Standards set for household help

The Shanghai Women's Federation unveiled 88 model domestic help agencies Friday to make it easier for local and expatriate families to find reliable, professional help at home, the federation announced Friday.

The agencies, selected from 92 applicants, aim to set industry standards that not only help local and expat families, but also protect the rights of domestic workers.

"Roughly speaking, more than 50 percent of Shanghai's domestic workers are self-employed," said Weng Wenlei, the federation's spokeswoman. "This can be a problem for the workers because their children might have trouble getting into local schools if they don't have an employment certificate. As for the families, they can have a hard time filing a complaint against an unqualified worker."

All newly employed domestic workers are required to undergo a physical examination and submit identification documents. For their part, the agencies must sign a contract with the workers and buy them insurance. "The standards will benefit the families, the domestic workers and the agencies," Weng said.

The city's domestic help industry has grown rapidly in recent years. Federation statistics show that there are more than 260,000 registered domestic workers in Shanghai. About 49 percent of them work for families.

As more and more foreigners move to Shanghai, some of the model agencies have been targeting expatriate families to be their clients.

According to census data from the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, there were 112,200 overseas households in Shanghai in 2010, one-third of whom came from Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan.

"Unlike Chinese mainland families, who prefer older, experienced domestic workers, our foreign clients value a worker's learning abilities so that he or she can quickly adjust to their different ways of life," said Xia Jun, general manager of Shanghai Aijun Home Service Co Ltd.

Foreign clients prefer younger, more educated domestic workers. The preferred domestic worker needs to be good at ironing shirts and helping babysit the children. "Language is not a major issue as long as the workers are open to learning new things," Xia told the Global Times.