He explains that – as in the case of Catalina – it is common for workers to work only under verbal contracts, which favors the lack of regulation in hours, salaries and tasks to be performed.
“We identified that on a discretionary basis, without increasing the salary, without increasing the guarantees or protections that are needed when carrying out care work for people directly, they carried out a lot of this care work,” says Soler.
A frequent problem is that they are employed to carry out household chores (such as washing, ironing, cooking), but over time, non-agreed care activities are added, without first having a consultation or dialogue with their employer, according to the experiences of workers from Guerrero, Chiapas and Mexico City collected by the Simone de Beauvoir Leadership Institute.
It was found that none of the participating domestic workers had received any type of formal training to carry out care work, despite being assigned to care for children or the elderly.
“Even some of them, at the time of hiring, did not have previous experience of the type of care requested,” notes the ILSB study.
This lack of training leads to various problems identified in the research, as both the well-being of the workers and the people requiring care are compromised:
- Medical and health risks for those cared for
- Labor and legal risks for workers
- Accidents or physical injuries also for female workers
- Low quality of care provided
- Lack of timely attention to accidents
- Stress in the development of work
