How to Protect Workers when they are not Considered Employees: Domestic Workers in Argentina

POBLETE, LORENA

Chicago

Congreso; LASA Congress; 2014

Latin American Studies Association

Like in others Latin American countries, domestic jobs represent a significant part of the women employment in Argentina. Job quality (wages, welfare, working conditions) remains often very bad. In this context, the new law (recently implemented in Argentina) is presented as an advance in terms of legal protections for domestic workers. For the first time, the law recognizes as workers all domestic workers regardless of number of hours they work per week. However, (and this is the hypothesis on this paper) lack of recognition of a specific employment status -employee status- results in fragmentation within domestic workers. The extension of social protection to all domestic workers does not mean real access to the same social rights. The law gives less protection to domestic workers who are more exposed to social risks: domestic workers who work only a few hours for different employers. Through the analysis of regulation and parliamentary debates, the aim of this paper is to analyze the consequences of the new law in terms of social protection.