Combatting the exploitation of domestic workers and the suffering of their children

NUDE Campaign Launch, October 7, 2011

By Joycelyn Bacchus,
Joy Marcus, Halima Khan,
Susan Collymore & Andaiye

There’s a crisis in Guyana that almost everyone is ignoring – the crisis of mothers and other carers forced to work endless hours, often on no fixed schedules, and of the children they must leave to fend for themselves while they destroy their health labouring for a starvation wage.

Thousands of these women are domestic workers. Six of the 9 women in the Red Thread centre know their exploitation firsthand: we have performed paid domestic work in the homes of respectable middle-class women and men who overworked, underpaid and sometimes verbally abused us, who could afford to pay us a decent wage but believed that while their labour is of value, ours is not.

Here’s a summary of one true story:

One domestic worker’s story

M is employed by a couple on the East Coast Demerara to wash, iron, clean,  mend and alter clothes for the