RGS Sp 2025-wl-6060-Unions and Labour NGO’s: The structural conditions for success of Domestic Workers Union

Domestic workers (DWs) represent about 25% of all paid care workers globally. Over the last century they have organised themselves to gain recognition of their rights as workers and for their places of work to be viewed as workplaces. This culminated in the ILO passing Convention 189 in 2011 to protect the rights of DWs. In Bengaluru, DWs have organised with many organisations that are of broadly two forms – DW Unions and Labour NGOs - with discrete yet intertwined histories. The paper looks at the trajectory of these organisations from the perspective of the struggles and visions of the leadership of these organisations. Key framing questions include: What are the different cultural, organizational, and structural shapers of DW Unions and Labour-NGOs? What do they mean for the struggles of DWs? The paper argues that the degree of 'organicity' of a DW union (namely, the participative and leadership capacities of DWs) is deeply shaped by the co-dependence between Labour NGOs and DW Unions. This in turn is a direct result of the precarity and conditions of work in the informal sector. The paper is based on our study of DWs in Bengaluru.