Working as a Domestic Worker in Hong Kong

Sep 14, 2023
8 min read

Let’s set the scene.

Imagine that you are a migrant worker, coming to Hong Kong for the first time to work as a domestic helper. You will be likely working with a family with a couple and their children. You will live in their home and will likely have a cramped room to yourself, if one at all.

Your duties in their home will include all chores imaginable — from sweeping the floor to doing the laundry and even cleaning the windows — and cooking a cuisine you are not familiar with. If they have children or elderly, you will also be their caretaker.

You will wake up at 6 in the morning and work until 11 at night. You will only have one day of rest per week, only 7 days of annual leave and 13 days of statutory holidays. There’s no guarantee you won’t have to work on those days, of course.

Let’s say you were unfortunate enough to be placed with a demanding employer. They are very demanding in the standard of your work. Every chore must be done to perfection or in the way that they prefer it.

As a newcomer to Hong Kong, you are not familiar with the norms of households here, let alone your employers’ standards.

You’ve worked with them for three months now. You can take the 16 hour work days, but you can’t take your employer’s scolding anymore.

You try your best to wipe the floor as clean as possible, but you still get scolded. You try your best to cook meals to their liking (despite their often unclear instructions), but you still get scolded. You try to tell them you’re not supposed to work on your rest day and statutory holidays, but you still get scolded. You are stressed, tired and scared.

You can’t take it anymore and you want to terminate your contract. You don’t know much about immigration rules, but you know that if a worker terminates their contract on the spot, then they have to pay their employer one month’s worth of wages.

You cannot be out of work because your comparatively higher wages here enables you to provide for your family back home. In the time that you look for a new employer, you will not have an income.

You definitely cannot afford to not be able to find a new employer because there’s no work at home. But you also know that you cannot withstand your current employer’s verbal abuse.

What do you do?

Of course, this is merely a hypothetical scenario for both you and me. However, in the time that I’ve worked at an NGO helping migrant workers seeking aid, this dilemma is the lived experience for many.

Domestic workers are an integral component in Hong Kong society. They take care of domestic duties as well as children or elderly (sometimes both) while their employers are at work.

In effect, they “free-up” labour by allowing parents of children to work longer and earn more for the household.

Domestic workers participating in the Give Care to Caregivers event, held by MFMW.

The bottom line is that they have fundamentally transformed how households in Hong Kong function. Both parents and children shy away from doing chores in favour of having their “helper” do it instead.

Despite their importance and contributions to Hong Kong society, many find themselves in difficult situations such as the one demonstrated above.

With their employers and agencies sometimes actively acting against their personal interests, the domestic worker’s dilemma — to terminate or not to terminate — sometimes appears more as a plight.

Having said this, what are the existing policies that regulate the working conditions of domestic workers in Hong Kong, and who is there to help?

The Current Policy Framework

Migrant domestic workers are employed in Hong Kong households under one standard employment contract. This contract outlines their length of their employment, wages, entitlement to holidays and conditions of work.

Quick facts:

The length of employment is two years, open to renewal.
Workers are entitled to one rest day per week and thirteen days of statutory holidays.
Workers are entitled to no less than seven days of annual leave per year.
The minimum monthly wage is HKD $4730.
The employer must cover the worker’s cost of travel and medical bills.
The worker must live in the employer’s home.

Termination of Contract

If an employer wishes to terminate their contract prematurely (before the completion of two years), they must provide their workers with at least a one month’s notice of their termination.

If they wish to terminate the worker immediately, they must also pay them one month’s worth of wages in lieu of notice.

Likewise, if the worker wishes to terminate their contract, they are subjected to the rules above as well. Exceptions for the payment of wages in lieu of notice would be if either party has conducted a summary offence, such as theft, dishonesty or abuse.

In both cases, though, the employer should pay for the cost of travel for the domestic worker to their places of origin.

Consequences for the Worker

While these may seem like reasonable terms, the domestic worker often bear the brunt of a premature termination of contract. Here are some facts to consider.

The worker must return to their place of origin until they find a new employer/their new work visas have been approved, while most likely being unemployed.
The worker must pay additional fees to agencies in their place of origin to find new work.
The Immigration Department may not issue a new work visa to workers who has a history of prematurely terminating their contract.

Given this, it is unlikely that domestic workers would want to terminate their contracts prematurely as this would mean losing substantial income.

However, consider the hypothetical scenario of ill-treatment by the employer we talked about above.

Keeping in mind points 1 and 2, the pressure to provide for their family at home deters many migrant domestic workers of even considering terminating their contracts.

On the other hand, many domestic workers are quite frankly terrified of being blacklisted by the immigration department as that would be they would not be able to find work in Hong Kong in the future.

These are the factors that prevents many migrant domestic workers from leaving abusive work environments at the expense of their wellbeing, let alone job-hop to higher paying employers.

Source: Labour Department

The Role of NGOs

NGOs play an important role to help migrant workers navigate the complex landscape of policies and regulations.

Over the summer, I interned with Mission for Migrant Workers (MFMW), an NGO that provides assistance for migrant workers seeking help or shelter in Hong Kong.

Me and fellow volunteers and staff at the Mission.

There are generally three ways that NGOs help migrants in regards to issues with employment

Official letters of complaint
Computation of dues
General employment advice

1. Complaints to Immigration

When migrant domestic workers terminate their contracts due to the ill-treatment or unreasonable demands of the employer, many are afraid that they will be blacklisted by the Hong Kong Immigration Department.

While working at MFMW, I have encountered many migrant workers who have been ill-treated by their employers. Some faced verbal abuse by their employers and their families, while others received unfair treatment or false accusations.

There is no enforceable mechanism that ensures fair treatment of domestic workers by their employers. Unlike companies, for example, there is no HR department that mediates conflict between employer and employee.

Moreover, you can imagine how daunting it must be for a domestic worker to confront their employer (who may already treat them badly), especially when they live under the same roof!

At MFMW, I interviewed migrants domestic workers to take a chronology of events, details of their experiences and write a letter of complaint directed to the Immigration Department. This is so that the department has a record of incidents encountered by domestic workers by their employers and flags or blacklists them when necessary.

When needed, these chronologies could also act as statements if the worker decides to further pursue their case with the Labour Department or in court.

2. Computing Dues

Domestic workers are entitled to certain monies. In addition to one month’s wages in lieu of notice of termination, domestic workers may also be entitled to

Severence pay or long service pay,
Pay for untaken holidays,
HKD $100 per day of travelling to their place of origin, and others.

I’ve encountered many cases where domestic workers were not given their dues after their work with an employer. We help them compute the amount that they should receive from their former employer and clearly break down each item and their respective amounts.

If the employer doesn’t pay the worker their dues in a week’s time, the workers should go to the Labour Department to file an official claim against their former employers.

After that, the department will arrange a reconciliation meeting between the two parties where they aim to settle the dispute. There are several factors to consider here, namely

There is no guarantee that the worker will receive the full amount they are entitled to, since the meeting is based on negotiation between the two parties.
The workers have no income in the period when they pursue their claims, which could take a little over a month to over a year!

Other factors to consider is that the labour officer may not even approve of the claims submitted initially. Another is the sheer terror that some domestic workers feel at the thought of negotiating with their former employers, especially if they have been verbally abused by them before!

This, combined with the aforementioned factors, sadly compel many to return home and abandon their their claims before they have been settled.

The Way Forward

Recent demonstration demanding a decent living wage for domestic workers.

The experiences for migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong can be irregular and especially precarious. Having demonstrated the complex issues that migrant workers face, it’s surprising that there has been pushback from policymakers to further restrict the mobility of domestic workers in Hong Kong.

Job-hopping

Recently, there have been policymakers in Hong Kong that advocated on cracking down on domestic helpers job-hopping. This refers to the premature termination of an employment contract by a worker to find a new employer.

Under the new proposed regulations, domestic workers must have “exceptional circumstances” in order to terminate their contracts prematurely, such as death, illness or abuse. In fact, it is not common for domestic workers to change jobs at all!

In context, this is an effort to further restrict domestic workers’ ability to terminate their contract. Given the potential consequences that migrant workers face when they terminate their contract, it’s reasonable to assume that many have more to lose than gain if they “job hop”.

Furthermore, restricting domestic workers’ ability to change employers is an infringement on basic human right. Issues such as verbal abuse and unreasonable standards of work by employers are perfectly grounds for workers to leave their jobs. Should domestic workers not be viewed in the same standard?

In other words, if domestic workers were treated right by their employers, then it is unlikely that workers would terminate their contracts prematurely.

Much Is Done But Things Can Be Better

There is a long road ahead for migrant domestic workers’ rights in Hong Kong, yet there are many migrant rights groups and unions, organised by migrants themselves that advocate for better working conditions.

Recently, these rights group have organised a demonstration for higher wages, regulation against long working hours and against tightening employment regulations.

Members of migrant workers union in a rally.

Groups such as the Asian Migrant Coordinating Body (AMCB) regularly advocate for migrant rights in Hong Kong and organise with different migrant worker unions.

It is inspiring to see migrant workers taking initiative and demonstrate agency to fight for fair treatment.

The best way for us to support these causes is to be educated in migrants’ issues and volunteer with or donate to NGOs that serve migrant workers directly.