Domestic Workers’ Mobilizations in Brazil and the Struggle for Labour Rights

Domestic work is usually described as being a precarious, informal and highly unequal sector of activity. In most countries, domestic workers are not even recognised as workers and do not enjoy the same labour rights as others. Industrial relations and social movements’ literature quite unanimously predict that precarious or ‘non-traditional’ workers are harder to organise and even more so to unionize. Yet, in some Latin American countries, domestic workers have created trade unions and recently gained new rights through important changes in national legislations. In Brazil, the largest employer of domestic workers in the continent, the category has a quite long history of fighting for their rights. The first association of domestic workers dates back to 1936, and local associations were recognised as trade unions in 1988 with the return to democracy and the new Constitution. The National Federation of Domestic Workers (FENATRAD) was created in 1997, and affiliated to the biggest confederation of workers of the country, the Central Única dos Trabalharadores (Unique Central of Workers – CUT). The FENATRAD is now composed of 25 local unions from 13 federative states (out of 26), and represents 133,000 members across the country. Against all odds, this group of marginalised women have been organising themselves and demanding equal rights. And most surprisingly, when the literature predicts that such a group would find alternative or non-traditional ways of mobilising, Brazilian domestic workers have instead used the ‘weapons of strong’ and created trade unions. This paper will explore what made such a mobilisation possible and how Brazilian domestic workers managed to create their own trade unions. Paying particular attention to the 2015 law that extends domestic workers’ labour rights, it will also aim at assessing how successful this process has been.