The United Domestic Workers Federation (UDWF) is a female worker–led federation established through the collective efforts of the Domestic Workers Union — Lahore, Domestic Workers Union — Kasur, and Domestic Workers — Faisalabad. It was founded with the purpose of amplifying the voices, rights, and bargaining power of domestic workers across Punjab.
Domestic work in Pakistan represents one of the largest yet most undervalued and invisible sectors of the labour force. More than 8.5 million people, the majority of whom are women and young girls, are engaged in domestic work across the country. Despite their vital contributions to households and the national economy, domestic workers remain excluded from formal labour protections, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, discrimination, and abuse.
Emerging from years of grassroots organizing, the UDWF has been at the forefront of the struggle for the recognition, inclusion, representation, and fair reward of domestic workers. Through sustained collective efforts, domestic workers’ unions have achieved major milestones, including the enactment of the Domestic Workers Act (2019), formal registration with social safety net institutions, and the introduction of a living minimum wage for domestic workers.
The Federation serves as a unifying platform that coordinates advocacy, legal assistance, registration support, and workplace standards among its member unions. It works to strengthen the collective voice of domestic workers, ensuring that their concerns are represented in policy dialogues and labour reforms.
To further enhance accessibility and empowerment, UDWF is developing a dedicated mobile application that will enable domestic workers to register, manage contracts, track benefits, and access legal and training resources. Through both digital innovation and grassroots mobilization, UDWF is paving the way for a more just, inclusive, and dignified future for domestic workers in Pakistan.
Full Background
The nature of domestic work—performed behind closed doors within private households—has made regulation, inspection, and recognition extremely difficult. Most domestic workers do not have formal employment contracts, fixed working hours, or access to paid leave and social security. Many endure long hours for very low wages and are often paid inconsistently. The lack of oversight has also contributed to alarming cases of violence and abuse, particularly against young girls employed as live-in workers. The problem is compounded by social and gender hierarchies that normalize domestic labour as “informal” or “non-professional,” further marginalizing the workforce.
Recognizing these challenges, the Government of Punjab took a significant legislative step by passing the Punjab Domestic Workers Act in 2019. This law prohibits the employment of children under the age of 15 in domestic work and establishes provisions for employment letters, regulated working hours, overtime pay, weekly rest, and festival holidays. It also aims to integrate domestic workers into provincial social protection systems such as the Punjab Employees Social Security Institution (PESSI). However, while the Act represents a milestone in legal recognition, its implementation remains limited.
Domestic work is essential yet historically invisible and informal workers provide childcare, eldercare, cleaning, cooking and other indispensable services but often lack formal recognition, social protection and enforceable working conditions. In response to this persistent marginalization, domestic workers in Lahore Kasur and Faisalabad organized themselves into unions to defend their rights, demand dignity at work and win concrete protections.
The Domestic Workers Union — Lahore, Kasur, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan, Sukkur, Khairpur, Hyderabad, led sustained grassroots campaigns focused on three interlinked goals:
- Securing legal recognition and protections through the Domestic Workers Act (2019), which affirms the labour rights and dignity of domestic workers;
- Obtaining formal registration with social safety net institutions, enabling members to access health care, pensions, and other social protection benefits; and
- Achieving a fair minimum wage and standardized contractual terms, to ensure that domestic work is decent, predictable, and fairly compensated employment.
Alongside these efforts, these unions have been continuously organizing domestic workers across districts of Punjab, expanding their membership base and strengthening collective action. They have conducted capacity-building and training-of-trainers (ToT) programs to enhance workers’ understanding of their rights, workplace safety, and negotiation skills. Their initiatives also include advocacy campaigns on fundamental principles and rights at work (FPRW), gender equality, and occupational safety and health (OSH) — empowering domestic workers to claim their rightful place within the formal labour framework of Pakistan. These campaigns required community outreach, collective bargaining, legal advocacy, stakeholder negotiations with government institutions, and constant mobilisation of workers — many of whom face precarious hours, informal hiring, and power imbalances with employers. Through persistent organising, both unions succeeded in advancing policy gains, increasing registration of members with social safety net programs, and pressuring local authorities and employers to adopt minimum wage standards for domestic work.
To consolidate gains and increase collective power, the two unions decided to form the United Domestic Workers Federation. The federation’s raison d’être is to unify campaigning and political advocacy, professionalize membership services, coordinate training programs, and represent domestic workers in policy forums.