Domestic workers lost far more jobs than others during Covid-19, ILO says

The pandemic has taken a harsh toll on domestic workers who have lost far more jobs than others despite a decade-old international pact guaranteeing their rights, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

In a fresh report, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned that working conditions for many of the world’s 75.6 million domestic workers had not improved since the adoption in 2011 of a convention entitling them to the same protections as other workers.

And the situation has been made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit domestic workers – the majority of whom are women – far harder than those in most other professions.

With eight out of 10 domestic workers globally working in the informal sector, many had no labour or social protections to fall back upon when the crisis hit.

“The impact on domestic workers was very much stronger than it was on other parts of the workforce, so that meant that these workers lost their jobs in greater numbers or saw their hours of work reduced to a greater extent than other parts of the workforce,” ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters.

“The crisis has highlighted the urgent need to formalise domestic work to ensure their access to decent work,” he said.

At the height of the crisis, job losses among domestic workers ranged from 5 to 20 per cent in most European countries, while the losses were between 25 and 50 per cent in the Americas, the report showed.