Equal opportunities on the threshold of Czech homes: do you know who cleans your place?

Domestic worker who does your ironing, shopping and cooking for you, baby-sitters with perfect English or house cleaners who will come to your house a few times a week – or all of this in one person. Nothing unusual about that in the Czech households of late. There are also specialized agencies offering baby-sitters from the Phillipines or cleaners from the Ukraine. These particular women form, however, one of the most vulnerable migrant groups.Equal opportunities on the threshold of Czech homes“ is a project that addresses this specific  issue. The project is being carried out by the Association for Integration and Migration (SIMI), People in Need (Člověk v tísni), marketing agency Ogilvy&Mather and the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Národohospodářský ústav AV ČR).

Anna has a husband and two children back home in the Phillipines. Unable to find work there, and desperate to pay for her children’s schooling, she accepted the offer made by a Czech agency and five months later she moved into the the Novak household. Since she lives on-site, her working hours are not a particular concern to anyone: at times she’s available 18 hours a day, getting up with the children in the morning, cleaning the house during the day, cooking lunch and dinner for the family, tutoring the children in the afternoon, taking them to bed later on, and doing a bit of ironing after they’ve gone to sleep. She also works Saturdays. In the beginning, all appears to be in order, yet, as time goes on, Anna begins to miss her family, it upsets her to think that she is actually raising someone else’s children while she has not seen her own for months. In time, she realizes that her working conditions are far from the standard. When she decides to refuse an additional houseduty, relations with the Novaks start to cool off. On top of it all, the money she is promised seem to be getting to her with an ever so bigger delay, the amount sometimes short of the promise. This difference is to be explained to her by Ms. Novak who claims that Anna’s shopping expenses are too high, or that she ate too much of their food. At the same time, Anna‘s family back home depends on her monthly income, making it impossible for her to leave the job at the Novaks. She needs money, she speaks no Czech, and she has neither friends nor acquiantances despite having lived here for months. She has no one to turn to.

Anna may be a fictitious character but her story is based on many that are real, happening around us. „The goal of our project is to improve the status of this vulnerable group of women on the labour market, to provide them with necessary information andsocial and legal counselling. Additionally, we would like to use comunication media campaigning – collaborating with Ogilvy&Mather - to create a debate across our entire society, drawing the attention of general public.“, explains Magda Faltova, the project coordinator and the head of SIMI. In order to meet this goal, a specialized website will be set up, in various languages, containing relevant information for foreign workers, their employers, the media and the general public.

As this issue is highly topical and has not been studied in our environs up to now, an extensive research forms part of the project. This research investigation is undertaken by theEconomics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Národohospodářský ústav AV ČR), in collaboration with other experts. „We would like to present the results of our investigation to government representatives and politicians who have influence over Czech legislature and migration policy“, adds Magda Faltova. The issue is also investigated by the International Labor Organization who has drawn up Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers. In July 2012, the Czech Parliament refused to ratify this convention, claiming that “from the point of view of the Czech Republic’s internal practices the issue of domestic workers in a foreign household is not important enough to justify changes in the labor regulations that would be necessary for the Convention’s ratification.”

Contacts:

Magda Faltová, project coordinator, SIMI, faltova@refug.cz, +420 224 224 379

Marie Heřmanová, media coordinator , Prople in Need,marie.hermanova@clovekvtisni.cz, +420 777 782 088

Kateřina Dederová, PR SIMI, dederova@refug.cz, 224 224 379

Further information you can find on our websites:

http://www.migrace.com/en/work/kulate-stoly

www.migration4media.net

Domestic Workers Convention:

http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:2551460