Filipino maids in HK seek minimum wage

INQUIRER.net
First Posted 15:30:00 04/28/2009

MANILA, Philippines—Foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, including an estimated 120,000 Filipinos, are asking the Special Administrative Regional government to grant them the statutory minimum wage given other workers there.

In a statement, the Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body on Tuesday said its members trooped to the Central Government Offices and formally submitted to Hong Kong’s Executive Council (ExCo) its proposal.

AMCB spokesperson Eni Lestari said their proposal is for foreign domestic workers to be paid on a monthly basis, compensated at 10 hours work-days even if most work 12 to 16 hours, and at the hourly rate of HK$33 (about P208 at HK$1=P6.3).

Lestari said they are willing to deduct their employers’ contribution to their monthly living costs.

Under this framework, she said, the monthly take-home pay of foreign domestic workers would be HK$4,849 (P30,600), or the minimum wage of HK$10,038 (P63,000) minus the living costs of HK$5,188 (P32,750).

Lestari said this calculation belies their critics’ claim that domestic workers’ working hours would be difficult to calculate because of their live-in status, and that their wages would become too prohibitive.

Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong get at least US$400 (about P19,000) a month.

“All workers, especially the marginalized sectors, should be covered by the statutory minimum wage. The government should consider domestic work as work,” she said.

“Those who say domestic work is not work and that it is okay to make foreign domestic workers work for 16 hours and not befairly compensated are advocates of modern-day slavery,” she added.

Lestari said they are optimistic that the ExCo would consider their proposal as it did when it put foreign domestic workers under the protection of the Employment Ordinance and required them to have a standard employment contract.

She said these earlier actions by the ExCo attest to their status as workers.

“Excluding one sector like foreign domestic workers would be discriminatory and regressive,” she added.

Local groups under the Alliance for Minimum Wage like the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese, as well as the Hong Kong Federation of Students, supported AMCB’s proposal.