Maids in South Africa – the fight, the fiasco

There are a number of struggles facing employers of domestic help in South Africa.  When reading user responses on sites like Parent24 one begins to notice a trend in cultural differences and work ethic. 

These employer responses are from online sources, but I have found that they well-represent the negative experiences of those who struggle to find a good domestic worker or nanny for their homes.  These people are angry, and as the owner of a domestic placement  and training agency, I regularly have to deal with similar angry stories on the phone.

TMAN: “I got another domestic from KwaZulu Natal.  That one was a hard worker but after three months I discovered that she was pregnant.  But I kept her until she had the baby, because she told me that she has no mother or father, only useless brothers.  I was like a mother to her.  I was buying everything for the baby and giving her a full salary.  And then I told her not to work for two months and rather look after the baby. Oh I was wrong.  When the baby was one year-one month, she told me on a Monday that she’s leaving and she’s not coming back.   And the following month she started a new job at a shebeen.  She was living in a shack with no electricity or running water.”

KAM-KAM: “I had one who was wearing the same clothes and shoe size as me, only to find that whenever she visits her friends she would take that beautiful dress of mine to wear over the weekend and bring it back on Sunday!  My latest helper, whom I fired soon after paying her last week, would send me to make her tea – because she is older than my mother – I said hell no!”  (this employer was also black, like her domestic, and found that her helpers would not respect her if she was younger than them.  The often expected to be served instead of to serve.  This comment comes up frequently, as black employers struggle to establish a proper employment relationship within the context of ubuntu culture)

BEV: “I have learned the hard way! Be too nice and complete advantage is taken of you. Be too firm and you are a b**ch. Personally I’d say keep the relationship friendly but professional. Set solid boundaries, and have a contract. AND THE BIGGEST NUMBER ONE FOR ME: Phone for references (make sure the address exists and you are not just phoning the friend). After all if you are entrusting your child to a domestic worker, you should be doing a bit of a background check. Right?  PAY HER WHAT SHE IS WORTH!”  (Employers expect to be able to pay minimum wage for their domestics, but this woman is right in her idea that the quality of work will directly correlate to salary)

KHOMOTSO: “A lot of black young career woman go though difficulty to find a suitable domestic worker. Yes our culture of Ubuntu in this case has disadvantaged us -by allowing our domestic to be part of the family and not a worker. There needs to be separation between personal and business. However the other issue is that good domestic worker are usually older than us and in the white culture they will respect their madams but with us black women the domestic still works on the cultural beliefs that you are a child and cannot tell her what to do. If you ask her to do play activities with your child, she finds it overwhelming, however if a white madam asks her to do that she will do it with pleasure, and even clean the garage, dog poo and wash their cars. With us she wants to do as little as she can, sits on your husbands favourite couch and eats supper while you tidy up in the kitchen. There is no family time because she is everywhere you are in the house. She then starts chit-chatting with your husband, or while your husband and his friends are watching soccer, she is standing in the kitchen watching soccer too and cheering …… you do not get any privacy or breathing space from her. If you tell her to go off, you are accused of ill-treating her and treating her like a dog and don’t want her in your house. “  (This one is obviously an extreme case! Very presumptuous of the domestic worker, I must say!)

IAN: “I am white, my wife is black so I think I can speak for everyone……..let’s face it, this is not about black and white. This is about what you expect to get out of the relationship. You get good employers and bad, you get good employees and bad.  Unfortunately in today’s society we have all become lazy, expect everything to be given to us on a plate.”

Ian sums it up quite nicely.  The culture of entitlement in South Africa is no joke, I see it every week in training.  I even see it in myself.  

An inheritance quickly gained at the beginning will not be blessed at the end: Proverbs 20:21.

We have structured much of our training material around alleviating and curing this heart attitude problem – and we see many successful cases of women who came into the course feeling bitter and resentful about being domestic workers, walk out the door with smiles on their faces, realizing the God given privileged of having a job and working hard.

But the problem in the country is large and an overall cultural reformation is what we really need!  May God grant us the grace to see large-scale transformation.

 

Labour Laws about HIV AIDS

South African law states that “If an employee is dismissed just because he/she has HIV/AIDS this dismissal is based on discrimination and is Automatically Unfair. The employer can be taken to the CCMA or Labour Court and be forced to re-employ the employee or give him/her compensation stipulated by the Court. Dismissal is only fair if it is based on the wrongful conduct of an employee or if an employee can no longer do his/her work properly.”

Read the rest of the laws concerning the workplace treatment of those with HIV AIDS in South Africa here.

 

Caine’s Arcade

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a nine year old boy from Los Angeles made a cardboard arcade in his dads auto parts shop.  The games were meticulously planned out, the prizes were stacked and ready for collection.  He spent his whole summer holiday creating this unique gaming experience.  But he had no customers.

One day, Caine’s first and only customer recognised the genius behind the creation.  He then decided to make a short film about the innovative young boy’s ideas.  The film is beautiful and will probably reduce you to tears.

The result has been awesome, with Caine’s Arcade Foundation created in the wake of the short documentary’s success.

Here’s to creative young entrepreneurs!  Let’s have some more of those in South Africa.  Do you know any grassroots projects in SA? Let us know about them, we’ll blog about it

Fresh food in exchange for rubbish!

A government initiative in Mexico helps community locals by giving them food stamps to use at the local farmers market in exchange for recyclable plastics, glass and paper.  Market customers can bring up to 10kilos of recyclable goods.  They must clean and separate the goods before the exchange.

The initiative was arranged by the Ministry of Environment in Mexico and aims to teach locals about the value of leftover product packaging and the practice of recycling.  It has proven beneficial for both parties, as it encourages local farmers and simultaneously decreases litter in the city.

Check out the project here – if you can read Spanish!

This would be perfect for our South African townships, surely?

Blue Sticker Website

Check out our beautiful new website – complete with all training course details, placement information, domestic worker profiles and anything else you might need to secure a well trained and amazing domestic worker for your home.

Domestic Worker Profiles Available!

Check out our domestic worker profiles – scan through the star performers – the best maids this country has to offer!

Training continues tomorrow…

… at the Cape Town library on the corner of Darling and Parade Street, Cape Town Central.

Come check us out if you are interested – ask for Blue Sticker Training!

(library pictured above)

Nightmare Domestic Workers

Sometimes finding your own domestic worker can turn into a horror story.

I had a conversation on the phone this morning about a woman who found her domestic worker on Gumtree – an ad placed by the domestic herself – and took her on, without references and without any guarantees.  She invited the woman into her home as a sleep-in employee, and introduced the lady to her children – only to have her work there briefly before running away in middle of the night with R1000.

Another case saw a child-minder dislocate the arm of the employers 2 month year old daughter through incorrect handling.  Another woman hired a domestic worker from the farmlands of the Eastern Cape and later found out that the domestic had invited her 4 year old son to urinate in a cup when he needed the bathroom.  Another hired a prostitute unwittingly, who would don a wig and gold teeth in the evenings before leaving the home – only to return later, substantially richer.  One mother took the nanny and her small child to the petting zoo.  The nanny saw a rat scuttling along the outside of the area where the friendly bunnies and baby chickens were.  She picked up the rat and gave it to the child to pet.  Needless to say, the rat was not keen, and it bit the child.  The child was rushed to hospital.

These are real-life domestic worker horror stories from South Africa.  And they are inevitable in a country where the effects of Apartheid are still felt by 24% of our population, who are unemployed and undereducated.  Many of the black women of South Africa never finished school, it seems, and never had any form of tertiary education.  So they get jobs as domestic workers.

When I walk through the taxi ranks and bus stations of Cape Town, handing out Blue Sticker Training fliers, 8 out of 10 black ladies that I speak to are domestic workers.  The other two are kitchen staff or receptionists.

And those that ARE domestic workers are usually untrained.  They tend to learn as they go, breaking glasses and burning shirts.  Their cultural upbringing is different from the white western paradigm. They don’t really know how to take care of the children and they frequently overstep invisible boundaries that they are unaware of (for example, when I was a child our nanny/domestic worker believed very seriously in corporal punishment).

We here at Blue Sticker Training believe the way to remedy this problem is through skills development – giving extra education and training to the blue collar working force of South Africa.  They are the invisible women who are earning an average of just R150 a day, and often supporting reams of extended family, while living from hand to mouth in a shack over an hour from their place of work.

• They don’t know how to clean properly – we guide them through the household chores and chemicals, painstakingly explaining their tasks to them, while helping them plan and manage their time.
• They don’t know how to wash, iron and fold – we take them step by step through the techniques, showing them how to wash, iron, fold and pack all types of clothing perfectly.
• They don’t understand household security – we explain the need for a secure house at all times and deal with fire safety, alarm systems, household callers and all threats to your home and possessions.
• They live from one day to the next, with no extra cash – we give them budgeting and saving lessons, help them choose a personal bank account, and teach them how to start a small business.
• They have never had anyone see them as more than domestic workers – we believe in them and in their potential.  We guide them into more.

 

Domestic Worker Employment Contract

Sample – Domestic worker employment contract

Above we have supplied you with a link to the sample contract for Domestic Workers in South Africa, as detailed by the Department of Labour.

For more information about legal or household issues relating to your Domestic Worker, please give us a call on +(27)824905467 for a free consultation.

This Month’s Training Course

This month’s Blue Sticker Household Domestic Training course has been running successfully for the past two weeks and I’d like to update everyone on the progress we’ve made.

We dealt with employer/employee rights in the first module of session 1 – which provided a good platform to explain to the ladies how the employer is allowed to react when they do not fulfill their contracts (be it a verbal or written contract).  Many of the ladies on the course had been sent by their employers simply because they were not fulfilling their contractual obligations, and needed to be spoken to and counselled into a proper service attitude.  Other ladies had come because of their good attitudes and hunger to learn.  Either way, the mornings work-shopping was helpful all around, with both groups seeing that attitude and performance play a vital role in their work experiences.

During the afternoon we went through the Cleaning Components and Techniques module, where we discussed how best to clean, and which products to use in which environments.  We also dealt with product consumption and wastage – making sure the ladies understand how to manage their working environments effectively.  Next we dealt with task, chemical and equipment lists, and how to schedule their work loads to ensure maximum productivity.

Towards the end of the day did a Dreaming workshop where we discussed their life stories and dreams for the future. Many of the women were deeply moved by their fellow’s stories, as each took turns to share dreams and aspirations with the class.

During this last week’s session, we focussed on safety principals for the workplace – discussing issues such as how to answer the phone, who to call in the case of an emergency, taking messages and how to react in the case of various emergency situations.  This was helpful on multiple levels, as we discussed the stories of various women who had experienced fires in the townships.  We talked about how to best take action in fire scenarios, and they shared how they had reacted in the past.

We also had a drawing and drama exercise where the women drew renditions of unsafe situations they had previously found themselves in, and how they would change their behaviours today.

On the whole the most encouraging thing I have noticed during the course is the confidence that being on this training has given these women.  They seem full of life and excited to be given personal attention!  I’ve realized how little one-on-one attention these ladies have been given, perhaps none at all, and how deeply it impacts them as people to know that they are being developed because someone cares about them and their futures.  It’s a beautiful thing to witness and take part in.

- Andrea Bester