by Anti-Slavery Society
When the High Court in London awarded damages £300,000 to Laxmi Swami last December, justice was seen to be done. But the case, because of its prominence, also illuminated the secret world of domestic slavery.
Laxmi Swami, a poor village woman from south India, originally worked for some £15 a week in Kuwait for two members of the emir's family, Sheika Faria al Sabah and Sheika Samiya. The job of maid had been found for her by an Indian labor recruiter. She was eventually brought to London by the princesses and stayed with them in a mansion in Bayswater, one of London's more affluent districts. There, for four years, she lived what has been described as a life of hell.
She was deprived of food, frequently had only two hours sleep a night, and her 'bedroom' was the floor outside the locked kitchen. She was never allowed out, received no wages and was whipped every day. She is scarred for life. On one occasion the two princesses forcibly removed her two gold teeth. Her passport was also taken from her.
Immediately after the High Court judgement, Mrs. Swami said: Once these rich people come to Britain and take your passport,they see you as their slave.
The Anti-Slavery Society, which is at the beginning of its investigation into the plight of overseas domestic workers, regards that statement as an encapsulation of the unavoidable truth.
Domestic slavery is not confined to Britain and instances of it, in varying degrees, may be found in Middle Eastern states, in Hong Kong, in North America and in member countries of the EEC. For the purpose of this submission the society will focus on the United Kingdom.
The 1971 Immigration Act gives the Home Secretary wide discretionary powers and these were used in December 1979 when it was decided that no work permits for overseas domestic workers would be issued from January 1980.
Almost simultaneously, those same discretionary powers were used to allow domestics into Britain, but without work permits.
The current position is that:
Domestics employed by visitors are admitted as visitors on condition they leave the country with their employers;
People entering the United Kingdom to live may bring with them domestic servants who have worked for them abroad for 12 months or more;
Domestic workers are not allowed to leave the service of the employer with whom they entered the country;
"...the effects of the Immigration Act, as they touch upon overseas domestic workers, the non-issuance of work permits to these workers, and the effective treatment of these workers by the immigration authorities as appendages of the employer rather than as individuals in their own right, to be responsible for the servitude these domestics suffer in Britain. The Home Office, however inadvertently, is supporting slavery."
Unsurprisingly, the policy of not issuing work permits to domestics, but allowing them to worl« on visitors' visas, causes some confusion amongst immigration officials. Their recourse is to use both the work-prohibited and employment restricted-to-one-employer stamps. It is a lottery as to which stamp the incoming domestic worker receives.
The Immigration Act, particularly the Immigration Rules within the Act, contain no section dealing with domestic work. This is curious for Britain, in common with many Western countries having a large female working population, (it) is experiencing a demand for help in the home. The Home Office, by making concessions for the servants of overseas visitors, is implicitly recognising this need.
In 1988 a second Immigration Act was passed which took away the right of appeal in deportation cases. This, combined with the fact that desperately poor people made vulnerable by the mere fact of that poverty, by being treated as appendages of their employers, by rarely knowing what is stamped in their passports or whether their employer has renewed their permission to stay, by being unable legally to change employer, has produced an intolerable but legal situation where the power is totally in the hands of the employer and the status of the employee is frequently reduced to that of a ., contemporary slave.
The Anti-Slavery Society is indebted to the two sister organisations working with domestics in Britain, Kalayaan and the Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers, which are cooperating extensively in the Society's research, and which, out of their intimate involvement with the victims of domestic service, have provided the following information:
Cherry....
Cherry is a Nepalese woman who had not been paid her wages and had been kept in conditions of captivity while working for her employers in London. "Whenever my employers went out, they used to lock us in and we had a security guard who used to keep watch over us. He had instructions not to allow us out or not to allow anyone into the house to talk to us".
While working for her employer, Cherry became seriously ill but was not given any medical treatment at all. She was actually taken to another empty flat owned by her employer and locked in there. "They sent me with a driver to their flat and I was locked up in that flat for one
whole month and it was terrible. They had sent some food, some bread with the driver and after four or five days they sent some flour and rice with him. I used to peep out the window and look at people passing by but I could not talk to them. I used to feel that I'll die one day in this flat.
Eventually Cherry's very serious condition forced the employers to bring her for hospital treatment. After partial recovery, Cherry fearing continual maltreatment decided to run away from her employer.
From: Briefing Paper: Situation of Overseas Domestic Workers and Proposals for a Solution (Appendix I), by Kalayaan (Freedom) Campaign for Justice for Overseas Domestic Workers, 27 June 1990
Sally....
Sally was born in Manila. She earned some P1,400/mo. a little under £34 from her job as a dressmaker and was helping her mother to pay for the schooling of two young siblings. She decided to go to a labor recruiting office which, for a fee of P6,000 plus a passport charge of P1,500 undertook to find her a job as a domestic in Abu Dhabi. Sally raised most of the fee by borrowing from friends and agreeing to an interest rate of 10 per cent. At the promised wage of US$200 a month that seemed something she could cope with.
In Abu Dhabi she found she was to work for a government minister who already employed four Filipinas and a maid from Sri Lanka.The minister kept her passport and the rest of her documents. During her first week Sally asked her 'madam' for permission to go out but, "she started shouting at me. She told me nobody is allowed to go outside."
She had a working week of seven days with no limitation on hours.
"Sometimes we stop at about 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock in the evening and we start 6 o'clock or 5:30 in the morning. Even after lunch we cannot have a rest, even one hour or half an hour. We cannot eat together with other housemaids."
In theory Sally was allowed to eat thrice a day but the work was relentless and frequently she had only one hurriedly gobbled meal a day at around 3 pm or 4 pm.
From: Kaisahan sa Europa Information Resources. Series No. 5, Nov. 1990
The domestics come from a variety of Third World countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Sierra Leone and Sri lanka.
The employers are drawn from Gulf and Middle Eastern states, from Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Nigeria, Singapore, USA and UK.
The tragic case of Laxmi Swami is atypical on two counts: domestic slaves do not receive justice and compensation, and most of them do not come from India. The overwhelming majority, perhaps in excess of 90 per cent of overseas domestic workers in Britain, are Filipinas. What does seem to be true is that employers originating from abroad come, as did Mrs. Swami's captors, from the Gulf.
The Home Office has admitted that the authorities do not know how many overseas domestics are working in the United Kingdom. Based on the number of known runaways, or over stayers as they are also called, there must be a considerable community. For the last five years, an average of 100 female domestic workers has run away from their employers every year. Each one of them knows of two or three captive servants. So it is not improbable that since the decision not to issue work permits ten years ago between 2,000 and 3,000 domestic workers have suffered conditions amounting to slavery in one western country alone. This figure does not include those overseas workers who are content at work.
Typically, an overseas domestic is a single Filipina in her 20's with financial responsibilities to her siblings who are continuing their education, or an older woman in her 30's and sometimes 40's who is trying to bring up a family with little or no help. Not infrequently they are widows.
They mainly find jobs through recruiting agencies in Manila and their first employment is usually in the Gulf area. No matter their skills or experience, the women overwhelmingly become servants for domestic work is the easiest to get. They are not infrequently duped, being promised the work of their choice only to find on arrival that the employer gives them no choice or rather the non-choice of returning home immediately at their own expense. Poverty drove them abroad in the first place and many of them land with virtually no money.
An aspect of the recruiting process that the Anti-Slavery Society intends to look at in detail is what seems to amount to debt bondage. Many of the women fall into debt by borrowing at exorbitant interest rates to pay recruitment fees, or by taking an advance payment from the recruiter. Before they can even begin to send money to their families - the prime purpose of working overseas - they have to redeem these debts.
After a year or two, and frequently without a visit home, the women are brought to London and the pattern of their working life is repeated. Their passport is kept by the employer, they are not allowed off the premises except rarely and then under some sort of supervision, they are ill treated and humiliated - slapping, hair pulling, being spat upon, being called dog, donkey, and sometimes slave are common - pay is either withheld or given months in arrears, food is what is left over from the meals of employers or their children, speaking to other servants is discouraged and sometimes forbidden. Their bed may be on the floor of the children's room, in a corridor, in the bathroom or in the kitchen. And, of course, there is no respite. They are the first up in the mornings and the last to go to bed and even then their few hours of sleep may be interrupted. Sexual harassment is usual and rape is not unknown. They cannot change their jobs either legally or because of the physical restraints on their movements.
These conditions are those of slavery.
Those 100 or so courageous women who do, and often at great physical risk, run away from their captors, immediately put themselves outside the law. They cannot legally seek employment, they cannot overstay whatever period may be stamped in their passport, which in the majority of cases is in the employer's safe, and they have no right to appeal against deportation orders. In addition, they are frequently penniless and alone in a city they know only from the airport and the house they were confined to.
The Anti-Slavery Society considers the stipulation that an employee cannot change employer to run counter to the last two centuries of British employer-employee relationships, custom and accepted practice.
It further regards the effects of the Immigration Act as they touch upon overseas domestic workers, the non-issuance of work permits to these workers, and the effective treatment of these workers by the immigration authorities as appendages of the employer rather than as individuals in their own right, to be responsible for the servitude these domestics suffer in Britain. The Home Office, however inadvertently, is supporting slavery.
The Anti-Slavery Society recommends as immediate measures that:
O the criminalisation of runaway domestic workers cease
O the permit system for overseas domestic workers be reintroduced;
O such permits be issued to the employee and not to the employer;
O the restoration of the right to change employers within the work category be given to overseas domestics;
O the right of settlement within the United Kingdom be given to overseas domestic workers after four years of employment
From: Kaisahan sa Europa Information Resources. Series No. 5. Nov. 1990