FDHs ask for 11 hours of uninterrupted rest

FDHs hold a rally in Central asking for regulated working hours. (File photo)

Marking International Migrants Day, foreign domestic workers submitted a petition, with more than 28,000 signatures, to the government asking for standardized working hours, particularly “11 hours of uninterrupted rest.”

Eman Villanueva, chair of Bayan Hong Kong and Macau, said they turned over the petition to the office of Hong Kong Chief Executive C.Y. Leung during the rally on December 19.

“We are asking the government to give us 11 hours of uninterrupted rest,” Villanueva said in an interview.

“So, instead of defining our working hours, we are asking that the government should ensure that we have several hours of uninterrupted rest. This is more workable because we live with our employers,” he added.

The signatories to the petition included migrant workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Nepal.

They joined the rally after marching from the Southorn Playground in Wan Chai to the Hong Kong Central Government Office in Admiralty.

Villanueva said that it was harder to push for an eight-hour working day for domestic helpers because even the working hours of local have not been standardized.

“That is somewhat an uphill battle because even local workers, after two to three years of public consultations, they have not yet achieved that,” he said.

“Instead of legislation (standardizing working hours), the proposals now are that it should be included in the local workers’ contracts. However, that means it will be the employers who will determine (the working hours),” he added.

Villanueva said the proposal of 11 hours of uninterrupted rest for FDHs could be made “flexible” so that domestic workers would still be ready to attend to their employers when they go home from work.

“If the employer comes home at 8 p.m., they could set the domestic worker’s uninterrupted rest to start at 9 p.m. until 8 a.m.,” Villanueva said, adding that this work arrangement was already being implemented in countries.
Villanueva earlier said that they would take legal action should the Hong Kong government exclude them from any regulation that would standardize working hours in the territory.

“Ang nase-sense namin ay ayaw talaga nilang isama ang mga migrant domestic workers…Kung sakaling i-exclude nila ang migrant domestic workers, hindi namin inaalis ang posibilidad na mag-take din ng legal action kung sakaling darating sa ganoong punto,” he said.

Villanueva said the Hong Kong government had been saying that standardizing working hours for employees and workers here would erode the city’s competitiveness.

This fear, he said, is unfounded as other cities that set shorter working hours for their employees and workers have remained competitive.

Hong Kong has wrapped up its three-month public consultation on standard working hours in August.

According to the UBS’ annual “Prices and Earnings” study, workers in Hong Kong spent 50.11 hours a week at the workplace, the longest hours out of the 71 global cities included in the poll.

Many foreign domestic workers have been complaining that they work between 12 and 18 hours a day to serve their employers.