Mexican maids seek legal job rights in Congress

Mexico City, Mar 31: Mexico's Congress is drawing up a law to require better pay and more protections for the country's 2 million maids, a fifth of whom are under 15, to guard them from abuse, lawmakers said.

Unlike fellow Latin American countries such as Peru and Uruguay, Mexico lacks legislation to regulate maids' working hours, living conditions or benefits, meaning many household employees work six days a week for as little as 100 dollars a month.

''We need initiatives to regulate these jobs, which are open to abuse,'' said Martha Gonzalez yesterday, a lawmaker from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Often working 16-hour days in middle and upper class Mexican families, some live-in maids work in conditions that are only a step away from slavery, forced to sleep on floors and eat leftovers, according to the International Labor Organization.

Mexican lawmakers want to raise the legal minimum daily salary of 4.60 dollars a day and force employers to give severance pay and grant paid holidays. The Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Domestic Workers says that 407 dollars would be a just monthly wage, although lawmakers have yet to decide what increase they would push for.

Up until now, it has fallen to the Catholic Church and non-governmental organizations to provide some sense of regulation by helping women find work with decent families that are willing to pay better wages.

In January alone, the Santa Cruz church in the wealthy El Pedregal district of Mexico City found household work for some 1,000 girls and women.

Reuters