Domestic-helpers’ Co-operatives : A Speculative Probe [WIP]
Team Phoenix [ Sweta Bisht, Jahnvi Vegad]
Proposal Brief
This project started with looking at “gated societies” as a vast research area. With a vision of probing into such socio-technical infrastructures, we explored various academia and ‘management apps’ on it. Throughout which, questionable professional place of domestic-helpers on household level as well as their role in the ecosystem of gated-communities got us curious.
The initial research raised a clear issue of ‘Imbalanced equations between domestic-helpers and their employers i.e. residents’. Apps like MyGate, give options for reviewing/rating or even firing domestic helpers, which sometimes the domestic helpers don’t even know about. Here domestic-helpers don’t get to say anything or much regarding important decisions about their jobs. This creates a window for emergent interventions like co-ops centred around domestic-helpers, providing community benefits -socially and economically.
Thus, our proposed research statement is as follows:
“Taking a speculative approach, what are the outcomes when a co-op of domestic-helpers emerges in a gated-society?”
Secondary Research
About Co-ops | Case Studies
About Co-Operatives(Co-ops)
A co-op is an autonomous association of people united voluntarily towards a common collective need. It is owned, used and democratically operated by the members. The benefits are derived and distributed equitably on basis of its use by the members.
Drawn up by the International Cooperative Alliance, cooperatives over the world use these seven principles as the basis of their business:
- Voluntary and open membership
- Democratic member control
- Member economic participation
- Autonomy and independence
- Education, training and information
- Cooperation among cooperatives
- Concern for community
We then started brainstorming to speculate what would be a domestic helpers’ co-op like? Questions like what are the core values of this co-op? What are their common needs? What are the services they will provide? What are their requirements in terms of resources and finance? When and where will this co-op be seen active?
To understand the complex system and dynamics a co-op brings in, we moved to case studies.
Case Studies
Up&GO
Up & Go is a platform cooperative marketplace for professional home services such as house cleaning, dog walking, baby sitting etc. They also provide training to the workers to feed back to the community. It is a collaborative between community-based organisations, tech developers, philanthropic funders, and worker cooperatives in New York City. Interesting case study to see how Up & Go workers gets 95% of the total cost, while the remaining 5% is funnelled back toward app maintenance which in tern help them manage the platform in contrast to other platforms that keeps between 20% to 50% of the service price.
SWaCH
SWaCH is a Pune based workers’ co-op which claims to specialise in waste-picking. Funded by Pune Municipal Corporation(PMC), this co-op runs for, with and by, skilful workers who pick up waste from door to door and segregate it on basis of its recycle-ability. Operational since 2008, SWaCH has emerged from a local union of waste-pickers and buyers. It is now a hugely populated co-op that serves over houses.
This case study helped us understand the workings of a co-op on a larger scale. Especially in Indian context, it was very insightful to read about such a workers platform functioning and how the two important stakeholders are benefiting each others interests. It gave us various areas to look at while trying to speculate through a workers’ co-op.
Primary Research
Straight from the community
It was realised that the idea of coop must come from the community itself that could resonate their common needs and desires. We also realised that more than the rigid structure of the coop in question, the essence of coop being a collective initiative was needed.
We went ahead to interview some of the domestic helpers with a primary intention to understand their needs and journeys they take in their day to day life’s professional work. We asked them about :
- Profession as domestic-helpers and current work situation in gated-societies
- Journeys in different scenarios and what they feel
- Their hiring process
- Process of leaving their jobs
- Bitter experiences in this profession
- Savings and where/how to save
- The occasions when the domestic-helpers’ community comes together
- Helping each other within the community
- Resonance with all the others in the same profession
- Reactions to bad treatment at workplace, protest, figuring out the situation
Currently, we are sketching out these scenarios of domestic helpers. We’re trying to come up with a service map that would depict a bigger picture of situations centring their life and gated societies.
Next steps
The insights from our secondary research encouraged us to probe more with our speculation and see domestic workers’ responses to alternative scenarios.
To do this, we plan to design a participatory session with a group of professional domestic helpers. The activity will aim to put participants in situations and react to them unanimously. Bringing a sense of united entity that capacitates them to bring a change in current scenarios. Then we plan to speculate an alternative journey accordingly.
