Kiidu supports the aim of ILO

Posted on November 23, 2019

Kiidu supporting the community by promoting the rights of domestic workers.

Trust and safety of our members and families is the top priority for us at Kiidu. We strive to provide everyone with as much information as possible. Every member of Kiidu has passed a background review. Our mission is to provide a flexible and easy to use platform that helps to establish fast and reliable connections between caregivers and customers. To constantly raise the quality of our services, we support our caregivers by offering training to help caregivers improve their skill set and meet the needs of clients. We are also social enterprise company which encourage, help and empower our caregivers. We want them to not only work with us, but also remain with us for a long-lasting, rewarding, and stable caregiving career.

As we realized that our caregivers also have to take care to strike a balance between their commitment to their profession as well as their home and family. They are playing multiple roles of a mother, daughter, sister, wife and a working professional with remarkable harmony and ease.  

At present, domestic workers often face very low wages, excessively long hours, have no guaranteed weekly day of rest and at times are vulnerable to physical, mental and sexual abuse or restrictions on freedom of movement. Exploitation of domestic workers can partly be attributed to gaps in national labour and employment legislation, and often reflects discrimination along the lines of sex, race and caste. They work for private households, often without clear terms of employment, unregistered in any book, and excluded from the scope of labour legislation. They may work on full-time or part-time basis; may be employed by a single household or by multiple employers; may be residing in the household of the employer (live-in) or may be living in his or her own residence (live-out).

For these reasons, Kiidu encourages the transparency and communication between the family and their nannies and domestic workers. We believe that the rights of domestic workers begin in the home, and that households should establish a healthy dialogue and respectful relationships with those who care for their homes and families. Here Kiidu supports the aims of ILO by educating the nannies and domestic workers to have the knowledge and resources so they can know how to protect themselves. We believe the awareness campaign will reduce the domestic worker’s problem.

(Translation in English)

The postcard promotes the rights of domestic workers and recognise the contribution these workers make to our communities. Concepts are drawn from the ILO’s Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers (No.189).

Ministerial Regulation No. 14 (2012) issued under the Labor Protection Act.

If you employ domestic workers, have you followed the following Thai Labor laws?

• The minimum legal working age in Thailand is 15. If the workers are under the age of 18, they are subject to special protection under Thai Labor Laws.
• The workers are entitled to a minimum of one full day of rest per week and be entitled to traditional holidays.
• If the workers are required by the employers to perform tasks on public holiday, they should get paid overtime rates for working on such days. As required by Government regulation, details of this can be provided on request.
• The workers are entitled to get paid for annual holiday.
• The workers are entitled to be paid for sick leave.

I pledge to uphold the principles of C189, and protect and promote the rights of domestic workers in my home and community, by taking the following actions:

• I will ensure fair wages are paid to domestic workers in my home (at least the minimum wage) and that domestic workers have reasonable work hours and time to rest.
• I will negotiate the terms and conditions of employment with any domestic workers in my home, ensuring a mutual understanding through a written agreement.
• I will ensure that domestic workers in my home have the right to social security.
• I will actively ensure a work environment that is free from abuse, harassment and violence.
• I will ensure that domestic workers in my home have access to decent healthcare.
• I will ensure that domestic workers in my home enjoy decent living conditions and a safe, secure and private bedroom.
• I will ensure that domestic workers in my home are able to spend their free time wherever and however they choose.

At a Kiidu we are like a family and we like to treat our Nannies and domestic workers like they are our daughters, mothers and sisters. We love and cherish our daughters and want them to be happy, healthy, respected, fairly paid and fairly treated. This is why we emphasize our commitment to complying with Labour laws on wages and conditions. It is a well-known fact that a happy employee is a good employee and treating your employee fairly and with good lines of communication will benefit all of us.