'Maid agencies' need to clean up their act, says domestic worker union
July 27, 2007
 By Terry Bell
Most weekday mornings at railway, taxi and bus stations in urban centres around the country, groups of workers wait to be picked up by minibuses. These take them to suburban homes and city apartments for a day of house, child care or garden work.
They are supposedly contract cleaners, nannies and gardeners who work usually on a daily basis and sometimes receive as little as R20, depending on the hours worked.
According to the SA Domestic Service and Allied Workers' Union (Sadsawu), the average daily hours worked are five and the pay for this is R35. However, many workers have to pay R15 a day in transport costs to and from the pick-up point.
Yet they are among the more fortunate of this veritable army of workers. Others are women bussed in from the rural areas and housed in often appalling conditions by labour brokers. They are ferried to work each day from the backyard sheds and garages where they are housed.
"These agencies are often just a desk, a chair, a telephone and a book," said Myrtle Witbooi, Sadsawu general secretary. "And as long as the book is in order, showing that workers are paid R6 an hour for the time worked, the labour department does nothing."
She pointed out that one such establishment, where more than 20 women were housed in a garage with one toilet, was closed down only for health reasons.
"Their books were in order, so they were fine as far as the labour department was concerned," she said.
Sadsawu is also critical of many of the agencies using resident urban workers.
"For them, the labour laws are just bits of paper and they make big money by getting around the laws," Witbooi said.
These agencies charge R160 a day or more for casual domestic help, while paying workers perhaps R40, less the claimed cost of transport.
One agency operating in Cape Town's southern suburbs charges R180 a day for a "maid service".
For the servant-employing classes fearful of the consequences of the labour laws, it offers a "flexible, easy-to-hire, easy-to-fire service". This, it claims, is for a "full-time, part-time, ad hoc" maid service "from emergency relief to full-time outsourcing".
It is the "easy-to-fire" claim that has union hackles rising.
The agencies are able to make this claim by maintaining that they merely provide a service for self-employed workers. This is a fiction the labour movement wants exposed and dealt with.
But with a vast number of poor and often desperate unemployed women and men available, agency operators are in a strong position.
Workers, especially those placed in a fairly regular series of jobs, however poorly paid, are reluctant to complain openly.
As far as the unions are concerned, the minimum hourly rate should be raised to R10 and agencies should be closely monitored and made to provide full employee status for the pool of labour they hire out.
This they are already supposed to do, and there are registered agencies that operate in accordance with the labour laws. But many do not.
These are issues Sadsawu intends to raise when the Presidential Women's Group meets with President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria. The meeting was initially scheduled for next Tuesday, but has been delayed.
Also on the agenda for this meeting is a new scheme to make pension provision available to the most vulnerable - and mainly female - workers. Insurance giant Old Mutual is heavily involved.
By August 9, plans should be well under way for the launch of a pension fund for domestic workers.
The new scheme has been tailored to cater for workers who labour for two, three or five days a week. It will apparently be administered in the initial period by Old Mutual. The more than 500 domestic workers employed by Old Mutual staff are likely to be the first members enrolled.
However, it seems the scheme will be voluntary. Employers may incorporate it into the pay packets of their workers or leave it to the workers to sign up on their own.
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