A task force of the National Social Security Board, which has been set up under Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008, has recommended that maids and other domestic workers should be extended the protection of the minimum wages laws.

The task force observed that the domestic workers have been overworked and underpaid and exploited by the ‘placement agencies’ that have been growing in numbers and influence over this informal part of the labour market.
In a city like Delhi, for example, while the minimum wage for ‘unskilled” labour is Rs 203, it’s unlikely that most domestic maids, who work piecemeal in several households, make anything over Rs 3000 in a month.

Quoting the task force, a report published in The Times of India on Wednesday says that the number of domestic workers varies from 4.75 million to 6.4 million; the sector is said to have grown by 222 per cent since 2000.

While there is every reason for the government to move to bring the domestic workers under minimum wages laws, there are a number of questions that need to be answered.
How will regulation of this kind be implemented in households given the fact that government’s labour law enforcement machinery has largely been failing even in the organized labour market?
Shouldn’t the resident welfare association (RWA) be engaged in enforcing minimum wages? But first give a thought on how will the RWAs react to this “intrusion” in their domestic space, especially if they perceive it to be an attempt to weaken the power of a household in negotiating wages and other conditions of employment of domestic labour.

As a matter of fact, domestic labour market of a city is divided into thousands of localized markets with as many demand-supply equations and wage rates.
How practicable and sustainable would it be to enforce minimum wage in a locality with very high supply of labour and very low wages?
In other words, will minimum wage protection in such a locality dramatically cut the demand for labour and be detrimental to the workers? Most domestic workers also work in several households in a day in a highly casual environment. The minimum wages in their case will have to be resolved into hourly wages.

Any policy support of this kind must attempt to ameliorate the conditions of workers without adversely affecting the demand for work and straining the relationship between employers and employees.
One needs to consider all these outstanding issues and then attempt to answer the following question.

Should maids and other domestic workers be extended the minimum wage protection?