translated from Spanish: the campaign to protect domestic workers

One group particularly affected in this COVID-19 epidemic is that of domestic workers. Many of their employers have been fired, sent to their homes without pay, or locked up working, without giving them a choice to leave so they don’t get infected and then infect them.
In Mexico, pointed out Marcelina Bautista Bautista, coordinator of the Home Workers Training Center, AC., there are 2.3 million of these employees, 96% have no social security and 98% have no contract. “Your income has been affected in this crisis.”
Read: Domestic workers are fired or forced to continue working during pandemic
Bautista Bautista explained that since March they have received nearly 300 complaints from colleagues who were cut pay, unfairly fired, or sent home to a non-rights quarantine.
In the face of this situation and to raise awareness of the employers is that the campaign takes care of you is launched, “to make aware that they do not be fired, that they pay the workers and recognize the work they have done in their families, in their homes, accompanying them when they have needed them, because today many care for the sick, older adults, children and are at risk all the time, because their work demands a physical closeness with the people who care for them”.
The campaign has as its center a video that was attended by Participant Media, the Center for Support and Training for Home Employees (CACEH) and Los Hijos de la Malinche.
Find out: Full salary and allow domestic workers to stay at home, ask Employers to join employers
During the daily conference on the situation of the coronavirus, the holder of the IMSS, Zoe Roblero, emphasized, when talking about the campaign, that part of the new normality of the country is also a new responsibility, to take charge and help those who help us.
“There are many elements that have been combined to think that the new normal is to take care of our responsibilities and that each and every person who uses the home work service, whether plant or entry by exit, have to register the workers to give them social security and the rights that correspond to them,” he stressed.
The IMSS owner indicated that in some cases employers have asked domestic workers to retreat to their homes to maintain sound distance, so their income is dramatically compromised.
He said that giving certainty to this sector was of particular importance at a stage of uncertainty such as that currently being addressed by the health emergency due to COVID-19.
Zoé Robledo pointed out that more than a year after the launch of the pilot program to give them social security and with a universe of 2.4 million working people, according to Inegi data, the vast majority still have no contract, work very long days, without pension or savings possibilities.
He emphasized that the progress of the program to incorporate them into Social Security has a slow pace, “it seems that we still do not understand that it is not a matter of charity, it is a matter of responsibility and health as well.”
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Original source in Spanish