{"id":749,"date":"2014-08-14T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T07:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=749"},"modified":"2014-08-14T13:47:43","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T12:47:43","slug":"lived-closet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"“I lived in a closet”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Far below the Living Wage, the statutory National Minimum Wage is set at a paltry \u00c2\u01416.41. But some workers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even earn that much. In part four of our Living Wage series, UniteLive explores the dark underbelly of domestic servitude.<\/p>\n

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Amira Harrak* has never had it easy. Born in Morocco, she received formal education only until she was seven years old, after which she went to work in a garment factory to support her family. She earned \u00c2\u01414 a week and worked over ten hours a day.<\/p>\n

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Searching for a better life, Harrak went abroad to Dubai to work as a domestic servant. She eventually came to the UK, where she encountered work conditions that were hardly any better than in her home country. In fact, they were often much worse.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about any of the rights I had, nothing about the minimum wage or hours of work \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nothing,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Harrak explains. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bOn my first job in the UK, the minimum wage then was \u00c2\u01415.73. My first employer paid me only \u00c2\u0141150 a week.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAfter five months, she forced me to work on my two days off and insisted she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay me more. She made me clean her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house across the street. I was on-call when visitors came on the weekends and couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep until they left, after midnight. And I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get one extra penny, not even a thank you.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Eventually, Harrak became very ill. Her employer did not relent once: she continued forcing her to work. When Harrak eventually went to a doctor, he diagnosed her with exhaustion and said that she must leave her employer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home and rest for a few days. When she told her employer she would stay at a friend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house to recover, she screamed at her for not working hard enough.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take it anymore, so I quit. When I told her, the woman threw all my belongings in a bin bag and showed me the door. I had nowhere to go.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Harrak went through a series of abusive employers, dotted with periods of being out of work. The worst employers she could remember treated her no better than a slave.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhen I first arrived, they showed me my room. It was a closet,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she recalls. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bAnd I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even given the entire closet. There was a printer and a washing machine in there, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes, I would try to sleep after working for 13 or 14 hours straight, and someone would come into my room and ask for something they had just printed.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOne time, one of my employer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sons took off his shoe and demanded I clean the sole. There was nothing on the bottom of his shoes; he just did it to make me feel bad,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Harrak says. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI got called so many names: dog, cow, donkey, things like that.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After seven years of horrific working conditions in London, Harrak has finally found a good employer. She still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite earn the London Living Wage, however.<\/p>\n

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Harrak believes that the fight for fair pay and conditions begins with education. With the help of Unite, Justice for Domestic Workers, and migrant worker charities like Kalayaan, she has been empowered to learn about her rights and motivate others in her place to do the same.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe just want employers to respect the law,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she says. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bBut the bosses won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do that on their own. That means we domestic workers have to learn the law ourselves and demand that they follow it.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Name changed to protect identity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Far below the Living Wage, the statutory National Minimum Wage is set at a paltry \u00c2\u01416.41. But some workers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even earn that much. In part four of our Living Wage series, UniteLive explores the dark underbelly of domestic servitude.   Amira Harrak* has never had it easy. Born in Morocco, she received formal education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[23],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}