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Why Organize Informal Economy Workers?

ITCILO COURSE A1-06025 Capacity Building for Organizing and Managing Trade Unions 13 to 24 May 2013. Building the Trade Union Movement: Organizing Informal Economy Workers: Opportunities and Challenges. Why Organize Informal Economy Workers? .

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Why Organize Informal Economy Workers?

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  1. ITCILO COURSE A1-06025Capacity Building for Organizing and Managing Trade Unions 13 to 24 May 2013 Building the Trade Union Movement: Organizing Informal Economy Workers: Opportunities and Challenges

  2. Why Organize Informal Economy Workers? • To improve the visibility and status of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy through increased organization and their effective representation by trade unions. • To achieve rights at work for informal economy workers in law and practice, including the: - rights to organize, - right to represent, - right to negotiate and of their voices to be heard through collective power - right for decent income, working conditions, social protection & social dialogue

  3. Why Organize Informal Economy Workers? • Achieve collective trade union protection for informal economy workers • Create conditions for the empowerment of informal economy workers through knowledge development, management and dissemination • Reinforced unity and solidarity among informal economy workers and between them and other workers, including those within the formal economy

  4. Targeted Workplaces and Groups Workplaces Groups Vendors Waste collectors Road side shoe shiners hairdressers Construction workers Transport workers Embroiderers Garment makers Waster sorters/recyclers Shoe makers Metal good producers Coffin makers Craft producers Electronic assemblers Toy makers Domestic workers/care givers Small farmers/agricultural labourers/shepherds Forest gatherers Fisher folk Water transport workers • Streets • Markets • Open spaces • Construction sites • Vehicular parks • Shops • Workshops • Yards • Homes and households • Fields • Forests • water

  5. Opportunities • Strategy for: - Rebuilding the trade union movement - Increasing the membership and strength of the trade union movement - Enhancing unity and solidarity of workers - Improving the financial position of the trade union movement - Extending union protection to atypical and informal economy workers, including women workers who constitute the majority of workers in this locale - Curbing child labour, forced labour & discrimination

  6. “Combining our Efforts” Building a Movement Informal Worker Organisations Trade Unions Support Organisations Social Movements and other organizations Women’s and Social Movements , NGOs, etc

  7. Challenges • Solidarity and collective action is not always a natural tendency among own-account workers as they may be in competition with each other • Many atypical and informal economy workers perceive their work as an extension of domestic or family duties and lack a sense of a worker identity • Labour laws often encompasses only workers in clearly defined employment relationships – not informal contractual relationships • Many informal workers are situated in scattered, individualized workplaces or are mobile – for them, time away from work means loss of earnings

  8. Challenges • Trade unions have enough on their hands, let alone free up resources to devote to hard-to-organize atypical workers. • Most atypical workers face extreme poverty – their ability to pay regular union dues is severely restricted and may be erratic and vulnerable to external shocks. • Also, organizing workers in the informal economy is often seen as a drain on union resources.

  9. Innovative Organising Strategies • Demand the ratification and implementation of ILS concerning FoA, CB & Domestic Workers. • Ensure that Core Labour Standards are applicable to all categories of workers. • Promote FoA and CB – actions should be extended to areas such as Trade, Investment and Procurement Agreements • Formal sector trade unions should recruit informal workers that are situated with that are aligned with theirs.

  10. Innovative Organising Strategies • Undertake targeted organising campaigns • Use a twin strategy of struggle and development by combining unionism and cooperative and use this as leverage to reach out to atypical and informal workers. • Build synergies with service providers that are active within the informal economy to aid the organizing initiatives of your unions. • Work with the Media (Print & Electronic) to project the image of the trade union movement in the public sphere.

  11. Innovative Organising Approaches & Models • Community-based unionism • Multi-hat unionism • Enterprise-based unionism • Alliance building • National and international Networks

  12. GROUP WORK • Identify the issues and services which trade unions should use as campaign tools in order to be able to organize informal economy workers into viable trade unions. • What do you envisage as likely challenges to extending unionism to informal economy workers in your countries? • Suggest measures to overcome these challenges. Elect a reporter to introduce your group report at the plenary session

  13. The End Thank you! 

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