FES BRIEFING TOWARDS THE INCLUSION OF MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS – RENEWING EFFORTS TOWARDS RATIFICATION OF ILO CONVENTION NO. 189 October 2024 SUMMARY This policy brief provides a snapshot of efforts to pro­mote ratification of ILO Convention No. 189 in the EU. It also discusses the limitations of the recently adopted EU Care Strategy and some lessons learned from the experience of ILO Convention No. 189 ratification in different Member States. The policy brief concludes by making a number of short-term and long-term recom­mendations to improve the conditions of paid domestic workers, as well as the provision of care in the EU. 1. INTRODUCTION Care is central to every society. Whether it be giving birth to and raising children, meeting the needs of the sick and disabled, providing training and education, or keeping our surroundings clean and safe, reproducing and sustaining life requires a multitude of care activities. Despite their funda­mental role, care and carers are undervalued, underpaid or even not paid at all. The Covid-19 pandemic made us painfully aware not only of how important care is in keeping our fam­ilies, communities and economies running, but also of the many gaps in care provision across the EU. In the EU27, needs for long-term care are on the rise and expected to increase in the coming decades. According to available estimates, by 2030 there will be 33.7 million people in need of long-term care in the EU, while by 2050 the number will rise to 38.1 million(European Commission and Economic Policy Committee, 2021). The contraction of the welfare state and associated chronic lack of adequate public investment in affordable care services has led to overreliance on private solutions. Today many families and individuals rely on privately hired live-in or live-out domestic workers for their direct and indirect care needs. 1 The growing sector of Personal and Household Services(PHS), which includes different types of domestic work, accounts for 5 per cent of total employment in the EU27. 2 Very often those needing home-based care have limited purchasing power, which means that domestic work is structurally low paid and precarious, delegated mainly ABOUT THE AUTHOR Vera Pavlou is Senior Lecturer in Labour Law at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of Migrant domestic workers in Europe: law and the construction of vulnerability(Hart Publishing, 2021) and of several other publications on care workers’ rights. Her broader research interests include gender equality at work and labour migration. 1 In this policy brief,‘domestic worker’ and‘care worker’ are used inter­changeably to refer to anyone who works for or in a private household in the context of an employment relationship. See, Article 1, ILO Con­vention C189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers for the definition of domestic worker. The term‘care worker’ is commonly associated with providing direct care(for example, bathing or feeding a person, helping them use the toilet, babysitting), while‘domestic worker’ is as­sociated with indirect care(for example, cleaning, cooking, household maintenance). In practice, direct and indirect care often overlap so that a sharp distinction between the two is not possible or necessarily desirable. 2 PHS is the term commonly used in EU policy to group together a wide range of activities that support households. 1