The impact of flexibility and incomplete employment relations on working hours and conditions for home helps

The process of professionalisation that began to take shape in the home help market in the late 1990s seems to have ground to a halt in recent years. Working conditions and rates of pay remain mediocre and show few signs of improvement. The situation of home helps - a largely female workforce - can thus be read in terms of incomplete employment relations. Home helps are excluded from the protection of classic employment relations in many ways, meaning the workers face skewed arbitration between working hours and employment conditions. The lack of financial compensation for the arduous nature of the work is particularly damaging. Improving working conditions means rather more explicit recognition of the specific demands of the job and challenging the extreme flexibility of working hours. [PUB ABSTRACT] Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po