Deliverers in a hurry of generalized uberization, butchers of junk food pigs, overqualified professionals of culture and education on the cheap, underestimated hairdressers: the series The new proletarians, which drew the portrait of a new world of exploited and precarious work, ends with the case of relentless domestic workers.
Marie went from ballet to brooms. After university studies and an artistic career, the work of housekeeper, practiced more or less part-time to survive in the underpaid environment of the arts, became permanent.
“Households, I’ve always done, including as a student, says Marie (a borrowed first name) now in her fifties. I understood that it was more profitable to do that than to work full time at minimum wage. Eventually I made a career out of it. »
A typical day allows you to work for two Montreal clients for approximately three hours at a time. Some contracts add other household chores, laundry in particular. She can then spend up to six hours in one place.
“The first difficulty is finding respectful customers,” she says. Many men are looking for housewives sexy. There’s a whole market for that. I don’t allow myself to be spoken in a condescending tone either, and there is a power relationship in this profession. I still feel it. »
The subordinate position comes with a host of other constraints. You have to find your customers and follow them when they move. The safety net remains low and leaky, with no sick days or paid time off.
“I don’t take a real extended vacation. I take two or three days in a row from time to time. Clients fired me over text messages and created big holes in my small budget that week. The majority of my clientele live very well, with a condo, trips, two cars, but don’t give me any gifts. Precariousness is at the center of my work. »
This is the key word of this series on the new proletarians. Precarious work brings into play a central dimension of contemporary work linked to the instability of the present and the unpredictability of the future. Casualization also implies a social relationship of domination where remuneration is subject to the decision of others, without too much leeway.
A female reality
Is it just new? Catherine Charron published in 2018 On the margins of employment (Remue-ménage) on the journey of Quebec domestic workers from 1950-2000. The sociologico-historical investigation drawn from her doctoral thesis is based on in-depth interviews with approximately 33 women from the Quebec region.
“I come from a working-class background,” says the researcher to explain her subject of study. My grandmother worked in private homes, like all her sisters before getting married. Myself, as a babysitter, I was socialized into domestic work as a teenager. There was a filiation that I wanted to deepen. »
Unpaid domestic work, assigned to women in an unequal and systemic way, occupied much of second-wave feminist thinking. Paid forms of this same type of employment have been analyzed much less, even though they occupied a high proportion of women for a long time.
Here we touch on an important point: if feminist academics are not very interested in domestic work, it is also because they benefit from it. That said, they do not exploit their housekeepers any more than their husbands or spouses.
In 1891, 41% of the female labor force in Canada was in domestic service. Many worked there before getting married and then continued the same work without pay in their own homes.
The proportion of this type of employment had fallen to 3% in 1981. “It is a reality that disappears from official statistics, but which continues to exist in an informal, underground and invisible way”, says the researcher, giving the example of undeclared work or undocumented migrants.
The visible part exposes other scenarios of professional cleaners than the precarious cleaning lady. The house maid, the old-fashioned model, persists in some very wealthy households. Another typical example is the salaried domestic worker or janitor hired by a public or private company.
Miguel (an assumed name) was there for a few years. A refugee from Colombia, he worked in large spaces of coworking. He picked up the cups, emptied the trash cans, washed the innumerable windows. He eventually got injured and was on sick leave for two years. He has since retrained in IT.
The minimum labor standards apply to domestic workers serving a single client full-time. Since April 2022, domestic workers have also been automatically covered in the event of an accident at work or occupational disease.
“Cleaning is mercenary work,” says Miguel. The pay was pretty good at $17 or $18 an hour. But it’s very demanding, without a break. I had the bathrooms, and I was still made to prepare fruity water for customers, without respecting sanitary rules. I did this job because I had no choice. »
No thanks !
A study by the Conference Board conducted for Tourism HR Canada revealed that more than half of Quebecers consider the profession of housekeeping attendant to be off-putting. Just 2% of respondents said they found it “extremely appealing”, but 22% “extremely off-putting”. Nine out of ten people see it as a temporary job or a springboard to something else.
In 2016, Quebec had more than 68,000 maintenance workers. In the tourism sector with more than 10,000 employees, there is a high proportion of people born outside of Canada and of women (about 60%). Recruitment difficulties are constant and, to tell the truth, increasingly acute.
Online advertisements for various positions in the sector (housekeeper or cleaner, maid, school janitor, etc.) offer hourly rates ranging from $14.50 to $21.27. Marie charged between $15 and $18 per hour around 2016. She now charges up to $30 and more per hour. His income is declared and taxed.
“Rates have gone up during the pandemic,” she says. I built a clientele. I have the key or code for the alarm system. People trust me. It pays off. I did maintenance “jobines” in stores, with difficult schedules. There, I have the freedom to choose my schedules, to choose my clients. I also have time for myself, to do other things. »
This is also what his wealthier employers, men and women, are looking for, who can thus relieve themselves of thankless tasks. “We are touching an important point here: if feminist academics are not very interested in domestic work, it is also because they benefit from it, notes researcher Catherine Charron. That said, they do not exploit their housekeepers any more than their husbands or partners. In addition, if women from the upper middle classes delegate their domestic work to less privileged women, they remain responsible for managing this working relationship. »
Mary pondered the question. Some of his clients are professional women. “You can be a feminist and have a cleaning lady,” she says. I consider myself a feminist and I have given myself working conditions with each household. »