The Daily News
Domestic workers are among the few South Africans who cannot claim from the Compensation Fund if they are injured on duty, the DA has said.

And the party plans to do something about it. DA MP and labour spokesman Ian Ollis announced yesterday that his party had prepared a “comprehensive action plan” to allow domestic workers the same compensation benefits enjoyed by most other categories of workers.

He noted that, aside from soldiers and police officers, who have their own compensation mechanisms, domestic workers were the only category of worker in South Africa to be excluded from the Compensation Fund and could therefore not claim for injuries or illnesses sustained in the workplace.

The DA plan would draft a Private Members’ Bill to be introduced in Parliament which would amend the existing Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act of 1993 “in order to expand the (fund’s) coverage to include domestic workers”.

“The implication for domestic workers will be profound. It will mean that, whenever a domestic worker becomes injured or disabled because of work, they will be eligible for compensation of their medical expenses, compensation for loss of income and could potentially receive punitive damages if employers were negligent or knowingly complicit in any injuries to domestic workers.”

Ollis said it was “unacceptable” that domestic workers did not enjoy the same rights as other workers and that “years and years of promises” from the Labour Department to do something about it had so far come to nought.

Another step would be to get Parliament to ratify the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention on Domestic Workers, which was passed earlier this year. The convention binds signatories to, amongst other things, “take measures to ensure that domestic workers, like workers generally, enjoy fair terms of employment as well as decent working conditions”.

It also binds signatories to “ensure that domestic workers enjoy conditions that are not less favourable than those applicable to workers generally in respect of social security protection, including with respect to maternity”.

And it urges member states to implement “means to facilitate the payment of social security contributions, including in respect of domestic workers working for multiple employers, for instance, through a system of simplified payment”.

Ollis said his party would call for the introduction of a simplified registration and payment “one stop shop” so that employers could use a single mechanism to register workers for both the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation Fund.

“And it won’t be expensive. Contributions to the (fund) are made by employers on a monthly basis. Individual employers will pay a small fraction of the total value of domestic workers’ salaries into the fund – this will likely be below one percent of the domestic worker’s salary,” he explained.

The third step in the DA plan would involve a national education drive by the Compensation Fund and the Labour Department “to inform domestic workers and their employers of their rights”.

“Domestic workers have been treated as second-class citizens for too long. It is high time that their role in building our nation is properly acknowledged and they are afforded the same rights as other workers,” said Ollis.

The ILO has urged countries to do more to improve the conditions of employment for domestic workers. In the preamble to the domestic worker convention, the organisation notes that “domestic work continues to be undervalued and invisible and is mainly carried out by women and girls, many of whom are migrants or members of disadvantaged communities and who are particularly vulnerable to discrimination in respect of conditions of employment and of work, and to other abuses of human rights”.

South Africa is not yet a signatory to the convention.