Carmel Maria Foster migrated from South Africa to the United States of America hoping to start a better life in a new country. Instead, she faced racism, discrimination, and injustice of every form. Foster went through a nasty divorce, which left her homeless. In her latest book, The Awakening – Story of a South African American 9781078780742, Foster writes about her experience in the family courts and the injustice she faced there. She also discusses working as a domestic worker in California to get back on her feet after the divorce. As a domestic worker, she faced more discrimination, abuse, and violence. She was intent on taking her abusive employer to court, but that did not help her at all. In court, Foster witnessed abuse of power, money, and authority. There was no justice served to her, as an immigrant, her dreams and hopes were shattered. The reality was that the “American dream’ was nothing but lies. Now, Foster works with domestic workers, helping them voice their concerns and injustices.
Unfortunately, countless domestic workers across the globe have faced violence and abuse of the same nature. A study conducted by the Humans Rights Watch shows us how the rights of domestic workers are excluded from the common labor laws in countries around the world. Here is an excerpt from the findings:
Governments around the world have failed to acknowledge the rights of domestic workers perhaps most egregiously by systematically excluding these workers from key labor protections afforded to most other categories of workers under national laws. Such rights include guarantees of a minimum wage, overtime pay, rest days, annual leave, and fair termination of contracts, benefits, and workers ‘compensation. This exclusion denies domestic workers equal protection under the law and has a discriminatory impact on women and girls, who constitute the vast majority of this category of workers.
Disregard for the labor rights of paid domestic workers is directly linked to the status of women. Domestic work is considered the natural extension of women's role in the family and society. Paid domestic workers essentially perform for wages the tasks the woman of the house is socially expected to perform for free. In countries such as
Guatemala, where the disproportionate majority of domestic workers are indigenous women, gender discrimination is compounded by racial and ethnic discrimination.
The failure properly to regulate paid domestic work facilitates egregious abuse and exploitation and means domestic workers have little or no means for seeking redress. Women and girls employed in private households encounter a wide range of human rights violations in the workplace, including extremely long hours of work without a guaranteed minimum wage or overtime pay; no rest days; incomplete and irregular payment of wages; unsafe working conditions; lack of proper health care; no workers' compensation; and job insecurity. Inadequate monitoring by any independent or government agency compounds these abuses by creating an environment of impunity for employers.
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