Regulatory Innovation in the Governance of Decent Work for Domestic Workers in South Africa: Access to Justice and the Commission on Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration

Abstract

South Africa ratified the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) in 2013, after playing an important role in the adoption of the Convention. South Africa is one of the countries that has a significant domestic work population that reflects the legacies of slavery and apartheid. South Africa is also one of the ILO Members to have acted decisively to foster decent work for domestic workers through law. This article offers a critical analysis of the legislative landscape on domestic work in South Africa, but focuses its attention on the innovative Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). The article draws on interviews and participant observations of the CCMA’s approach to dispute resolution. It canvasses the ethnographic material alongside key scholarship on topic, to suggest that there are firm indicia that the CCMA structure, procedures and accessibility have helped to reinforce, over time, a recognition that domestic work is a form of employment to which labour law principles apply. The institution, its structure, its attempt at inclusion, play a crucial mediating role, underscoring that state law is applicable to the household as a workplace, and can help to change its asymmetrical, pluralist law. That mediation is part of the aspiration of decent work for domestic workers embodied in Convention No. 189 and Recommendation No. 201. The article concludes by affirming that the CCMA is a critically important institution, only part – but also a meaningful part – of the promise of labour law’s ‘citizenship at work’ in the context of persisting societal inequality.