News Article :- The story of Liliana Melgar, a Bolivian migrant who left for Spain 15 years ago, mirrors the trajectory of millions of domestic workers like her who clean, wash, cook and take care of children in households around the world.
Except that Ms. Melgar happens to work in the home of Shakira, the Colombian superstar.
Shakira’s latest music video, “El Jefe” (“The Boss”), featuring the Mexican band Fuerza Regida, portrays the life of poor immigrants with big dreams, who are stuck working for bad employers who make lots of money that never trickles down. Toward the end of the three-minute clip, Ms. Melgar makes a cameo appearance as Shakira sings, “Lili Melgar, this song is for you because you were never paid severance.” The video has thrust Ms. Melgar — who was reportedly fired by Shakira’s former partner Gerard Pique, a Spanish soccer player, before being rehired by Shakira — into an unexpected spotlight and raised the profile of the roughly 76 million domestic workers around the world.
The New York Times tried to reach Shakira, who now lives in South Florida, and Ms. Melgar, but received no response. An agent who represents Mr. Pique did not respond to a request for a comment.
Domestic workers play a particularly crucial role in households across Latin America and the Caribbean, where about 1 in 5 employed women are domestic workers, according to the International Labor Organization, the second highest rate in the world after the Middle East.
Ms. Melgar’s cameo in the video, which has been streamed more than 57 million times on YouTube, is a sort of vindication following the loss of her job — lifted up by a famous and wealthy female boss. But her case is an exception to how domestic worker have fared in recent years.
Before the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, domestic workers in most Latin American and Caribbean countries had gained new rights that set caps on weekly work hours, established minimum wages, created incentives for employers to sign labor contracts and imposed age limits.
But the pandemic, which cratered economies across the region, pummeled domestic workers, causing many of them to lose their jobs. The industry has not fully recovered.
“To us, it feels like we’re still living through Covid-19,” said Ernestina Ochoa, 53, a domestic worker in Lima, Peru, who helped found the National Union for Domestic Workers, an advocacy group. “If you had your salary reduced, you never had it increased again.”
Many of the rights that domestic workers had won before the pandemic were rooted in an early wave of legislation in Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay and Colombia that was spearheaded by workers who organized labor unions.
“Fundamentally, paid domestic work is a job that exists in societies with high economic inequality,” said Merike Blofield, a political science professor at the University of Hamburg, in Germany, and an expert on domestic workers in Lati
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