[Celebrating the month of gender equality in July] Press Conference " Let's establish the job manual for domestic work ! Let's write the contract!"

National House Managers Cooperation and Korean Women Workers Association

 We have been struggling to stand against the gendered perception of domestic work, that the works is women's worker, and to locate the work in the right place. We debunked that it is against the social justice and discriminatory that the domestic work is not protected by the labor law and thus the law does not protect workers' human rights. Above all, we have been struggling to change the social perception of domestic workers by calling them 'house managers' instead of ' domestics' or 'helpers', in order to gain social recognition of the work. We contributed to the adoption of The Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers in ILO in 201, playing a significant role in protecting domestic workers' human rights and labor rights.

 

 However, in reality, domestic service is provided without a proper contract. As a result, the industry is ruled by a grab-bag approach which often cause conflicts between the workers and clients. Domestic workers work 4 hours for a client, and the 4-hours work has no clear job description. This leads workers to work without a break or to work too much, causing chronic illness related to the work. On the other hand, clients experience difficulties in choosing services they need, as they have different preferences and expectations.

 

 To address this issue, the National House Managers' Cooperation,  Korean Women Workers Association, the workers , and researchers conducted a research project to develop a job manual for domestic work in 2014.  Based on the project, we developed; ▲ a job manual, which defines a boundary of domestic service and time that is need for the each services; ▲  rules that governs rights and obligations of both service providers and recipients; ▲ the Terms and Conditions for domestic service and the Standard Contract for Domestic Service. 

 As from today's press conference, we will carry on a public campaign to promote the wide usage of the contract, in order to protect the workers' human rights and rights of the clients. In addition, our workers will sign the contract with their actual clients. By writing the contract, we want;  ▲ to improve the social perception of domestic work; ▲to change the wildly used but denigrating terms referring domestic workers to house manager;▲ to re-evaluate the value of domestic work, which has long been devalued; ▲to recover self esteem of domestic workers by declaring them as workers; ▲to guarantee the rights and the obligations of workers and clients; ▲to re-locate domestic work in this society. 

 Wishing that domestic work is respected as an important job, we request the government to play more active role in settling down the practice of writing the contract. 

July 2nd, 2015 

National House Managers Cooperation, Korean Women Workers Association.