Specific Research and Action
WIEGO commissions research that focuses on improving statistics on, and analyzing policies relating to, the working poor who make their living in the informal economy. [12] Membership-based organizations (MBOs) of informal workers are always involved in the identification, prioritization and design of WIEGO activities.
Impact of Global Recession: In 2009 and again in 2010, WIEGO coordinated Global Economic Crisis studies to determine how informal workers were being affected by the global economic downturn. [13] The study was executed by organizations involved in the global Inclusive Cities project, [14] which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Two rounds of interviews and focus groups were conducted with 102 home-based workers, 63 street vendors and 54 waste pickers in 14 cities across Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 2009, 77% of respondents reported their incomes had fallen in recent months, while 52% reported another decrease between mid-2009 and 2010. [13]
Findings from the first study, completed in 2009, are captured in "No Cushion to Fall Back On: The Global Economic Crisis and Informal Workers". [13] Findings from the second study are found in "Coping with Crises: Lingering Recession, Rising Inflation, and the Informal Workforce". [14]
Domestic Workers' Rights: From 2009-2011, funding from the Government of Netherlands MDG3 Fund allowed WIEGO to assist domestic workers in their struggle for an international convention that would help secure their rights as workers. WIEGO helped establish the International Domestic Workers' Network (IDWN), and provided technical and strategic advice, research and capacity building, as well as assisting the IDWN in fund raising. [11] Such practical support allowed domestic workers to represent themselves at the International Labour Conference (ILC) in 2010 and 2011. On June 16, 2011 governments, employers and workers from around the world adopted the Convention and accompanying Recommendation on Decent Work for Domestic Workers (Convention 189) at the 100th ILC in Geneva, Switzerland. [11]
An informal economy is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countries, it is sometimes stigmatized as troublesome and unmanageable. However, the informal sector provides critical economic opportunities for the poor and has been expanding rapidly since the 1960s. Integrating the informal economy into the formal sector is an important policy challenge.
In macroeconomics, the labor force is the sum of those either working or looking for work :
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), meaning "service" in several Indian languages, is a trade union based in Ahmedabad, India, that promotes the rights of low-income, independently employed female workers. Nearly 2 million workers are members of the Self-Employed Women’s Association across eight states in India. Self-employed women are defined as those who do not have a fixed employer-employee relationship and do not receive a fixed salary and social protection like that of formally-employed workers and therefore have a more precarious income and life. SEWA organises around the goal of full employment in which a woman secures work, income, food, and social security like health care, child care, insurance, pension and shelter. The principles behind accomplishing these goals are struggle and development, meaning negotiating with stakeholders and providing services, respectively.
The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) is "an autonomous research institute within the United Nations that undertakes multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on the social dimensions of contemporary development issues". UNRISD was established in 1963 with the mandate of conducting policy-relevant research on social development that is pertinent to the work of the United Nations Secretariat, regional commissions and specialized agencies, and national institutions.
Poverty reduction, poverty relief, or poverty alleviation is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of poverty.
Labor unions represent United States workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger trade unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.
Decent work is employment that "respects the fundamental rights of the human person as well as the rights of workers in terms of conditions of work safety and remuneration. ... respect for the physical and mental integrity of the worker in the exercise of his/her employment."
Community organization or community based organization refers to organization aimed at making desired improvements to a community's social health, well-being, and overall functioning. Community organization occurs in geographically, psychosocially, culturally, spiritually, and digitally bounded communities.
Migrant domestic workers are, according to the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 189 and the International Organization for Migration, any persons "moving to another country or region to better their material or social conditions and improve the prospect for themselves or their family," engaged in a work relationship performing "in or for a household or households." Domestic work itself can cover a "wide range of tasks and services that vary from country to country and that can be different depending on the age, gender, ethnic background and migration status of the workers concerned." These particular workers have been identified by some academics as situated within "the rapid growth of paid domestic labor, the feminization of transnational migration, and the development of new public spheres." Prominent discussions on the topic include the status of these workers, reasons behind the pursue in this labour, recruitment and employment practices in the field, and various measures being undertaken to change the conditions of domestic work among migrants.
A waste picker is a person who salvages reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or for personal consumption. There are millions of waste pickers worldwide, predominantly in developing countries, but increasingly in post-industrial countries as well.
The Global Labour University (GLU) is an international network of universities, trade unions, NGOs and the International Labour Organisation. It was initiated in 2002 and offers master's programs, academic certificate programs and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on sustainable development, social justice, international labour standards and trade/labour unions, economic policies and global institutions.
Rural poverty refers to situations where people living in non-urban regions are in a state or condition of lacking the financial resources and essentials for living. It takes account of factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the marginalization and economic disadvantage found there. Rural areas, because of their small, spread-out populations, typically have less well maintained infrastructure and a harder time accessing markets, which tend to be concentrated in population centers.
Social protection, as defined by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, is concerned with preventing, managing, and overcoming situations that adversely affect people's well-being. Social protection consists of policies and programs designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting efficient labour markets, diminishing people's exposure to risks, and enhancing their capacity to manage economic and social risks, such as unemployment, exclusion, sickness, disability, and old age. It is one of the targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 aimed at promoting greater equality.
Mirai Chatterjee is a leader of the Self-Employed Women's Association, SEWA (India). She joined SEWA in 1984 and was its General Secretary after its Founder, Ela Bhatt.
Renana Jhabvala is an Indian social worker based in Ahmedabad, India, who has been active for decades in organising women into organisations and trade unions in India, and has been extensively involved in policy issues relating to poor women and the informal economy. She is best known for her long association with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), India, and for her writings on issues of women in the informal economy.
Martha Chen is an American academic, scholar and social worker, who is presently a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and senior advisor of the global research-policy-action network WIEGO and a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). Martha is a development practitioner and scholar who has worked with the working poor in India, South Asia, and around the world. Her areas of specialization are employment, poverty alleviation, informal economy, and gender. She lived in Bangladesh working with BRAC, one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations, and in India, as field representative of Oxfam America for India and Bangladesh for 15 years.
The Global Labour Institute in the UK, is part of an international network of not-for-profit organisations with the stated aim of promoting international solidarity among trade union organisations and affiliated groups in order to achieve a democratic and sustainable world society. The major activities of the GLI organisations are developing education, capacity-building and research on international labour movement development, gender policy and organising strategies. The Global Labour Institute works with global union federations, national trade unions, workers' associations, development agencies, research institutions, workers' education organisations and NGOs such as LabourStart, WIEGO and Oxfam, and it states an ideological commitment to democratic socialism.
Sustainable Development Goal 8 is about "decent work and economic growth" and is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals which were established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The full title is to "Foster sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all." Progress towards targets will be measured, monitored and evaluated by 17 indicators.
The International Domestic Workers Federation is the first membership-based global organization of household and domestic workers. The IDWF has 81 affiliates in 63 countries, representing over 590,000 members.
