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Court order suspends the Unified Contract for Migrant Domestic Workers
26-10-2020
In what is considered a serious setback, the new Standard Unified Contract for Migrant Domestic Workers (https://bit.ly/2RMsiiJ) after the Shura Council issued two decisions on October 14 to freeze its implementation, pending the review of the deduction from worker’s salary. The two decisions came in the wake of a lawsuit filed by the Syndicate of Owners of Recruitment Agencies on September 21 to this effect. Recalling that on September 8, the caretaker minister of labor, Lamia Yammin, launched the unified contract with the aim to regulate the work relationship between migrant women domestic workers and their employers, a move described by human rights activists as a backslide towards the abolition of the kafala (sponsorship) system (https://bit.ly/2RMsiiJ). According to Al Akhbar daily, the Syndicate’s announcement came after Yammin’s disagreement with the arguments they presented, citing Kafa lawyer, Mohana Isaac, who made clear that the reasons behind the Syndicate’s decision were personal in nature. Apparently, executing the provisions of the unified contract which constituted a progress in securing the rights of those workers, clashed with the interests of the Syndicate. The newspaper further added that the Syndicate claimed that the Minister of Labor’s decisions were not within her ministerial powers, while also challenging their legality, as they were taken during the term of the cater taker government. Furthermore, and according to the newspaper the Syndicate rejected most of the key terms of the new contract namely: that wages will not fall below the minimum wage, definition of work, determining the numbers of days off and annual leaves, workers’ right to hold their working permits, their freedom of movement, their right to terminate the contract. (Al Akhbar, October 26, 2020)
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