LAST MONTH, in a public interest litigation (‘PIL’) seeking inclusion of domestic workers under minimum wages notifications, a bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the petition, with the Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’) making several adverse comments against trade unions, projecting them, rather than employers, as the real exploiters of workers. While the CJI’s tirade against trade unionism was alarming and should be critiqued, it were the specific comments on paid domestic workers that continue to demand our immediate attention, given the core issue informing the PIL.
The CJI had remarked that the proposed reforms for domestic workers could drag every household into litigation, and thereby, hamper the hiring of such workers. In his sweeping observations, he had argued that severing the “human connection” and “trust” between employers and domestic workers would unleash unnecessary hardship for “millions of families who treat domestic workers as part of the extended family”.
The presumption that domestic workers are treated like extended kin smacks of an apologia, which basically lends credence to the existing policy framework that strategically denies crores of domestic workers the status of a worker in the legal apparatus. Denied this status, domestic workers are consciously excluded from protective features of the country’s labour laws – a measure that vastly benefits employers. By implying then that domestic workers are treated more like family, it is simply assumed that matters like wages and other working conditions are amicably resolved and best left to employing households. The Supreme Court’s reasoning outrightly privileges the sanctity of the employer’s home and household privacy to conveniently mask the huge exploitation of a workforce comprising largely women and children.
