We, the domestic workers represented by the Federation of Asian Domestic Workers’ Unions (FADWU), the Coalition for Migrants’ Rights (CMR), and various partners, express the united position and strong solidarity among the Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Nepalese, Thai and all DWs in Hong Kong. We have ardently campaigned for the long overdue and greatly deserved recognition of our status, rights, welfare, interests, and dignity.

We are here today, 8 July 2009, to collectively express and show our indignation over the HK Labour and Welfare Department’s recommendation to exclude live-in domestic workers, the majority of whom are women and migrant, from the coverage of the proposed Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW) Law. This decision of the HK government to exclude us from the protection of the SMW law is yet another glaring proof of the recurring and methodical discrimination policy employed by the government in its treatment of one of the most vulnerable, most abused, most exploited sectors of the working force here in HK.

We welcome the commitment of the HK SAR Government to legislate a Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW) Law for workers in Hong Kong.

We support and reiterate the position that the central aim of the SMW Law is to “address the problem of working poverty” by providing minimum protection for the income of the most vulnerable and needy sections of the working population – who otherwise have no security of income and will suffer from unfairly low wages despite the very long working hours and multifarious tasks that they do.

Several domestic worker leaders in HK from the only self-representative organization of migrant domestic workers in this region, the Asian Migrant Domestic Workers Alliance (ADWA), and its partner DW organizations, trade unions, and civil society advocates, held a joint workshop of local and migrant DWs and met the press on 14 December to call for the adoption of an ILO Convention recognizing domestic work, and to demand for protection of domestic workers amidst the worsening global crisis. The DW leaders also announced a march-rally on 21 December and other activities as part of the international campaign of the International Working Group of Domestic Workers (IWG) for the recognition of domestic work.