Building Domestic Workers Skill as an Entry to Decent Work for Domestic Workers

Background

Domestic workers contribute significantly to the welfare of families and societies through their valuable and often indispensable services. They have allowed million of people to work productively in the world of work outside their homes or to pursue their personal development.

Despite such valuable contribution, in many part of the world domestic workers have not yet received legal protection as workers making them vulnerable to abuses and exploitation such as working long hours, low wages, excluded from social protection and, in extreme cases, physical abuses.

Domestic workers suffer not only because basic labour protection is not available to them, but also general lack of respect for domestic workers within society frequently leads to other human rights abuses, as well as physical abuse. It is common for many people to misunderstand the relationship between domestic worker and their employer, seeing it as a helper, rather than a work relationship.

The skills development and professional recognition of domestic workers play an important role in promoting decent work for domestic workers. Skills training can help raise the status of domestic worker as a recognized profession. This, in turn, would improve domestic workers’ employability and prospects for better employment condition.

To build domestic workers skills, ILO Jakarta's Promote Project has piloted a skill training program for domestic workers in Malang, East Java. The piloting had provided some valuable lessons learned from future works in building domestic workers skills.

Objectives

• To share the results of the piloting of skill training for domestic workers with main stakeholders; and
• To identify actions to be taken at the policy and program level for building domestic worker skills in Indonesia.