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"Domesticas"
Fight For Eight Hour Work Day
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"Domesticas"
Fight For Eight Hour Work Day
Domesticas - domestic employee or maids -
have run out of patience after 17 years of
fighting against slave-like working hours
and are threatening to report the country to
international bodies if the hours aren't cut
back.
The association for domestic employees,
Astradomes, is lobbying the Arias government
to cut back work hours from a 12 hour day,
which can be extended to 16 hours, to 8
hours.
Astradomes is demanding that work hours for
domestic employees is the same as for other
workers, 48 hours a week, and is threatening
to report Costa Rica to the Inter-American
Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), with the
help of the Washington-based
non-governmental Centre for Justice and
International Law (CEJIL), which has already
pledged its support.
As many as 12% of Costa Rican women work as
domestics.
In 2008, Astradomes scored a decisive
victory when the Sala Constitucional
(Constitutional Court) recognized that
domestic employees suffered discrimination,
and ruled that they have a right to one day
off a week, as well as national holidays.
But the Sala dismissed the demand for an
eight-hour day - the key point in the action
filed by Astradomes.
Álvaro Moya, lawyer for Astradomes, said
Costa Rica’s Labour Code dates back to 1943
and regulates paid domestic work as an
exceptional case, "with several
discriminatory rules".
The Costa Rican constitution of 1949
"contains more guarantees," the lawyer said,
but labour issues continue to be regulated
by the Code, which is in violation of
Convention 11 of the International Labour
Organisation (ILO), signed by Costa Rica in
1962, that says that all workers have a
right to equal labour conditions.
Congress is dragging its feet over the
second debate of a draft law to limit
daytime work by domestic employees to eight
hours, and night-time work to six hours. The
first debate on the bill was held in
November 2008.
- Some 120.000 people work as domestic
employees in Costa Rica, according to the
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC)
- National Statistics and Census Institute.
- 90% of the domestic workers are women, and
60 percent are foreigners, mainly from
neighbouring Nicaragua
- An estimated 8.3 percent of child labour
in Costa Rica works in domestic service,
making a total of some 9,500 children aged
between five and 17 who do paid work in
other people's homes, nearly all of them
girls, according to ILO statistics from 2002
- Costa Rican law prohibits working under
the age of 15, and education is obligatory
until that age. Fifteen to 17-year-olds may
work up to six hours a day, providing they
can continue their studies
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