Domestic Workers Union continues advocacy efforts
Earlier this year in January, worker-leaders from the Domestic Workers Union of Sri Lanka (DWU) travelled from across Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, Batticaloa, Kandy, Colombo, Hatton, and Maskeliya to meet with the Deputy Minister of Labour, Mahinda Jayasinghe. They discussed the issues they faced, highlighting the need for legal protection, and presented him with a legal draft requesting that labour protection including EPF, ETF and a contract of employment be extended to this vulnerable group of workers. Following this, Founder-Member Menaha Kandasamy accompanied worker-leaders from Kandy and Colombo to meet with the Minister of Labour, Anil Fernando for a second discussion, again expressing the need for legal protection and submitting the draft to him. This is the latest in over a decade of labour reform advocacy that the union has consistently engaged in with successive government administrations.
Domestic workers form a significant 47 per cent of the labour force in the country as noted in the Labour Force Survey – Annual Report 2022, Census and Statistics Department. However, they face a range of challenges such as low wages, unregulated hours of work often without extra pay, lack of mandated rest days, substandard living conditions, and exposure to mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Amidst a political environment in which the current administration pledged in its manifesto to protect employee rights including ensuring fair treatment, fair wages, and secured working conditions as well as securing social protections including pensions for all workers in the country, the DWU’s draft comes at an opportune time.
In order to operationalise the extension of labour protections to domestic workers, the Union’s draft requests that the Minister of Labour rescind regulations under the Employees’ Provident Fund Act, No. 15 of 1958 and the Employees’ Trust Fund Act No. 46 of 1980 that specifically exclude domestic workers from state pension funds. It also requests that the Ministry of Labour through the Department of Labour introduce a model contract of employment for domestic workers to be shared on the website of the Department of Labour.
It is likely the most favourable political environment since the DWU began its advocacy. Union leaders and members remain hopeful that such legal changes will finally come to fruition, providing basic legal protection for a group of workers so essential to the economic and social life of Sri Lanka, yet who have historically been left behind.
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