“We already won the rights on paper, now it’s up to the State to make them a reality”

The year has not ended, much less for Marcelina Bautista. She continues attending work meetings and scheduling others, executing strategies and planning new ones, answering interviews, coordinating the political and technical training of domestic workersorganizing discussion forums and speaking with authorities so that they comply with what they have to do.

In the midst of all this, he stops to recount what has been achieved in 2022. Stopping is a saying, because we are talking on the way to the facilities of the National Center for Professional Training and Leadership of Domestic Employees (Cache), organization which he founded and directs.

“The progress in the fight for decent work has been significant,” he says. However, “the challenge is implementation.” In November, Congress approved the mandatory nature of social security for domestic workers. Whoever hires an employee has the obligation to affiliate her to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS).

They had been demanding this human right for decades, access to which, until this year, was left to the will of the employers. In 2019, with a reform to the Federal Labor Law (LFT) achieved the recognition of other basic guarantees, such as an eight-hour working day, vacations and bonuses, among others.

Access to a housing loan through the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit) and the labor inspection to verify the conditions in which they are used.

“They continue to hide behind the fact that the home is a private space and no one can enter to inspect it. But for us they are a workplace and, as established by Convention 190 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), all jobs must be free of violence and for this there must be vigilance”.

Lack of dissemination of changes

In April 2019, by order of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), the IMSS began a affiliate pilot program for this group of workers, made up of 90% women; with different adaptations, it worked for three years.

But in that time, only 2% of the more than 2.3 million domestic workers were affiliated. Many times non-compliance is due to “they are not so clear on how to carry out the process, or they have not really found out,” explains Marcelina Bautista, whose defense of the rights of this union is internationally recognized.

Misinformation contributes to the abuse to which they are always exposed. “Employers tell them that if they want the Insurance, they are going to deduct it from their salary, or register them with the minimum wage even if their salary is higher” so as not to pay a higher fee.

They have already managed to have their rights recognized, now it is necessary for the people to comply with them and the authorities to enforce them. This requires dissemination of information, he says. “And that not only corresponds to us, but also to the State. Institutions must disseminate public policies that they have created or the laws that they have reformed”.

Organized domestic workers are doing their part, he stresses. “A fundamental part of our struggle is to inform the domestic workers about their rights and seek strategies to communicate them to employers”. But they cannot take full responsibility for doing so.

“We began to make visible the discrimination that we experience and then to influence to achieve the legislative reforms what we have now,” he says. More changes are needed, but there is progress and this is more noticeable when doing a regional analysis.

“I remember that when I participated in the first Latin American meeting of domestic workers in 1988, where we were 11 countries and Mexico had nothing, absolutely nothing. When preparing for the meeting we did not find any study and we did not know what it was to have a decent job or what right we had”.

From that meeting emerged the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Domestic Workers (Conlactraho). That first regional organization “helped us to find, together, all the countries the way to claim our rights. The goal was also to make our situation visible at the international level and that is where we are at. There are countries that continue to advance, but Mexico has already equaled many and advanced more than others.

Short-term projects from Caceh

In addition to continuing to fight for the rights that are needed and the implementation of those that have already been achieved, from Caceh they have several more pending. “In 2020 we expanded our coverage and we are already present in seven states and we continue to promote our rights every Sunday.”

This year they inaugurated “La Casa Aída” in Mexico City, in honor of Aída Moreno Valenzuela, a domestic worker who formed the first trade union in Chile and who died in 2021. In that center, a first generation of employees received training in homework techniques and knowledge of their rights.

Also this year, along with other colleagues, she founded the Cooperative for the Comprehensive Development of Domestic Workers (Coodepth). The following year she will begin to implement a placement program and one for training. “In addition, we provide advice in conjunction with the Mexico City Labor Defense Attorney’s Office.”

The activist calls on other workers to organize. “Let’s join efforts for our rights, they must know that they must have decent work. In Caceh we are working to strengthen the peer leadership so that they replicate this in their places of origin”.