June 16, 2022
Your Excellency, Mr. Prime Minister and Honorable Members;
Ratify the C189 Decent Work for Domestic Workers – Formalizing the Informal Workers and Achieving Gender Equality in Spain.
On behalf of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), representing 600,000 domestic workers in 82 organizations from 64 countries, we congratulate you on the progress towards ratification of the Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers in Spain, a dream of tens of thousands of domestic workers in your country awaiting to be fulfilled.
Our recent engagement with the domestic workers leaders in your country during the Domestic Workers Conference in Seville, November 14-15, 2021, and the European Domestic Workers Conference, Brussels, May 23-24 this year, has convinced us that domestic workers deserve better labour protection and other human rights protection. Ratification and implementation of the C189 will enable domestic workers to be formalized, lifting many out of poverty and moving closer to gender equality.
Eleven years ago, governments, employers and workers of the world adopted the C189 as the international standard to allow domestic workers to enjoy the same rights as any other workers. Since then, every year on that day, we have been reminding governments of their duty towards domestic workers – workers who work to make all other work possible. Therefore this year we are writing to you and hope you will soon take the final step to become the 36th country ratifying the C189.
We appreciate the opportunity of exchanges with your government through the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy and the Ministry of Equality at our domestic workers conference and the online Forum in Seville in November 2021. We commit to support decent work for domestic workers everywhere and remain be prepared to work with you in the future for the shared objective.
Yours in solidarity
Myrtle Withooi Elizabeth Tang
President General Secretary
