The fight for domestic workers’ rights
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2022
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Millions of people, mainly women, sign up for jobs as domestic workers overseas. Yet much of this work is informal, with households enforcing their own terms behind closed doors - leaving the workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
In this episode, Laura Heighton-Ginns meets domestic workers who escaped modern slavery.
Jackie was forced to work extreme hours, sleep on a hard floor, and given only leftovers to eat for two years. Grace felt she had no choice but to take a domestic job overseas, but discovered many women who do this work are victimised.
As well hearing their stories, Laura speaks to the newly appointed Philippines Secretary of State for Migrants and UN International Labor Organisation and asks why domestic workers still lack basic protections.
Presented and produced by Laura Heighton-Ginns.
(Image: Grace Nine. Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:17.0 | Oh, there's a wasp in there. |
| 0:18.7 | Just search for crowd science wherever you found this podcast. |
| 0:32.1 | Hello, I'm Laura Heit and Jins. |
| 0:34.2 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm at an event for migrant domestic workers, people who've left their home countries to earn money working in households abroad. |
| 0:45.2 | It's work that isn't well regulated, leaving the people who do it vulnerable to exploitation and worse. |
| 0:52.3 | In a few minutes, we'll hear from a woman sharing her story for the first time. |
| 0:57.5 | What they eat, the rest of that is what we eat. |
| 1:01.7 | Every day? |
| 1:02.9 | Every day. |
| 1:04.5 | And there's no bed, just the floor. |
| 1:09.0 | We asked the Philippines government and the International Labour Organization |
| 1:12.7 | why there's been such little progress on domestic workers' rights. |
| 1:17.4 | Probably administrative challenges, possibly political will, |
| 1:21.4 | possibly lack of information. It's sort of a combination of things. |
| 1:25.0 | And find out how domestic workers themselves are taking action. |
| 1:29.8 | In the middle of the night, we go there. |
... |
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