More than 20% of South African domestic workers earn less than the government’s stipulated minimum wage, with a fifth of the 1 100 respondents in a survey earning less than R500 a month, a new report reveals.
According to Migration and Domestic Workers: Worlds of Work, Health and Mobility in Johannesburg, about 55,7% of respondents earned between R501 and R1 000 a month.
The Southern African Migration Project and Wits Palliative Care, which did the research, found that apart from the low wages they pay, many employers are not meeting the minimum standards of employment set out by the Department of Labour.
Almost 45% of the women worked six or seven days a week, and most (58%) worked between eight and 10 hours a day. The majority of the sample worked for one employer (88%).
Last year domestic work was the largest employment sector for black women in Johannesburg. The report gives outsiders a glimpse into the desperate lives of domestic workers who have sacrificed personal relationships and homes for what they see as a secure job in the big city.
Their lifestyles make the women a high-risk group for contracting HIV/Aids, researchers in the project found.
Nearly a third of the women interviewed were unable to describe how to have safe sex, but more than a third knew someone who had died of Aids.
”A defining characteristic of this group was the lack of condom use,” the report found. ”More than 60% of the sample had never used a condom in their lives. Although almost half of the women were single, only 10% had not had a sexual partner in the past five years. But more than 40% identified themselves as single, widowed, divorced or separated.”
The majority of the women with long-term partners or husbands lived apart from their partners and children. The research showed only 27,3% of respondents lived with a long-term partner or husband, while 30,7% of those with long-term partners or husbands lived temporarily apart from them.