Calls on the Member States to put in place and improve, in collaboration with social partners, information channels on the rights of domestic workers and carers and to ensure the highest information accessibility for all workers; recommends, to that end, to establish information points, following best practice in Member States, at regional and local level, helplines and websites providing assistance, information also in the form of campaigns on the rights of domestic workers and carers in each Member State in the national language and other appropriate languages; emphasises that civil society organisations such as organisations working ...[+++] on behalf of women and migrants should also be able to provide this information; points out that these tools must also be developed in a way that allows best practice, relevant advice and guidance to be given to possible employers, including families and agencies and that model employment contracts should be offered in order to ensure that employers carry out their responsibilities.

whereas domestic workers and carers have the right to a decent life, which takes into account their need to have a good work, family and life balance, especially for live-in domestic workers, and must enjoy the same social and employment rights as other workers.

Urges the Member States to ensure the availability of legal avenues for migration to the EU and to introduce targeted legal migration programmes; stresses the need for the Member States to establish bilateral agreements with those states that statistics show to be the sending countries of domestic workers and carers, in order to regularise the sending and receiving flow, helping in this way to combat trafficking and forced labour networks, but deterring, nevertheless, the phenomenon of social dumping; calls on the Member States to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, adopted ...[+++]by the United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 1999.

whereas a widespread practice, in some Member States, for employing domestic workers and carers is through bilateral agreements between the worker and the household owner or the dependent person, rather than through formal means such as state structures or firms and enterprises.

whereas the domestic work sector employed over 52 million people around the world in 2010, according to ILO figures, and a further 7,4 million domestic workers under the age of 15, accounting for between 5 % and 9 % of all employment in industrialised countries; whereas according to the ILO the majority of workers employed in this sector are women. accounting for 83 % of the global domestic workforce in 2010 and translating into 2,5 million in the EU, 88 % of them being women; whereas this sector is characterised by considerable feminisation; whereas domestic workers and carers contribute greatly to the gender equality targets of the Europe 2020 strategy by effectively providing the infrastructure enabling many ...[+++]families in the EU to achieve work-life balance.

Two weeks ago, I met with the president of the Regroupement des organismes communautaires de La Baie et du Bas Saguenay, Lise Savard. She strongly condemns this measure, because it jeopardizes organizations such as the Maison de l'Espoir, youth centres, the Maison des Familles, and many more.