This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 35, Summer 1997.
Slavery is alive and well in Britain today. Women migrants employed as domestic workers have no right to change their employer, to receive regular wages or to keep their own passports. Often they are subjected to violence. Paddy Tanton interviews Sister Margaret Healy about the situation and about Kalayaan, which supports and campaigns on behalf of these women.
Paddy Tanton: Can you tell me when and how Kalayaan started?
Sister Margaret Healy: It was established in 1987. By then the Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers had realised that there were much bigger numbers of migrant domestic workers who had left brutalising employers. They had no money, no passport, had not been paid a salary for 6-8 months, longer sometimes. We also realised that we couldn’t continue responding on a day-to-day basis because when there were a few individuals it hadn’t been a problem but we began to get more and more. We also discovered around that time that there were women from other nationalities who were in a similar situation, so in one household you might have two Filipinos and two Indians and when the Filipinos escaped, they would take the Indians as well or the Sri Lankans, for example. So we realised it was a broader issue than just a Philippine issue.
Also in that same year, 1987, Face the Facts approached us to do a programme but at that time we were very concerned about the women’s security and apprehensive about the Home Office or police being involved. So in order to protect the women and the work, we had to have a stronger organisation. By 1987 we already had a fairly strong group of migrant domestic workers organised — they had their own organisation, but we couldn’t do public campaigning. So we had discussions with a number of organisations and decided that we should establish a group that would campaign specifically on the issue of migrant domestic workers which would be for women of all nationalities, and men also (there are some men domestic workers). So that’s how it became established.
Paddy: The women that come to you, do you find most of them are from the Philippines or are they from a range of countries?
Margaret: I think about 70% are from the Philippines, but there could be a reason for that in the sense that this is a Filipino centre and that Filipino women workers in general speak English because the system of education in the Philippines is the American system, so anyone who has had a secondary level or third level of education would be English-speaking. In recent years the number of Indians and Sri Lankans and women from African countries is increasing.
Paddy: How is contact made with the women? Do they contact you or do you have a network?
Margaret: They contact us but that’s done through a network. They access each other through contact with each other. For instance, people who have escaped this year, if they go to Hyde Park in the summer months, they will see many women who are in similar situations and sometimes they give them telephone numbers or whatever and then they’ll contact us.
A number of women, when things get really bad, will just escape without knowing anyone. They’ll go on the street and hope they meet somebody, which in many cases they do, or they just call a taxi which brings them here if they’ve heard of the Centre before.
Paddy: From the book Britain’s Secret Slaves, I got the feeling that a lot of those who had run away were working for Middle Eastern families who were here on a visit. Do you think the women use the opportunity to escape at the point when they come to this country?
Margaret: No, I don’t think that at all, and I say that based on our experience, because we have a number of women who have come to us who have been in the UK five, six or seven times and would never have thought of escaping. But when I say, ‘Why did you leave?’, they say, ‘She hasn’t paid me my salary for the last three months and always before they paid the salary but this year they haven’t’. One woman I met said, ‘It’s a big lack of trust for me; I worked for these people for nine years, I’ve travelled all over the world with them and just this year she didn’t pay my salary’.
I don’t know whether I’m right or not, but we think it’s because the employers now know that the women don’t have any rights in this country and if they do leave they live in a very insecure situation. Some of the women tell us that when they had asked for their salary, the employers said, ‘No I’m not going to give you your salary till we go back to Kuwait (or back to Dubai or whatever) because you might run away’. They actually say that to them. And a lot of the women who come actually don’t know anyone in this country. They literally have run from a brutalising situation without thinking. And that contradicts the Home Office position which is that if we allow them to have rights, allow them to change their employers, it’s a back door into the country. That’s ridiculous.
Paddy: It used to be that there was a period before you could gain residency rights.
Margaret: Yes, four years. You came with a permit for that and you had a right to change employers; at least, you could change employers with the permission of the Department of Employment. After four years, provided the conditions were kept you could get residency. That changed in 1979 when they abolished the work permit system here.
Paddy: In general, what sort of support do the women need when they come to you?
Margaret: Often they are very demoralised because they have been shouted at constantly. What you mostly hear about is constant shouting, calling them derogatory or racist terms like ‘donkey’, ‘dog’, ‘slave’, ‘very poor’ and things like that. What they need is knowledge. To know that they are not the criminal, but it’s the employers who are. They very often think that they have broken the law or that they have broken their contract, when in fact their contract has never been kept by the employer. Bad as it is, or minimal as it is, on a contract that is supposed to offer $250 a month they might only be paid $150 a month, and still they feel that they are the one who has done wrong by leaving this situation. So information about the reality of their situation, why they’re in this situation — that’s what they need. It’s the system that creates their ‘illegality’, if you want to call it that.
Paddy: So a lot of your work is explaining these facts to the migrant workers?
Margaret: Also, in a practical way we always will let them see a solicitor. Everybody gets that, and the solicitor will then explain to them about retrieving their passport if the employer has it, or, if there have been unpaid wages whether it’s possible to retrieve them. Sometimes all their belongings are still in the house or with the employer so maybe the solicitor will help them retrieve them. Then, through the community they are helped because here’s a Centre that’s open seven days a week from 10 until 6. There are always people here so if someone new comes and they don’t know anybody, then somebody from the Centre will give them a place to stay for a few nights until they find work, or help them to find work. If they really have nothing at all, someone from the organisation will give a small amount, maybe £30, for their travel allowance and to buy some food for themselves.
Paddy: Do they manage to get redress from their employers? Are they successful?
Margaret: Very often they don’t. We’ve had a few cases, especially if they’ve worked in this country for a long time and didn’t get paid, where the solicitor has been able to get maybe £1,000 or £2,000 for them in unpaid wages, but that doesn’t happen often. To retrieve their passport is very difficult because the employers very often send the passport to the Home Office or the police station or the Embassy or back to the country from which they have come. But the point about them seeing a solicitor also is to give them reassurance that if ever they are in conflict with immigration or police here, they do have a named solicitor they can call or that we can call to try and get them out of detention or out of the police station.
Paddy: Do you think that the women who come to you on the whole have put up with long-term abuse? You mentioned some women have been here for years.
Margaret: They do put up with long-term abuse. Not only that, even after they have left these abusing employers and they get jobs with other employers in this country, they will sometimes put up with bad treatment from the second employer, even from the third employer. Of course we try and get them to understand that they don’t have to, and they shouldn’t put up with bad treatment from anybody. But sometimes they’re quite desperate. For instance, a person might be three or four weeks before they can find a second job here. Now during that time they may not have been paid anything for five or six months before they came to us. They literally have nothing; they’re dependent on either the organisation, people they’ve made friends with who give them five or ten pounds or whatever. It’s an awful situation to be in. Their families at home are needing money. So they do take bad jobs the second time round and they even stay sometimes in bad situations. But once they find their feet they know what their situation is, and the longer they’re here the better they know and the less they will put up with bad situations.
Paddy: Are domestic workers in bad situations with British employers as well?
Margaret: Yes, I could tell you plenty. Some British women don’t pay, tell the person to work five hours today, five pound an hour. She’ll work five hours and she’ll pay her for four. And that can happen over a period of time.
Paddy: Physical abuse too?
Margaret: Physical, not so much. I mean, you don’t often hear of British women actually hitting people. The other, which to me is just as bad — not paying or not allowing them to change their day off or saying ‘I need you to babysit tonight, sorry if you have to go out but I can always make one phone call to the Home Office’ — that to me is just as bad in a sense.
Paddy: Obviously the women are trapped and isolated which is one reason why they put up with long-term abuse. Would you say the experience of abuse is more common than not? Of course I wouldn’t think you know how many domestic workers there are, but would you say that the abuse is extensive?
Margaret: All I can say is that we have interviewed more than 4,000 domestic workers in the last few years and that every one of those has experienced abuse. Now that can be either not paying their salary, constant shouting, working 18 hours a day — that is common — sleeping on the floor, children kicking and beating them, pushing and spitting at them, that type of abuse. Of that 4,000 I would say practically 100% have suffered. But they are the people who have escaped. Out of that 4,000 we’ve had people coming as well who are still with the employer who brought them here and have just chatted because it’s the Centre here. They are very happy with their employer, they treat them well, the salary is $250 a month, they pay them regularly, they get home very two years, so they are happy to stay with them.
Paddy: Have you got a theory as to why this abuse happens?
Margaret: I don’t know. It’s something to do with having someone in your household, I think, because it happens more with women who have live-in jobs. The family vary from wanting you to be a member of the family, a member of the household, and then the female employer treats you nicely so she expects you to be part of the household and do more work, and there’s blurring of the relationship.
Paddy: The boundaries are not set at all whereas in most jobs they are?
Margaret: Not at all. And I think that for a domestic worker in a household of another woman, I mean it is a peculiar relationship, no matter how you look at it. But I think historically, calling domestic workers servants, maids, household helps, all helped to keep that bad relationship. In other words to keep it as a subservient kind of relationship. And then it’s something to do with the human psyche, if you’ve somebody under you, so to speak, which they are, living in such close proximity in your household. I know it happens but I can’t understand why, these are all factors I suppose.
Paddy: Also an element of racism I would have thought.
Margaret: It’s more class. It’s more classism that race. I do think that. Because you have all nationalities brutalising. No, I think it’s class. There is racism in it as well, of course.
Paddy: The other thing that interests me is the Western view of Asian women that they are passive and subservient. Do you think in the case of Asian domestic workers that’s part of it too?
Margaret: Yes the attitudes are there, the stereotypes are there, but it’s far from reality.
Paddy: And it’s not internalised by the women themselves, they don’t see themselves like that?
Margaret: No in fact the domestic workers here have their own organisation which is very strong and well organised, and the majority are members of the Transport and General Workers Union. They organise their own meetings, they have their annual general meeting, they elect their officers, they organise their outings and entertainment, support for each other, education classes, and they are very strong, I would say. The very fact that they survive within this inhumane society where someone can die — for instance a child back home — and the mother must decide whether she is going to go home to her family and attend the funeral or whether she is going to have to stay here in order to support her family. A person who can do that is not a passive person.
Paddy: The word slavery is used to describe the experience of many women domestic workers. What is it about the work that makes it slavery?
Margaret: It’s the total control the employer has over the person. The employer, as a general rule, holds their passport. In fact the name of their employer is written into their passport; it states that employment is strictly prohibited other than with that employer. The employer can actually lock them in the house, which is not uncommon. The wages are withheld. And in this day and age I think the whole emotional and psychological control the employer has over the person because that person is in their household and totally dependent on them is tantamount to slavery.
Paddy: It has a resonance of domestic violence. Are there parallels?
Margaret: Yes, oh yes.
Paddy: Are there parallels with the sex industry as well — the advertising, the way it’s done is very similar — seeing women as a commodity?
Margaret: Yes. And it’s male organised and male controlled and male dominated. In Sri Lanka, whereas anyone else going abroad is asked to give in two or four passport-sized photographs, domestic workers are asked to give ten photographs, four of which are postcard-sized. Now why does a domestic worker need to have ten photographs, four of which are passport-sized?
Paddy: Do you think the women see any positive aspects to them being migrant domestic workers — being able to send money home, for instance?
Margaret: Yes, I could tell you about several women who have come here as migrant domestic workers and lived underground in very difficult situations, but if they earned enough, they are actually going home to their families, having earned enough, say, to build a house and even to set up a small business. Several have done that. So there are very definitely positive aspects to it. Otherwise the system would stop, wouldn’t it?
But the point is the hypocrisy of the West. I’m not just talking about the UK; it’s all over Europe that migrant women workers are used for care of the elderly, for care of the children, which leaves other women to go out to work. They are making a wage contribution to the economy of the country and they have no rights whatsoever. I do think myself that it’s state organised, because otherwise it couldn’t work, and it does work very well. You can keep the whole system going without any cost to the system and without any benefits to the worker except that they can survive and they can send money to their families. But it’s big price to pay to keep your family; it’s big price from the women’s point of view.
Paddy: And it’s to do with women as well. It’s the women in the West and also the richer Asian countries who are going out and finding the jobs; the workforce has become much more female, but there’s no childcare facilities.
Margaret: That’s right. But you see the women also have a responsibility — it’s not that easy to get support from women’s organisations. Not really, not the full-hearted support you’d expect. If I had a domestic worker in the household then I should have a responsibility towards her welfare.
Paddy: Do you know what the women’s experiences were with the various agencies that got them their jobs? I have read that there is a lot of abuse and that a lot of money is made.
Margaret: There is. There is a massive number of agencies. When a person presents themselves to an agency, they have to pay for so many things: a medical checkup, a dental checkup, to get their papers processed, to get their passport secured. They have to pay a massive amount of money. The agency fees in the Philippines, for instance, can be as much as £500 to £1,000, which would equivalent be two to four years of a teacher’s salary. And then they very often sign contracts saying that they will be paid $250 [£170] a month.
Very often they will sign contracts saying they will work in a hair salon or in shops and they end up as domestic workers, although it was never their intention to do that. Some who applied as civil engineers to go abroad to work as civil engineers and they were just told, ‘We don’t let women work as civil engineers in this country. You can work in my household or you can go back to the Philippines’. They haven’t a choice.
Paddy: I was going to ask you about that. Can generalisations be made about the background of the Filipino women. Are they from the poorer sections of society?
Margaret: They are not from the very poor. I suppose because if you’re from the very poor you can’t even get to Manila to get out. So very often they are middle sector people, people who are educated themselves. By that I mean that they would have two years in college or further education; some would even have finished. As I said there we’ve worked with civil engineers, teachers, nurses, whatever.
Paddy: So you would say that on the whole they are over-qualified for the work?
Margaret: Absolutely, for domestic work. Except I don’t want to run down domestic work because there’s the whole thing of organising it and for mothers who look after the children and look after the household, that’s quite professional.
Paddy: But it’s not seen as skilled.
Margaret: Yes.
Paddy: So a lot of them are over-qualified.
Margaret: Yes. Especially from the Philippines. From Sri Lanka and India and Africa, not so much. Some who don’t read or write English would be more disadvantaged. We established a literacy class to help them read and write English, to give them a better chance of a good job.
Paddy: So, given that some of the women may be duped into taking on more so-called ‘menial’ work, do you think there are any other explanations? Are there qualified women who actively take on domestic work?
Margaret: Yes there are. First of all I will take issue on calling it menial work. We have to stop calling it that because it keeps being used. It’s very hard to get anyone from the Home Office to say that these women are workers, because once women in private households are seen as workers then it has to be considered that they have rights. That’s what is so important to us. Domestic work is low paid and it’s low regarded, but the work in itself is perfectly all right — it‘s the low status that‘s the problem. There are professional women from the Philippines who go abroad to work in domestic work in private households on the understanding for themselves that they are going to stay, say, for two years and they are going to be paid a certain amount of money and they really go with the intention of doing a good job in that household. That is the hope, but the reality doesn’t work like that.
Paddy: Earlier you were saying that the women here were quite well organised. Do you think that finding each other and becoming aware that there are others in the same boat is a kind of consciousness-raising experience?
Margaret: It is. And I think it’s very good. I think especially the whole internationality of it is very good. It’s really nice that when somebody comes here and they’re from Zimbabwe, for instance, and a Pakistani woman will take her to her place and share the room with her and help her find a job, or a Filipino woman will take an Indian, or whatever. I do think that’s very good in terms of learning about other people’s cultures and other people’s countries and backgrounds and seeing that by coming from many different backgrounds, their experiences as women are quite similar.
Paddy: What I’m looking for here is a glimmer of possibility out of a rather horrendous situation that there are things emerging that are very positive. That out of the oppression comes the solidarity towards change. Do you think that’s being too optimistic?
Margaret: Signs of change amongst the women? Yes. Kalayaan and Solidar jointly organised a round table in Brussels last June. We brought together migrant domestic workers from Spain, Italy and Greece. And prior to that, in preparation for that, we met here with about 12 or 13 women domestic workers from different nationalities. We discussed with them how they felt about being domestic workers in private households and how their employers related to them and how they related to their employers, the attitudes of employers and all of that. That was very enlightening because it was just a marvellous meeting to be part of. All the women expressed in their own way the similar feelings and experiences they had, and they were actually putting things together and saying, ‘Oh yeah, that’s what my employer does as well’ and, ‘I wonder why that happens?’. So it was very good for making connections.
Paddy: There have been suggestions in some of the literature that I’ve read that a migrant worker’s union would be a really good idea. As far as I know there isn’t one. How feasible is it?
Margaret: I’m very much in support of it because I think that’s where they get their strength. Now with the domestic workers here I think maybe about four to five hundred are paid up members of the Transport and General Workers Union. The TGWU would really like them to form their own branch of the union. But they have discussed it and they have made a decision that they won’t do it because of their situation.
First of all in terms of work you would have officers, maybe you could have part-time officers, but then they all go through periods of time when they need to earn more money to send off to their families, or their employers change, or they change their employers. Their whole situation is so volatile so they have made a conscious decision that they will stay simply as members of the TGWU. But they do collect the money, they have their own trade union officers who collect the money every Sunday, who write out the chit and send it to the head office and things like that. But a union would be great.
Paddy: How supportive is the union?
Margaret: We had to struggle with them but now they are extremely supportive. Probably the best way they can support us is through the campaign and they have taken a very active role in it. If, for instance, an employer doesn’t pay a domestic worker her salary or her wages and the worker decides to leave her because that’s all she can do, then we will get the trade union to write a letter to the woman. But even with that, very often they won’t pay it because they know there’s no action really the person can take. Especially if it’s for £100 or £200.
Paddy: But you have to constantly keep making the point to employers.
Margaret: Yes. And also for the workers.
Paddy: What do you think should be done? Especially in the light of the fact that the ‘maid trade’ as it’s called has become such an international big business. Have you got a voice at the UN?
Margaret: Well, we made a presentation to the UN working group on contemporary forms of slavery this June. It was the first time Kalayaan’s been invited. But for me it’s a question of investing rights in the workers as workers. So the government has to recognise and acknowledge that there is a need for domestic work in private households, whether it be to care for the elderly or for children or whatever. The majority of those who come to the Centre who have escaped from their bad employer, will find a job in a very short time, which shows the need. The ones who have more difficulty are the ones who don’t read and write English, but even those eventually find a job. But from the government’s point of view, if you acknowledge the need is there then you have to set up the system to ensure the need can be met. They know that the need is there, but they won’t recognise it or acknowledge it so that they can have this underground for workers to do the work.
Paddy: What do you think the fear is? Is it a kind of misogyny, that women do housework and therefore it’s unpaid. Is it part of that, that it’s unrecognised work? Or is it because they fear migrant workers staying in this country? What do you think is the root of the lack of ability to see this problem?
Margaret: Well, I don’t know what it is. I just can’t comprehend it because for instance every time we meet with the Home Office, they say, ‘We have a strict but fair immigration policy, and if we allow domestic workers to change their employer then we’re opening the door to thousands flooding into the country’.
That’s so far removed the reality that it’s hard to know how you can even counter it. Up until 1979 there was a work permit system which was very restricted and it had many conditions attached to it, but at it did allow for people to change from one employer to another within the same category of work. You could move from being a domestic worker in a private household into a hotel or a hospital, for instance; as long as you stayed within the same strata, you were still a domestic worker. But after four years, having kept the conditions of that work permit you then could apply for residence and normally you got it.
At that time the government knew every single individual that was here. They knew exactly where they were because they had to get permission from the Department of Employment before they could change their job. They abolished that system in 1979 and they introduced the concession which allowed the employer to bring in domestic workers without any rights for the domestic worker and what do they have? They have all those women and men escaping from their bad employers staying in the country, living and working clandestinely. And they have these employers going home and coming back in six months’ time bringing two or three more domestic workers who then go underground.
It’s obvious to anybody that it’s a peculiar system. While under the work permit system the government was very much in control over who was here, under this system they have no idea. Even in questions to the House of Commons they don’t know how many. All they know is they issue approximately 12,000 visas or entry permits a year for domestic workers in private houses. They issue them but they have no idea how many stay in the country or how many leave the country again. I think that the present government [John Major’s government] is very hypocritical. They want to give the impression that they have a strict immigration policy. Actually what they have set up is a brutal and cruel system.
Paddy: What’s your opinion of the idea that the remittances the women send back to their families (which I think they usually send through the national banking system) have substantially helped to improve the balance of payments in the Philippines and therefore helped to alleviate the massive foreign debt?
Margaret: In 1982 Marcos introduced the Executive Order 857 which was intended for migrant domestic workers to remit 50% of their salary back to their families through the Philippines banking system and that was to bring in massive earnings to the government. The remittances do bring a lot of income into the country. In the Philippines it is the number one dollar earner. Because the bank withholds the money for a period of time and only lets the family take a certain amount out each month. The bad aspect about it for me is that the women make such a contribution to the economics of this country without any rights. They also make such a contribution to the economy of their own country with out any benefit to them as major contributors. The Philippine government even makes all Filipinos abroad pay a tax of 3% of their earnings. And who suffers? Their children, their husbands, whichever partner is at home, their parents. And then there are many broken marriages because of it. It’s unbelievable the damage it’s done to children both in the sex tourism industry and in drugs because there’s no parent; the mother is abroad working and the father is out working or trying to get some sort of life together, subsistence for them.
Paddy: Do you think a Labour government will bring any change?
Margaret: They will. We’ve had many discussions with Labour, and at least they are more socially conscious.