspections becomes feasible in such a context. Also, the formation of a tripartite Domestic Workers Welfare Board will help unionization of domestic workers as it necessitates representation of domestic workers in the Board.
Formation of a welfare board and imposing cess to finance social security and welfare might not always be the most appropriate way to ensure basic labour rights, as the case of construction workers might convey, but in case of domestic work involving multiple employers, this might be the best possible solution in the present context.
This Bill has wider repercussions for the other similar occupations in the informal sector, particularly those carried out in domestic space. Since economic liberalization in 1991, large-scale manufacturing has been outsourced to domestic space and these activities are perceived as self-employed occupations. It has become imperative to define employment relations in such activities and this Bill will definitely help make that demand more vocal.