Domestic help and carers, the settlement will be more reasonable for everybody

While up to not long ago the needs of families on one hand, and those of domestic help and carers on the other, gave business relations much possibility to be irregular, today this possibility is sharply reduced thanks to the commitment of the trade unions and the associations that deal with the immigrant workers. The project, realised by the trade union CISL and the non-profit institution ANOLF, thanks to a notification by the Provincial Council in Varese, which has allocated € 164,895, directly provided by the Ministry of Labour, will allow us to give advice to families and their attendants, to help them deal with administrative and legal matters for the recruitment and the settlement of the family attendant, to spread the knowledge of rights and duties of the household staff, to make the job demand and offer meet (CISL is registered in the Regional Council in Lombardy to carry out this task).
It is a series of concrete actions which aim to dismantle a system, which is often irregularly managed because of the ignorance and the fear to face unsustainable costs. In short, if there are business relations, they will have to be regular, despite the fact that they are fragmented and occasional. The non-profit institution ANOLF (National Association Beyond the Frontiers) will deal with family attendants, who won’t have to pay, but they only will have to join the Association, whereas the CISL’s Labour Services Association will deal with families, which will be given free advice and only those who ask for the service management (payments, payrolls, contributions, etc) will have to provide a lump-sum payment of €160. Kleopatra Halili, in charge of CISL’s Labour Services Association, explained, “It is an important service, because it clears the ground from many kinds of ambiguity. And as the Financial Police is making a series of cross checks, it is important to be informed about rights and duties, especially in business relations, such as the household ones, which are often fragmented and which naturally avoid settlements. Today, we have the instruments to do things regularly. Therefore, money coming from the notification allows us to manage the service with sustainable costs for a phenomenon which has considerable figures: in the province of Varese, according to the last report of ISMU (Initiatives on studies about multi-ethnicity), there are 15,635 family attendants, i.e. 21.1% of the total foreigners living in this territory. Among them, 11,337 would apparently work as domestic help and 4,298 as carers. However, according to the same report, there are more than 20,00 irregular foreigners coming from Ukraine, Ecuador and the Philippines doing this job.

Sergio Moia, working at the provincial CISL’s secretary’s office, explained, “Domestic help tends to have fake business relations in order to have the possibility of going to Italy and then they pay contributions of fake business relations with the money gained by working illegally. This project allows us to come out of the irregularity.” The crisis spares no sectors, even the domestic help one. The intermediate between job demand and offer can help people who are looking for a new job. Martine Hillgen, the manager of ANOLF in Varese, concluded, “Jobless domestic help starts to arrive. In the last few months, at least seventy of them have come to our Association, especially Romanian ones. This project can help us to replace them regularly.” In addition to CISL, which received € 30,400, other five Associations obtained the financial support for this project: the Comunità Montana Valli del Verbano (€ 30,000), the district of Azzate (€ 30,400), the City Hall of Travedona Monate (€ 13,295), the district of Tradate (€ 30,400), Energheia in Saronno (€ 30,400).