{"id":5322,"date":"2020-04-19T15:17:21","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T11:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/?p=5322"},"modified":"2020-04-19T15:17:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-19T11:17:23","slug":"domestic-workers-victims-of-language-barrier-and-lack-of-knowledge-about-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/domestic-workers-victims-of-language-barrier-and-lack-of-knowledge-about-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Domestic Workers, Victims of Language Barrier and Lack of Knowledge About Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Housekeeper, nanny, maid, helper, cleaner, domestic worker: different titles — some deemed politically incorrect, others not — but all referring to an employee working at an employer’s home. Although there are laws to protect them, there are often cases of mistreatment. It is mostly due to the fact that they don’t speak the local language, they aren’t aware of laws protecting them or simply because the employer doesn’t respect these laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analisa\u00a0Luang,\u00a0a 34-year-old Filipino domestic worker, still remembers her first job\u00a0in the United Arab Emirates in 2014. She was verbally and physically abused by her employers, was not allowed to use a phone and deprived of her salary for several months. Then one day, she couldn’t take it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI jumped out of the bathroom window, from the sixth floor, into a dumpster, and started running barefoot,\u201d she said, recalling how she ran away from her employer’s house.

The U.A.E. Domestic Labour Law provides a legal basis to protect domestic workers and ensure that they are aware of the terms of their contracts, the nature of their work, their workplace, the periods\u00a0allowed for\u00a0rest, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The laws by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation <\/a>are drawn upon mutual understanding from all parties involved, to protect all parties involved. However, domestic workers are often in a vulnerable position because they sometimes do not speak the local language and aren’t aware of local laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luang\u00a0is one of many who suffer from this situation around the world.\u00a0According to the\u00a0International Labour Organization<\/a>, there are about 67 million domestic workers across the world who\u00a0comprise a significant part of the global workforce in informal employment and are\u00a0of\u00a0the most vulnerable groups of workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discrimination exists even though there are laws that prohibit it. In an Instagram survey asking people if domestic workers should be allowed to take weekly days off, there were even some who said no. They were a minority, but still, this shows how some people view domestic workers and potentially contribute to the perpetuation of mistreatment and abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the respondents said \u201cgiving them a weekly day off can cause problems, like pregnancy,” adding, \u201cyou can allow them to have private phones, but they can only use them whenever they don\u2019t have work.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another person said, \u201cI\u2019m against a day off because this might create problems and cause interactions that will become my headache, but I am with rest hours during the day.\u201d\u00a0\u201cThey deserve to have a day off just like everyone has their weekends, and housekeepers have the right to own their phone because that\u2019s their only way to communicate,\u201d said one other respondent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another participant, Dania Haj-Eid, a 30-year old sociology graduate, who has hired part-time domestic workers in the past, said, \u201cI feel like a lot of the times people forget that they are humans too and experience the same types of emotions and feelings as the rest of people. They need their time and space.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Housekeeper, nanny, maid, helper, cleaner, domestic worker: different titles — some deemed politically incorrect, others…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5324,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions\/5324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbrsc.aud.edu\/MBRSCPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}