Verónica Montúfar, PSI Equalities Officer, discusses the shift in approach towards care policies, moving from a focus solely on the care economy to a broader perspective encompassing the social organization of care. This shift led to the creation of the Care Manifesto in collaboration with global feminist, tax justice, and human rights movements, advocating for five key principles: recognize, reward, reduce, redistribute, and reclaim. While progress has been made, challenges remain, such as the privatization and financialization of care, which marginalizes vulnerable women, and the lack of unity within the trade union movement. Despite challenges, opportunities exist, including advocating for the recognition and reward of care workers at the global level. Montúfar emphasizes the importance of unity in order to achieve success in the fight for equitable care policies and legislation.

In 2020, PSI decided to change the course and the discourse on care and move from the approach focused only on the care economy to the social organisation of care, which allowed us to have a more comprehensive approach to care, integrating both the political and the ethical in our analysis.

This shift permitted us to build our Care Manifesto with global feminist, tax justice, and human rights movements in 2021, jointly calling for rebuilding the social organisation of care. The Manifesto refers to 5Rs beyond the world of work of the ILO 5R Framework for Care Work and places the discussion on care at the national, regional, and global political levels. Our 5Rs (recognise, reward, reduce, redistribute, and reclaim), include in addition the need to recognise care as a human right, the need to redistribute care between the households and public services, and the need to reclaim the public nature of care and the fundamental responsibility of States in the financing, providing and regulating of care systems and services. -

We see that we can proclaim victory in all these levels, including the global governance on 3Rs or from our position in at least part of the 3Rs (recognise, reduce, redistribute)

We need to fight more to reward care workers with decent work (ILO agenda) and to reclaim public care and the State’s full competence in regulating all actors of the social organisation of care, including the private sector.

Opportunities:

• Advancing the need to reward care workers (ILO General Discussion this year)

Challenges:

• Privatisation and financialization, considering care as a market asset, that pushes out women in vulnerable situations, using the tricks of the finance system and/or using the State as an instrument for increasing private profits by the externalization of care services. (Care economy, purple economy, silver economy)

• Gender bonds and increasing the public deft.

• Lack of unity in the trade union movement that is not allowing us to fight together.

United we win, divided we fall!

Background

There are 75.6 million paid domestic workers worldwide who, since slavery times, have fulfilled the care needs of the global population under sub-standard employment conditions and without adequate social, economic and labor protections. About 76.2% of domestic workers are women and of them 12 millions are migrant workers in the so called ‘global care chains’. Their labor provides direct and indirect care in private household representing about 25% of the care workers globally (ILO, 2021). It is clear then that paid domestic workers are care workers and that the paid domestic work sector is a fundamental pillar of the care economy. 

The demand for paid care work is only growing and today we talk about the ‘care crisis’; experts in the field say that the care economy could create around 300 million jobs by 2035 (ILO, 2022) yet what kind of jobs and under which conditions? For almost a century paid domestic workers organized movement has been demanding rights and recognition for their labour. The ILO convention 189 of Decent Work for Domestic Workers adopted in 2011 is a powerful international instrument to create decent working conditions, pathways to formalization and professionalization for this key pillar of the care economy. Many countries have engaged in efforts to address the ‘care crisis’ by trying to improve the conditions, yet despite the clear contribution of domestic workers to the care economy often these efforts do not include domestic workers as care providers. These two panel of experts/organizers  and domestic workers themselves will explore what it means to put in practice the five Rs framework (Recognize, Reduce, Redistribute, Reward and Represent) through public policies while centering decent work for domestic workers in the care economy

Agenda