Letter to the Straits Times Forum

There have been several letters recently from employers of domestic workers who have complained about their behaviour and suggested that they are too free to decide their conditions of work and who they will work for. (“Are errant maids, agencies misusing free ride home? Nov 23, 2009. Strike a balance to protect interests of maids' employers. Nov 28, 2009. Transfer - the new mantra of street-smart maids. Dec 1, 2009)

We disagree. Domestic workers are not free to change jobs at will. They are tied to a specific workplace and employer by the terms of their work permits, and can only leave them and take work with another employer with the consent of their existing employer. Workers do not seek to change employers for frivolous reasons; usually there are charges attached to their transfer by their agency that mean that they may work from one to four months more before they receive any benefit at all from their labours.  There is no legal restriction on the hours a domestic worker may be required to work, nor any mandatory day off.

Two Sundays ago, we heard women from the shelter operated by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) talk about their experiences at the hands of employers. The beatings, insults, sexual molestation, inadequate food and rest that these still distressed women described may be the experiences of a small minority among the nearly 200,000 domestic workers here, but they testified to the great inequality in the relationship between employers and domestic workers. These women were not just the victims of bad employers; they suffered from disempowerment. Some were afraid to seek help or to refuse to do dangerous or illegal work out of fear that their employers would send them home, before they had paid off their debt. Most were not allowed to go out and were cut off from the outside world. Their passports and other documentation was taken away from them by agents and employers in order to control them.

It should be unacceptable for any employer to be allowed so much power over workers. Domestic workers should benefit from all the protections contained in the Employment Act and such others as may be necessary to ensure that they are treated with respect and consideration, asked to work reasonable hours and at duties they may fairly be asked to undertake, and have the freedom to come and go that other adults in Singapore take for granted. A more equitable relationship needs to be established, and we need to hear the voices of domestic workers as we work towards that.