Friday, April 9th at 8 pm ET/7 pm CT/6 pm MT/5 pm PT
Knowing that organizing workplaces is difficult, think about doing so if you lived in the home of your boss. In Asia-Pacific, over 80% of domestic workers are women, many of them migrants who live in the homes of their employers. Domestic workers take care of elders, children, and households for pay. They work on temporary visas arranged by private agencies that take a cut of their salaries, and face unique challenges as women, migrants, and low-wage workers, linked to their employer and agencies for visas, housing and income.
Domestic workers are often taken advantage of in their workplace, forced to work around the clock, abused by employers, and not afforded the dignity and respect they deserve. In response to the challenging conditions they face, domestic workers organize around the world to fight for their labor rights, their safety, and their health. In Hong Kong, domestic workers have a minimum wage that is regulated by the government, which presents an opportunity for collective organizing to increase minimum wage, and fight for better contracts.
This webinar will feature leaders from domestic worker federations and unions in Asia who will talk about their experiences organizing and empowering some of the most underrepresented and undervalued women workers to stand up and fight for their lives and livelihoods in a moment of unprecedented crisis. The featured speakers are Fish Ip, Regional Coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Region of the International Domestic Worker Federation (IDWF), Shiella Grace Estrada the Chairperson and founder of Progressive Labor Union of Domestic Workers' - Hong Kong (PLU-HK), Novelita Palisoc, who is organizing migrant domestic workers as well as local domestic workers in the Philippines, and Liezel Galdo, a migrant domestic worker organizer in Malaysia.
The event will be in English and recorded and shared live on the DSA Facebook page. Please join us!
Sponsored by DSA International Committee.
