Hidden Populations – the Case of Domestic Workers in the Netherlands - paper for LLRN3, Toronto 2017

This paper examines the social and legal construction of the figure of the “paid domestic worker” in the Netherlands and how does it “fit” the ILO definition of domestic work. It describes how and why there are different categories of “domestic workers”, differently involved in the labour market and differently protected under social security laws, despite the fact that they do the same type of work and perform similar tasks. The investigation of the incidence of undeclared work in the personal and household sector is the starting point of the research. Moreover, the position of domestic work in society (gender and migration issues) and in the labour market (vulnerability and risk of labour exploitation) is addressed from a critical perspective.
Developments in Dutch society are expected to have a great impact on the expansion of the market for domestic services. The growing labour market participation of women and the rise in the number of single and dual-earner households is likely to result in an increased demand for cleaners, house-keepers and child minders; the growing number of older people is likely to increase the demand for care workers, just like the welfare state retrenchment and growing focus on self-reliance in care provision. Recent reports estimate that around 14% (1 million) households in the Netherlands employ a domestic worker (defined as a non-self-employed person hired directly by a household, other than au-pair) on a regular basis.
In the Netherlands, domestic work is implicitly assumed to be part time and, as such, regulated predominantly by the Regulation on Household Services (Regeling Dienstverleging aan huis). Introduced in 2007, the Regulation applies to the provision of personal and household services for no more than three days a week per household. Thus, it defines “part-time” work from the point of view of the service user and not the service provider, who might be working for more than one household and constitute in fact a “full-time” domestic worker. According to the Regulation, a domestic worker is entitled to a limited range of social rights and partial labour protection.
This paper sketches the profile of the domestic worker in the Netherlands, focusing in particular on their legal position, their formal (citizenship) status, and the mechanisms of exclusions that affect them. The implications of gender and ethnicity are also briefly discussed. The aim of the research is to examine the mechanisms generating their divergent inclusion/exclusion from entitlement to labour and social security rights and to explore what are the legal/policy instruments available to foster decent work and social protection in the sector. The paper considers the potential of international labour standards to change exclusion/exploitation trends: If international regulations (in particular, ILO convention 189) would be implemented in the Netherlands, how the situation could be improved and what adjustment of the current legal and policy framework would be needed to achieve that aim?