Uruguay’s Domestic Work Law No. 18.065

Uruguay’s domestic work law brings labor rights into the private household, placing limits on employer power through institutional protections and collective bargaining. When a workplace is an employer’s home, can work be described as helping out until its boundaries disappear? Uruguay’s Law No. 18.065 treats paid domestic service as an employment relationship. It was promulgated November 27, 2006, and published December 5; these are different dates.

A household is not outside labor rights

The law addresses dependent employment providing household services without directly generating economic gain for the employer. It differs from unpaid family care. The absence of a marketable household output does not erase the employment relationship.

Working-time limits include eight hours a day and forty-four a week. Rest concerns whether workers can dispose of their time, not merely whether they are temporarily unoccupied. Continuous nighttime rest and suitable accommodation for live-in workers bring living conditions within labor protection rather than leaving them to generosity.

Privacy and inspection meet at the door

Wage bargaining, social protection and labor rights receive institutional recognition. Entry into a home for inspection also encounters privacy and judicial-authorization requirements. The private character of the workplace can therefore be an employer’s right and a barrier to enforcement. Recognizing that tension is more useful than treating the home as beyond regulation.

Legislation does not prove universal implementation. Recording hours, organizing, leaving live-in arrangements and obtaining remedies depend on enforcement and resources. The law is not a universal rule for all housework or care; scope and subsequent arrangements require separate attention.

ILO Convention No. 189 provides an international comparison. Servants of Globalization situates live-in work within migration and transnational families. Together they ask whether caring for another household requires surrendering one’s own time, private space and family life.

Original title: Ley N.º 18.065: Regulación del trabajo doméstico.