Mariaam Bhatti: Tales of a Domestic Worker
As I started my search for a new job, I noticed there was a big difference between my hours and other jobs advertised with a similar or even fewer tasks. I was told I was an au pair, but coming from a place where such a title isn’t common, I found myself confused. I thought, wasn’t ‘au pair’ just a European term for a childminder?
I compared my job to other au pair positions: they too paid anything from €100 to €150, but for much fewer hours, with weekends free and plenty of time to attend college courses. It made me wonder what kind of an au pair I was, working as many as 68 hours a week for €400 a month. Of course I wasn’t one, really. Some cunning people just use the term ‘au pair’ to describe their full-time domestic workers. They pay them the same ‘au pair’ pocket money, but the tasks and hours will be those of a full-time employee.
The first interview I attended was at a café in Dun Laoghaire one Sunday morning. I met a lovely tall woman with a little boy who was maybe around two years old. I remember the lady asking if I wanted anything to drink, and I politely declined. She went ahead and ordered drinks for herself and her boy and the interview started, but we could hardly talk without little interruptions like when the boy dipped his whole fist in his drink and gave us his best smile.
When the woman asked for a reference, I only had references from my previous jobs back in South Africa. She then asked of my reasons for wanting to leave my current job. I didn’t say anything about the near slavery conditions I was under – there’s no way I’d get the job if I spoke about my situation. I merely told her I was hoping to study in a few months and I was looking for a position that would allow me to do that.
I think at one point she asked a question that touched on my working conditions, and I could no longer hold back my tears. There was nothing I could do, and I knew straight away she would not hire me. I remember us shaking hands at the end of the interview, and casting a glance at them as they walked away back home hand-in-hand.
On the way back to my own ‘home’ I was deep in thought. During the interview the woman had mentioned that she was a police officer, and my heart stopped beating for a moment: I was undocumented, and there I was being interviewed to work in a garda’s house! But I also wondered if she had noticed the sadness in my tear-filled eyes. Could she not understand my cry for help? I assumed police officers are trained to study behaviour – could she not see through mine?
But then I also know at that moment she was off duty, thinking as a mother who needed a childminder, and she was definitely not going to entrust her child to someone in the state I was in.
To be continued...
Mariaam Bhatti is a member of the Domestic Workers Action Group and Forced Labour Action Group of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland.
