Domestic work is taken up by poor urban women who live in sub standard settlements (Slums) in Chennai. They are called as Velaikari in Tamil. Velaikari means a person who does menial job in the houses. Domestic workers are the most disadvantaged group in the society. Due to poverty and lack of employment in the rural villages they migrate to cities. Many women become domestic workers since they are not academically qualified. Many women take up this job since they cannot afford to run the families with small amount of income from their husbands. Many of their husbands go for work but their income is mostly spent on alcohol. The minimum amount which comes in may not be adequate to send their children for higher education. The income of the most of the domestic workers is below Rs. 5000 in a month. Most of them live in small huts and they spend a large amount of money for educating their children and it is a mounting burden on the family again as the living cost is high in the cities. They work for longer hours and working continuously without a day off is quite common in the domestic work sector. Due to fewer wages many Domestic Workers are urit forced to take up work in many houses and at the end of the day, struggle to cope up with the work. Even for any funeral or function in the families, they are not given leave. If they take leave, the next day they have to do double work. To cope up with the work, many domestic workers take their girl children along with them for work to assist them. Their girl children remain as potential child domestic workers. Often they are late to school andas they have a fear of being humiliated in front of other students, they do not say that they go along with their mothers for domestic work. Ten rooms and ten toilets to clean, staircases and corridors to sweep, plates and utensils to wash and a salary of Rs.3000 a month with no holidays, no Sundays and no benefits- this is the ’job’ that Sarada(45) does in an upscale locality like Saidapet in Chennai. She says the ‘going rate’ is around Rs.1000 for each category of housework, but nobody follows the rate. Despite bringing the domestic workers under the purview of The Minimum Wage Act 1948 in 2007, Tamil Nadu has failed to fix a minimum wage for domestic workers. The life and livelihood conditions of domestic workers are pathetic because they are living in the slums and their work is insecurity like Lobour market, employment, job, work, skill reproduction, income and representation insecurity.
