The employment contract entered into the most is undoubtedly between domestic workers and their employers. It is the one contract that brings out the best and worst traits in both employers and employees. Possibly because it is a special kind of employment relationship in that it is extremely personal and invasive both ways.
MIRIAM TOSE MAJOME
Domestic workers often live in their employers’ private homes such that they are permanently in each other’s personal spaces. For some their domestic worker may be the only friend they have in as much as they can also be their very worst enemy.
Domestic workers are often taken for granted yet are the people who put their employers’ lives in order. Their value is seen most that one Sunday evening when they fail to return from their off day and their employer has a house full of toddlers and badly needs to go to work in the morning but cannot.
Domestic workers see their employers through their most vulnerable moments, they are the ones that are there through family illnesses, births, deaths and other significant life moments.
However, they are also the most likely to let their employers down and stab them in the back and turn the knife with more precision than anyone else can.
The law
Both employers and domestic employees are urged to get a copy of Statutory Instrument 377 of 1992 which is the Labour Relations (Domestic Workers) Employment Regulations of 1992. It is available online or from Government Printers.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
These regulations guide the domestic employment contract and applies to all domestic workers. Domestic workers refers to people employed in private households in the capacities of child minders, baby minders, cooks, housekeepers, minders for aged and disabled persons, qualified sick person minders and yard or garden workers. they are listed in the first schedule of the regulations.
As far as possible it is important to remember that it is an employment contract like any other employment contract subject to the Labour Act. There is advice bandied around in social circles that the best way to conduct the domestic worker employment relationship is to treat domestic workers the same as the children in the household.
This is very bad advice which should not be heeded because it is condescending and only formalises the abuse of domestic workers. Domestic workers should always be regarded professionally as provided for by the law.
It is advisable to keep written records of the employment contract such as vital information like identity details, references, next of kin details, remuneration records and conditions of service just like in any other employment contract.
Effect on national productivity
However, more often than not this type of contract is regarded a little too casually by both sides. Oftentimes it appears like little more than a loose living arrangement between acquaintances than an actual employment contract.
This is the reason a housekeeper can see nothing wrong in telling her employer that her brother told her to return immediately to the rural areas to look after the family goats because the regular herder ran away.
This happens when people are in jobs or careers that neither they themselves nor their employers take seriously yet domestic employees are actually very important to the national economy. When the engineer of a company has to regularly to stay home to look after her toddlers because Evernice the maid did another no show on Sunday evening she cannot do her own job an engineer which affects productivity which affects profitability which affects the tax remittances to the Treasury which affects the national gross domestic product which affects the Minister of Finance and leads him to walk into parliament with an empty briefcase and nothing good to say.
There is no single unimportant link in the economic chain. There are tens of thousands of domestic workers throughout the country who routinely let their employers down this way and it invariably adds up. That is why domestic workers employment laws and relationships must be valued and taken seriously.
Minimum wages
Employment contracts can be verbal but it is advisable to keep written records particularly of remuneration and other conditions of service. It is a requirement to place domestic workers in any one of the categories listed in the First Schedule. This is important because it is illegal to pay any domestic employee wages that are less than the amount prescribed for that particular grade.
According to Wage Indicator 2016-Mywage. Org/Zimbabwe minimum wages gazetted in 2011 prescribe that a yard worker should earn $85 per month or a weekly wage of US19,60. A cook or housekeeper $90per month or $20,79 per week. Domestic workers looking after disabled and aged people $95 per month or $21,94 per week.
We will continue exploring the rights and obligations of employers and domestic employees and the unique problems attendant to that employment contract.
Miriam Tose Majome is a lawyer and a teacher. She can be contacted on [email protected]
