Domestic Workers and the Employer-Employee Relationship in Delhi

Abstract

A. The Indian Context There are approximately four to five million domestic workers in India today who are part of India’s unorganized and unregulated workforce, the sector which includes 94% of all workers. (National Domestic Workers Movement, 2016). Workers in the unorganized sector lack job security, anti-harassment infrastructure, and reassurance of safe working conditions due to lack of legislative regulation. Unlike workers in the organized sector, domestic workers do not have social securities such as medical leave, insurance, pension, or minimum wages (DW Advocate A, personal communication, April 23, 2020). Workers are vulnerable to the breaching of informal contracts, unsafe and unregulated working environments, and power differences in the employee-employer relationship which limit power in facing abuse (Rights for Domestic Workers, n.d.; DW Advocate A, personal communication, April 23, 2020). Between the end of the 20st century and 2011-2012, the number of domestic workers in India increased fourfold (John, 2019). Data on domestic workers is sparse because A) domestic work is seen as illegitimate and considered extension of the household, B) many workers are part time, so they do not register domestic work as their primary occupation, and C) because there is little government-mandated data collection for the sector (Sahni & Junnarkar, 2019). Currently, most middle to upper class households traditionally employ at least one domestic worker. As traditional