Domestic service, paid and unpaid domestic work and household workers' labor rights in Argentina (1926, 1974)

Domestic service’s proximity to unpaid domestic labor was recurrently used throughout the twentieth century to restrict household workers’ labor rights. Both household workers' exclusion from the Argentinean labor laws passed in the first half of the twentieth century,  and the special law sanctioned to regulate this work in 1956 -which recognized limited labor rights to household workers- were justified by this proximity. The characterization of domestic service as a “special” and “non-productive” activity, and its placement within family relationships, rather than within labor ones, resulted in a late legal protection as well as in restricted labor rights recognized to domestic workers.. However, in her demands for the recognition of their work’s value, household workers also appealed to their work proximity to . In this paper I examine how different actors used this proximity either to deny or to vindicate different rights in labor courts. On one hand, from a close reading of projects submitted to Congress, parliamentary debates, and jurisprudence, this paper discusses the characterization of domestic service as a “special” activity in the Argentinean labor law. On the other, I focus on both domestic workers’ and employers’ strategies developed before labor justice.