Essential yet excluded: COVID‐19 and the decent work deficit among domestic workers in Brazil

Abstract

This article presents data from a survey conducted with the National Federation of Domestic Workers in Brazil on the impact of the pandemic crisis, complemented by an analysis of key emergency policies and the Federation's main actions in the first year of the pandemic. It discusses three key areas: employment and income, occupational health and safety, and violations of rights. It shows the extreme polarisation between those who lost their means of survival, and those who had to keep working at the cost of their health and basic human rights. Although the extent of the current crisis is exceptional, we argue that this situation is made possible by pre‐existing conditions of legal exclusions and precarity.