Rights of Paid Home Care Workers in Brazil: An Evaluation Using the Global Care Policy Index

The paper aims to explore the potential of employing the Global Care Policy Index to assess the level of state protection afforded to paid home care workers in Brazil prior to the pandemic. One of the key challenges in utilizing the index within the Brazilian context stems from the substantial fragmentation concerning the occupational circumstances of these workers resulting in significant heterogeneity in coverage and rights attainment.

Two distinctive attributes of the Brazilian care labor market merit attention within this assessment: firstly, the notable proportion of informal labor within the sector, and secondly, the diverse contractual frameworks, each offering varying levels of protection, which depend on the weekly frequency of work and the parties involved in signing the contract.

Given this reality, we chose to segment the analysis into groups reflecting the different occupational situations of these workers for the purposes of applying the international index. We then examined the rights guaranteed by law for each group, using ILO Convention 189 as a reference. The result is a diverse evaluation for each group, which negatively impacts Brazil's overall score in the ranking of countries assessed by the index.

To summarize, in four of the five categories evaluated, the weight of the groups is quite significant in assigning scores: labor protections apply only to groups with a formal employment contract. Protections related to social insurance, such as maternity leave, retirement and sick pay, apply to formal groups and also to informal workers who voluntarily join the system at their own expense. The category that differs from the standard concerns the prohibition of the exploitation of child and forced domestic labor, as the rules extend to all.