For the recognition of domestic workers' rights: the controversies associated with regulatory reforms in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay

POBLETE, LORENA

The Political Economy of Work in the Global South

Red Globe Press

Año: 2020;

In 2011, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention (C189) and Recommendation 201 (R201). These two documents lay out an innovative regulatory model for paid domestic work. Since the Domestic Workers Convention was approved, twenty-five countries have ratified it, including twelve in Latin American. During the 1990s, some countries implemented limited reforms. However, at the turn of the century, various countries undertook comprehensive reforms, like Bolivia and Peru in 2003, and Costa Rica in 2009. At that time, while some domestic workers? organizations were participating in the standard-setting process, others aimed to engage government representatives and the main unions to promote legislative reforms at the national level. As a result, when C189 was adopted in 2011, many Latin American countries had already started the process of regulatory reform or had political and social support for the initiative. In that context, C189 became a catalyst for reforms already underway and a model for reforming domestic work legislation in Latin American countries, regardless of whether or not they ratified it. Argentina, Chile and Paraguay are particularly interesting when analysing how C189 influenced national reforms because they made sweeping reforms to their legislation after the Convention was adopted. As legislators reiterated several times during the congressional debates, the new laws needed to revolutionise the social and cultural order. In different ways, legislators in these three countries sought to change the cultural notion of domestic work ? historically forged since colonial times ? in order to transform this familiar relationship based on care and trust into a contractual employment relationship regulated by the law. This was the ultimate challenge for regulatory reforms on domestic work legislation in these countries.To understand the process in which regulatory reforms resulted in a broad recognition of domestic workers´ rights in these three countries, it seems crucial to reconstruct the political economy of this process. This paper aims to answer some questions: Which were the motivations of the three countries to advance the reform? Was the convention 189 the trigger for the regulatory reforms? How C189 and R201 influence the new laws? Did the various actors who advocate for domestic workers´ rights worked in a coordinated way to forge a consensus? How public opinion face the international and local movement for domestic workers´ rights? Which were the obstacles for reforming the national legislations? How the political economy of the process of recognition of domestic workers? rights can explain the outcome in each country?