HUMSS - Clémence Ledoux

Representing decentralized employers of precarious female workers. Why act at the European policy level in the home care /domestic work sector?

Home care and domestic work is the most important sector for female precarious employment, both in Europe and in other continents. In the European Union, this sector has undergone many transformations over the last 30 years, with the rise of welfare markets and private employers. As being officially responsible for hiring, managing employment and working conditions, and dismissing workers, employers of home care/domestic workers play a major role in defining the status of these workers. Although they are mostly decentralized, some of them have nevertheless organized at the national level and also at the European level. How can this Europeanization be explained and how being active at the EU level has also changed the way employers' organizations perceive their interests in the home/domestic care sector? In this presentation, I argue that the European Union has provided financial, normative and symbolic resources to encourage these employers to be represented at this level, but that being active at the EU level has also transformed the expression and perception of their interests, leading them to build a coalition with the trade unions in front of the European institutions.