Spare a thought for our domestic staff

For middle class families, Christmas and New Year can be hard work, with the house girl upcountry for the holidays, yet large and often extended families enjoying a break from their own jobs too.
Yet as heads of homes and home makers turn to their very own housework and catering, it’s those that don’t that are flirting with prosecution.

For the law on domestic staff is clear, and simple. Yet the breaches of it are abundant.

House girls are entitled to the country’s minimum wage, which since 1st May 2017, in Nairobi, has been Sh10,995 a month. They are also entitled to NHIF and NSSF contributions, ensuring their basic healthcare provision and a pension ahead.

By law, all domestic staff must have a contract, just like any employee, with fixed hours, and arrangements for overtime. They are entitled to 21 days a year of fully paid holiday, up to seven days on full pay for sickness leave, and a further seven days on half-pay, as well as 90 days of maternity pay once they give birth.

They additionally have the right to join a trade union, typically he Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotel, Educational Institutions, Hospitals, and Allied Workers.

Their final base of rights comes around termination, which must follow employment law in every aspect, with any dismissal based on breach of contract or issues of performance explained in writing and the worker given an opportunity - accompanied by an independent third party - to ‘show due cause’ for the problem.

Where a family’s own circumstances change and a domestic worker’s job is terminated as a redundancy - and not because of any issue with the house girl herself, or her work - she’s entitled to full redundancy payments of up to 15 days pay for every year worked, as well as at least a month’s notice.

A drop ball across any one of these entitlements can trigger a court case before the labour tribunal, which can award up to a year’s pay to the worker in compensation for infringements, and sometimes other compensation besides. And these are cases that can and do happen, day in and day out, with access to the court not costly at all, although resolution can be slow.

Yet, in reality, the proportion of Nairobi homes running illegal domestic staff is high. However, the facts are that Sh2,000 a month is not a legal salary or even a viable one, and needs a rethink as 2018 opens, as does Sh6,000 or Sh8,000. It’s just illegal.

But domestic workers face much bigger issues than underpayment. All of them spend long hours right inside the homes. Nearly all must, inevitably, become close to the intimate and private details of any family, knowing who comes and who goes, and what is hidden at the back of the underwear drawer. Many even live inside or beside their employers’ home.

Inevitably, that can see domestic workers drawn into personal habits and dysfunctional behaviour that is far from the public eye – and certainly wouldn’t be happening in any office environment. For sure, the hapless house girl on duty when the head of home arrives home drunk doesn’t have too much on her side by way of defence!

Indeed, so widespread is the greater vulnerability to violence in the home for domestic workers that in 2011, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) created the Domestic Workers Convention (No.189).

Sadly, Kenya has never yet signed it, so maybe domestic workers’ rights to decent work, decent pay, and firm barriers around unsavoury duties and mistreatment aren’t yet as important as stopping plastic bags.

But with or without the ILO convention, the abuse of any domestic worker still constitutes assault, and is criminal, an actionable under multiple laws protecting basic human security in Kenya.

So, rather than get it very wrong for those girls who work in our homes, blessing us with extra time, helping us across very domain, let’s make 2018 the year we honour our own domestic staff with better than their rights, and remember that it’s a job we value, and that it is their life.