Agreement for Italian domestic workers

Italian collective bargaining covers domestic workers, although official estimates suggest that only 216,000 of the 1.4million people employed in this area have a proper contract, the rest are in the informal sector.

The new agreement, signed appropriately enough on 8 March, International Women's Day, produces a number of improvements for employees in the sector, 90% of whom are women. The most important, in the view of the unions involved, is that in future domestic workers will have new protections against dismissal during pregnancy and maternity. Up to now this group of workers did not have the same legal rights in this area as the rest of the Italian workforce. Under the new agreement, which runs for four years until March 2001, domestic workers will be protected against dismissal from the start of pregnancy until the end of the five months of maternity leave. To pay for this and other absences though illness the two sides have agreed to set up a new fund.

The new agreement also reduces weekly working hours, from 55 to 54 for those living with families and from 48 to 44 for the remainder. Pay goes up by 2.5% and by more for those living with families. In addition the two sides have agreed to set up a working party which will look at training needs and provide families and domestic workers with information about health and safety and ways to escape from the informal economy.