Work Is Life and That Is Why Every Domestic Worker Deserves to Feel Safe By Manilyn

I have been a domestic worker for more than ten years. I rise each morning at five o'clock, while the rest of the household is still asleep. Those early hours are mine in the most honest sense. They are the quiet before the work begins, and in them I hold my reason for everything: my family.

On the days when keeping going feels like the hardest thing, it is the thought of my children's future that lifts me. There is a particular kind of determination that lives in a parent working far from home, and I carry it faithfully. My hope that things will get better is absolute. I believe in a better future for domestic workers not as a wish but as a conviction.

Three words capture what I want the world to understand about people like me. Domestic workers are strong. I say it simply and plainly, and it needs no elaboration. The strength it takes to do this work, year after year, across more than a decade, is not the strength of someone who is merely surviving. It is the strength of someone who has decided that her work matters and that she will keep showing it matters with everything she does.

My belief about what this work truly is comes through in four words I offer freely: work is life. This is not simply a job. It is a livelihood, a purpose, and for many of us, the central thread running through every decision we make. To treat it as anything less is to misunderstand the people who do it and the families who depend on them.

My most urgent concern is the right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa, and I rate the urgency of restoring pre-2012 rights at the maximum. Without visa renewal, nothing else is stable. I cannot plan, cannot settle, and cannot feel truly secure in the place I have spent years serving. I consider this right, and indeed all four of the rights VODW is fighting for, to be life-changing. Not simply important. Life-changing.

Those four rights, the right to change employer without restrictions, the right to renew the ODW Visa, the right to settlement, and the path to British Citizenship, represent the full picture of what a secure life looks like for a domestic worker in the United Kingdom. I see all of them as necessary. I spend five hours every week worrying about my job and visa situation, and I imagine what those hours could be used for instead if the fear were simply removed.

I believe that raising awareness is how change begins. Employers, governments, workers' unions, NGOs, and the general public all have a role to play. Change requires all of them to pay attention, to care, and to act.

If these rights were restored, my answer is warm and clear. I would feel safe. That is the word. Safe. After more than ten years of early mornings and dedicated work, safety should not be something I have to hope for. It should simply be there, built into the structures that surround every worker in every profession. VODW is working to make that a reality, and my voice, grounded in a decade of lived experience, is an important part of that effort.

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