Between the Public and the Private Worlds: Employers and Domestic Workers before the Council of Domestic Workin Buenos Aires

Abstract

Domestic service occupies an ambiguous place between the public and private worlds. Performed inside the employers’ homes, it gives place to relationships in which labor and affection are intertwined. The labor lawsuits between employers and domestic workers are a privileged stage to watch the overlap of these dimensions. While the demands of the workers before the institutions of justice put these relationships in the public world, the responses of employers often seek to resituate them in the private domain. Moreover, in some scenarios, the demands of the workers were also expressed in a language that refers to the private sphere. This article analyzes the logics of judicial confl icts in the strategies of employers and workers before the Council of Domestic Work (TTD), an institution created in 1956 to address individual disputes arising from employment relations in this sector in the city of Buenos Aires. We take two time horizons characterized by changes in labor regulation in general terms and, particularly, in domestic service: the early years of the TTD and the turn of the twentieth century.