CHILDREN DOMESTIC WORKERS

A LOOK AT THE INVISIBLE

Child domestic work is one of the most disturbing features of Filipino life. It is disturbing because of its very nature - domestic work performed by a child, increasingly by very young girls, some as young as 8 years old, isolated and separated from their families. It is also disturbing because of the high incidence of deceptive recruitment and trafficking that characterize it. Finally, it is disturbing because of the very exploitative working conditions that also make these children vulnerable to sexual abuse.

• Basic profile of CDWs
• What national statistics say
• Profile of CDWs in Asia
• Terms and Working conditions

Child domestic work is a massive, invisible engine of Filipino life. Domestic work is seen as dirty work that employers would rather have someone else carry out for them. As two-income households become more feasible and desirable, it also becomes more necessary to hire a domestic worker. As adults can often find better income in other forms of work here and abroad, domestic work falls more and more on children. This phenomenon is embedded in the Filipino's historical & cultural roots.

• Language and Labels We Use
• Why we propose the term "Kasambahay" or "house companions"

For more details, check the resource center.
Link to Kasambahay Book.

Table Graphic:

BASIC PROFILE

There are forms of child domestic work where children suffer grievous work that make them vulnerable to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.

Child domestic workers work an average of 15 hours daily, and are on call 24 hours a day. Days off are limited to one day each month; many have no day-off at all. Confined to repetitive, menial work, most of these children have no opportunity to acquire life skills that would help them grow into productive adults.

Working away from home, the child is separated from her family for extended periods of time. She and many others like her are prohibited from communicating with their families. The child is under the complete control of her employer who does not necessarily serve the child's best interest. The child's freedom of movement is also limited. Many CDWs are not even allowed to venture beyond the house gates except when the employer sends them on errands or brings them along when their services are needed. Because they are isolated from family and peers, they rarely leave even when they suffer abuses. Thus, they are also literally invisible.

These children are among the lowest paid workers, receiving an average of PhP 800 (US $16) a month - if paid at all. Few employers comply with the law requiring domestic workers earning more than PhP 1,000 (US $20) a month to be registered for social security benefits. From this meager amount, CDWs frequently remit part of their income (when they receive any) to their family. Many also buy their own supplies, including medicine, and sometimes even their own food.

Some begin their working life in debt to recruiters who initially paid their transportation and lodging on the way to the employing household (two to three months' worth of the child's wage). Some employers sell clothes and other personal items to their domestic worker who buys even when it takes months of going without a salary to pay for it. When an overtired child makes mistakes, some employers deduct the equivalent cost from her salary. When emergencies occur at home, the child domestic borrows from her employer, who also deducts the loan payment from her salary. The child is then trapped into debt and thus into bondage. One CDW had to work off her debt for 2 years.

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WHAT NATIONAL STATISTICS SAY

n 1995, the National Statistics Office found that there were at least 766,000 domestic workers in the Philippines. Of these, at least 301,701 were 19 years old or younger. As the surveying government agency cautioned, these figures refer to paid domestic workers: this does not include children who work in exchange for room and board, or for the chance to study.

It is difficult to count how many child domestic workers there are. In the first place, labor force and employment statistics gathered by the government capture only those who are at least 15 years old. In the second place, enterprises employing 10 workers or less are classified in the informal sector. Domestic work or domestic workers are included in the industries and occupations of the informal sector. In addition, employers and their domestic workers who are kin do not report employment, and neither do employers who pay their child domestic workers in the form of schooling or room and board instead of cash.

In short, child domestic workers are statistically invisible.

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PROFILE OF CDWS IN ASIA

Asia is home to more than 60% of working children worldwide. Most still remain invisible, transitory and unreached. Estimates indicate that probably second to child laborers in agriculture, child domestic workers in households away from their families are most numerous. No comprehensive researches have been made to accurately peg how many they are but at least we have a clearer idea where they are, how they move and what interventions work. Initial situational studies in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, India and Philippines, indicate the high densities of CDWs not only in major cities but also in other urban centers and small towns. During the Manila consultation, the following estimates were forwarded:

These are pre- Asian crisis figures, and recent grassroots studies suggest pervasive effects of globalization. Child labor has increased. Abuses are more rampant and more hidden nowadays. The more scattered child laborers are increasingly more difficult to protect. And finally, they tend to sacrifice their education in the face of constricting incomes and opportunities. The plight of CDWs similarly follows these trends, threatening to erode our hard-earned gains in advocacy and direct interventions. Despite the dramatic increase in the attention given by many organizations and the variety of strategies for reaching out CDWs, the possibilities of realizing concrete actions to really make a big difference in their lives has become increasingly challenging.

For more details, see 2nd Regional Consultation of the Task Force CDWs in Asia.

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TERMS AND WORKING CONDITIONS

The childhood of child domestic workers is bought, paid for, and deducted from their very lives.

One can find CDWs escorting their employer's children to and from school as part of their duties. Even when employers allow them to go to school, their heavy workload and long work hours - which are not adjusted for their schooling - disturb their studies and the fact that they have no money for school-related expenses. Many are forced to drop out. Unable to acquire the means to better themselves, they drop out of their hopes and dreams as well.

CDWs often endure inhumane treatment. They suffer insults on a daily basis. Employers call them tanga, gaga, bobo (stupid), batugan (lazy), tarantada (careless), walang pinag-aralan (illiterate), bastos (rude), malandi (flirt), sinungaling (liar), and other derogatory names. A child who often hears these demeaning words would tend to believe these are true and thus lose her self-confidence and self-respect.

An employer can easily jail CDWs merely by accusing them of theft. Without any immediate access to legal assistance, they can rot in jail until the case goes to court. They are usually lumped together as youth offenders. It is as though they are not citizens within the same legal system.

Many are beaten and some even to the point of death. There are cases where the tormenting employers' creativity exempts his or her acts from being called beatings: one child domestic died from being forced to drink a liquid used to unplug drains; A child who was forced to drink bleaching liquid each time she failed to wash all the laundry as a form of discipline; One was made to kneel on a stool for hours while balancing a fire extinguisher on her outstretched arms.

This is torture and brutality, not discipline by any stretch of the definition. These are not acts to provide anyone, even an adult, with a guide to improve performance or behavior. These are acts meant to injure, torment and even kill.

Girls are sexually molested usually when their duties include giving their employer a massage. Some are raped, after an escalating series of molestations. In Cebu City, the regional Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) reveals that 80% of reported victims of rape, attempted rape and other acts of sexual abuse are child domestic workers. These acts have no relation to the "personal comfort and convenience" defined by the Labor Code: sexual molestation and rape are expressions of power over others, having nothing to do with sex.

Invisible and isolated, overworked and underpaid, deprived of the opportunity to study and to play, verbally abused day in and day out - this is how many child domestic workers live. In the worst situations, they are abused to the point of death and hopelessness. This is how perhaps 1,098,980 Filipino children live today. One million future adults - if they survive this kind of childhood.

It is a tribute to the resiliency of these children, as well as to concerned citizens and organizations that many do survive. They somehow find in themselves the resolution to live because of the courage to hope and the strength to insist on their humanity.

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LANGUAGE AND LABELS WE USE

We have various terms to refer to domestic workers. It can have a significant impact, either good or bad, on one's self-image. Hence, the struggle for politically correct terms to ensure that the images words project stripped off negative meaning. Sticks and stones break bones, and words injure or annihilate what defines us: one's self-esteem.

Consider the labels we use to refer to domestic workers. We usually call them katulong or helper, alalay or assistant. These words capture how society regards domestic work. On one hand, it is secondary, undesirable and marginal, for it is work that the domestic worker's employer cannot be totally bothered with. On the other hand, it is supportive and necessary to everything else that the employer does, for he has gone out and hired someone else to do it for him!

This is exactly what domestic work is in the Philippines, although it may not be true in other countries especially the industrialized ones.

Since domestic workers are widely accepted, affordable and accessible, employing them is a practice that is part of the everyday life of the Filipino household. You can hardly go to work in unwashed, wrinkled clothes, with no breakfast and no supper the night before. Your child or children can hardly be expected to go to and from school unattended. You cannot take the toddler to the office, and expect to be able to fulfill the demands of your job. You cannot be tied up in an important after-work meeting and run around buying groceries at the same time. You can hardly remember to take out the trash either in the morning as you rush to the office or at night when you crawl home too tired to even smile.

Doing house chores is secondary, undesirable and marginal. As many full-time housewives or househusbands know, domestic work is sheer drudgery. You do the same things every day, some every week. Over and over again, every day, every week, of every month in every year. You arrange your work around your spouse's and children's schedules. On bad days, you identify with the worst of what you work on: dirty dishes, dirty laundry, dirty house and trash. On really bad days, you identify your worth with the amount of money you bring into the household: none.

The low value society gives domestic work extends to the persons who do it. The terms katulong and alalay take on a wholly different meaning when used in the context of domestic work. As we in the Visayan Forum have observed in our interactions with CDWs, many of them are ashamed to be identified as and called katulong. They wince at the outright scorn expressed by the terms tsimay or atsay (corrupted Chinese terms for domestic workers which with downgrading connotation).

At the same time, notice how domestic workers refer to their employer. Although they call their employer "sir" or "ma'am," kuya (elder brother) or ate (elder sister) in face-to-face conversations, domestic workers refer to their employer as amo, literally "master," when speaking or writing about them. It is well to remind us of the quotation, "There can be no masters where there are no slaves." If there are masters, then there are slaves: the domestic workers.

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WHY WE PROPOSE THE TERM "KASAMBAHAY" OR "HOUSE COMPANIONS"

Employing a domestic worker is a socially accepted practice in the Philippines with slavery as its historical root. Before our country was colonized by Spain, our tribes had two kinds of what may be considered as the equivalent of domestic servants: aliping namamahay (domestic slaves who can own property) and aliping sagigilid (domestic slaves who are household property). These slaves were often captives of war, or in debt to the tribe.

The Spanish era introduced various schemes to extract free labor from Filipinos. In the guise of obras pias (works of piety), Filipino women were conscripted as servants of clerics and officials of the colonial government. Women with religious aspirations were made to render domestic services for clergymen.

The rise of urban centers and cities also gave rise to the need for household help, "to give comfort to the employers' home for them to engage in other productive endeavors outside the home." The practice, begun by the elite both in their urban household and at their hacienda (rural estate), thus spread to the middle and lower classes where both spouses need to work to attain and/or maintain their chosen lifestyle. More recently, it is common to find domestic workers who began their career at a very young age in their own rural village.

Although there are indeed enlightened employers, there are those who are simply unaware. The experience of most of the CDWs we have dealt with at the Visayan Forum and the trends indicated by other studies show that child domestic work by its very nature has many practices similar to slavery.

Where there are masters, there are indeed slaves. In its second-to-worst form condition, child domestic work re-creates the aliping sagigilid of the ancient tribes, slaves who were household property. But even slaves were considered assets to be judiciously expended. They had no freedom on their own, but were fed and watered and treated in such a way that they could effectively carry out their duties.

When CDWs are no longer treated in that nearly rational manner, when abuse in its different forms is all that they receive in exchange for all the work they give, that is the worst form of child domestic work. Children treated as less than persons, less than animals, and less than machines. The Visayan Forum finds no words that can express what the worst of employers think they are.

In the Labor Code, domestic workers are called domestic servants, perhaps to differentiate them from civil or public servants. The National Commission on the Filipino Language translates the word "servant" into utusan (errand runner), alila (slave), or katulong sa bahay (helper in the house). The last term is colloquially used by everyone.

The term utusan, however, refers to a person whose role is to be ordered about, to be given commands. No wonder CDWs can rest only when the employer can no longer think up a task for them (such as getting them a glass of water in the middle of the night). The term itself limits their existence to obeying orders and commands.

The term alila has additional connotations of degradation, including the ill treatment of child domestic workers. Household equipment, appliances and pets are better treated than many child domestic workers.

Inasmuch as the Labor Code defines domestic workers as domestic servants, and the government's own Commission on the Filipino Language translates "servant" as utusan and alila, one cannot avoid the conclusion that the government itself has unwittingly defined the role and status of domestic workers: to be ordered about, and to be degraded.

Whether we refer to them as katulong, katabang, timbang, kabulig, tsimay, atsay, utusan or alila, we are expressing the value we place not merely on their work, but the value we place on them as persons. None of these terms capture the fact that we are referring to persons, much less children.

Our laws call those who hire domestic workers "employers" and not "masters," not merely because they employ domestic workers, but also to define their value as persons. They are not "masters" of domestic workers with powers over life and death, but "employers" with a set of responsibilities and rights.

This is why the Visayan Forum advocates the term kasambahay, a contraction of kasama sa bahay (literally "companion at home"), or household partner. With this statement, we hope to build a new understanding and experience of domestic work. With this statement, we offer a benchmark for relationships between those who toil as domestic workers and those who employ them. With this statement, we encourage domestic workers and their employers to embark on partnership.

The term "househelper" as used in the Labor Code is synonymous to the term "domestic servant" and shall refer to any person, whether male or female, who renders services in and about the employer's home and which services are usually necessary or desirable for the maintenance and enjoyment thereof, and ministers exclusively to the personal comfort and enjoyment of the employer's family.

Rather than being servants, domestic workers' responsibilities are not limited to performing household tasks. In fact, it extend to managing the welfare of the employer's home and freeing the employer to move towards his or her strategic life goals. In a partnership, the relationship is one of mutual trust and respect. Both parties cooperate to resolve problems and there is room for change and for growth.

In a partnership, diverging goals are accommodated. The employer's own example allows the domestic worker to work towards a better life situation, most likely a better job. In a partnership, shortcomings are workable challenges that can be hurdled with mutually agreeable measures: there is no slave for there is no master. In a partnership, there is no place for abuse of any kind from either side. If the relationship no longer works, then it is adjusted, or else civilly dissolved.

The term kasambahay is thus laden with both socio-cultural and political agenda.

In place of devaluing domestic work and those who perform such work, the term kasambahay offers to recognize the dignity of domestic work and of domestic workers.

The term "kasambahay" denotes partnership: mutual trust and respect, cooperative problem solving, and room for change and growth.

In place of belittling CDWs' perception of themselves, the term kasambahay proposes to encourage them to develop a profound and positive understanding of themselves, upon which they can build their daily lives.

In place of the secondary, undesirable and marginal value society places on their work and on their persons, the term kasambahay reminds us of the supportive and necessary contribution domestic work and those who perform it provide our household, our lives, and our society.

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