Peru: Domestic Workers organize for implementation of new rights law
In Peru there are 700,000 domestic workers; 90% are indigenous and rural young women who have migrated from the countryside to the cities to escape from poverty. Considering their working day, payment and access to healthcare and pensions, many work in slave conditions – no fixed timetable, no rest days and even no payment or no minimum pay. Many are underage and/or illiterate and are denied the right to go to school. They suffer physical abuse and rape. When they reach sixty they are thrown out with no pension or severance pay, after investing their life in the care of the family.
The CCTH was founded in 1982 by domestic workers. Our mission is to defend the human and labour rights of this unprotected sector so that all of us are recognized as workers who create people’s time and welfare, and so that we are treated with social and economic dignity and respect. As women, our struggle has been part of the women’s rights struggle, and as people of Andean origin our struggle has been part of the affirmation of Andean culture and work values as a social function, and part of communal and reciprocal living. Since 2000 we have been active in the platform of the Global Women’s Strike.
We work with a wide range of collectives of community kitchens, vaso de leche, trade unions, people of African descent, with disabilities, lesbians… and other domestic worker and women’s groups.
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In 2003 with the passing of the Domestic Workers Act 27986, we won:
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We help dismissed women and teenagers; defend those that have been raped or attacked by employers; organise childcare for domestic workers’ children; carry out labour and human rights programmes in night schools; educate society about the discrimination we face to achieve equality and justice. For many years, our weekly radio programme “Soncco Warmi” - in Quechua “Heart of Women” - was “the voice of those that never had a voice”.
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CCTH demands in 2005 The governments must include us in social and economic policy. The government must set up refuges for domestic workers and older people. The Ministry of Work must implement the Domestic Workers Act. More attention by the authorities for agricultural and rural communities, so that young people don’t continue to migrate with the expectation of employment and an education. The strengthening of our own autonomous organizations. We congratulate the revolutionary government of Hugo Chávez and the people of Venezuela for their victorious struggle against the oligarchy and the interference and aggression by the United States. We are in solidarity with the Bolivian people in defence of their gas. Respect for Latin American sovereignty. No to the Free Trade Treaty. Invest in Caring, Not Killing, and an end to poverty in the world. No to wars, as none are good. No to the arms trade. Poor countries are set up against each other. The winners from this bloodshed are the multinationals. Don’t pay the “Third World Debt”: we owe nothing, they owe us. |
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CCTH works with the Aymara centre in Puno. Pacha Aru demands: Fair prices for our agricultural produce That the work of rural women be recognised and valued Free schooling, health, water and electricity. No to privatisation. Maternity security The right to exist as Indigenous people and be legally recognised by the state and by the international community The right to our culture, to speak and be educated in our own language. State protection, especially for those in vulnerable situations Lower salaries for congress, ministers and local and national state functionaries to address the struggle against poverty. |