"Informal" work is nothing new in the garment
industry. The informal economy however, does change its
nature. What is more, latest research shows that, far from
disappearing, it is actually growing. So what are the implications
for campaigning for garment workers' rights?
Workers employed informally do not have access to the hard-won
formal protection of labour laws, and social security provisions
where they exist. Some of them are not even legally recognised
as a worker. This is why the term used for their situation
is "informal". The majority of informal garment
workers are women.
In Sri Lanka, some garment workers are considered "self-employed",
even though their pay and hours are regulated by the factory.
Garment workers in many countries have been shifted out
of the permanent workforce and onto temporary contracts.
More and more workers on the production line are being hired
in through subcontractors rather than directly employed
by the factory owner. At the Nien Hsing factory in Lesotho,
Southern Africa, more than half the workers were on "gate
call", daily hire-and-fire basis.
In Central and Eastern Europe, it is estimated that 70%
of factory workers are informal, though by its very nature
the informal economy is difficult to measure. In the UK,
where most large factories have closed or moved overseas,
there has been an increase in small units that use immigrant
labour. Such workers have limited choice because of language
or legal status, and are paid low wages, and work long hours,
seasonally.
Virtually everywhere, at the end of garment production
chains are homeworkers, who are probably paid the worst
and suffer the most abuse.
Such bad employment practices are the route many garment
companies are choosing in order to stay competitive in the
global market. This increase in "informalisation"
of employment is linked to increasing decentralisation and
a shift towards smaller production units globally. There
are also fears that more downward pressure on standards,
and therefore more informalisation, will be caused by the
phase-out of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement.
What's being done
On 23-25 September 2004, the CCC and IRENE (International
Restructuring Education Network Europe) held a seminar in
Meissen, Germany, on the theme "Campaigning strategies
on informal labour in the global garment industry".
As the title suggests, the aim was not just to describe
what is happening but to exchange ideas about what is being
done, and could be done more/better, to help defend the
rights of informal workers. Some 45 people from 20 countries
took part, from NGOs and trade unions in both garment producing
and consuming countries.
It is obviously much easier for trade unions to organise
workers who are on permanent employment contracts with a
clearly identified employer and in a large workplace. Millions
of garment workers are simply not in this situation.
Nevertheless, as Jane Tate of HomeWorkers Worldwide (HWW)
told the seminar, there has been a notable growth in informal
economy workers' organisations, from the foundation of the
Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India in the
1970s onwards. In a number of countries, including Canada,
Australia, and in Europe, there have been good broad-based
campaigns involving unions.
At an international level there are networks such as WIEGO
(Women in the Informal Economy, Globalising and Organising),
Streetnet for street vendors and Homenet for homeworkers.
HWW is currently engaged in a mapping exercise involving
many countries, and this is being used as a means to support
organ-ising activities. Making the role of informal workers,
especially homeworkers, not just legally recognised but
simply more visible is, the seminar decided, a very important
effort.
The adoption of the ILO Convention 177 on Homework in 1996
was a significant step forward, bringing recognition that
homeworkers too are workers with rights. However, the Convention
still needs more governments to ratify it, and this is one
area of lobbying that supporters can undertake. The ILO
is currently examining informal employment relation-ships
of many types and their relationship to "decent work".
It is also very important to influence the outcomes of these
discussions through union and government representatives
involved.
Also at an international level, the European Union issues
directives which must be implemented in each member state.
Many of these, if properly implemented, could improve informal
workers' situations. Meanwhile, European Works Councils
in particular companies could be more strongly moti-vated
to take up issues of informal workers related to their production
chains.
At a national level, the seminar came up with a long list
of possible demands on governments. One area is to push
harder to ensure that employment laws are widened in scope
- to apply to small enterprises and to a wider definition
of who is a "worker", for example. Other suggestions
included improving labour inspectorates and better research
methods to quantify and make the informal economy more visible.
However, as the seminar participants universally agreed,
the key to seeing laws and conventions, whether national
or interna- tional, implemented is organisation by the workers
concerned. This would be assisted if governments were to
recognise informal economy worker organisations as social
partners for collective bargaining.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to informal workers organising,
however, is not having any proof of employment, as Rohini
Hensman of the Union Research Group in Mumbai, India, pointed
out. Many workers cannot even prove that they are workers,
let alone who they have been working for. It should be compulsory
that there is some system of registration where the employment
relationship is recorded, she said, recommending that this
requirement should be included in codes of conduct and the
global framework agreements of the Global Unions.
The founding history of trade unionism in the industrialised
countries and the more recent success of SEWA in India are,
however, based on self-help and involve a wide range of
activities not necessarily associated with how many trade
unions oper-ate today.
"We need different types of organisations that are
more flexible… cooperatives, workers' associations",
said Jini Park from the Committee for Asian Women based
in Bangkok.
The global trade union movement is well aware of the need
to tackle the informalisation of employment. According to
Sergejus Glovackas of the CEE Unit of the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), "A political
decision has been taken to focus on informal economy. Now
it just remains to be seen how to implement this".
He spoke about their organising efforts in his region, though
this does not yet include garment workers. However, around
the world there are some examples of garment workers' trade
unions taking initiatives to bring in informal econ-omy
workers, such as the Southern African Clothing and Textile
Workers' Union (SACTWU).
"We act according to the belief that knowledge and
information must come from the workers themselves, and that
home-based workers must say their needs and priorities for
themselves", said Dilek Hattatoglu of the Working Group
on Home-based Workers in Turkey. In workshops they organised
in 14 cities in Turkey, home-based workers came up with
the same top priority: social protection. At first they
did not see themselves as work-ers but through the workshops
they started to, and began to organise themselves as workers.
Better social protection be-came their aim, and self-organisation
the means to achieve it. Unfortunately, with one exception,
the Turkish trade unions, though invited, did not take part.
For the ICFTU's CEE Unit, Glovackas is keen to promote
better relations between unions and NGOs. "Cooperation
is important", he said, adding that unions need it
to survive in the face of the growing informal economy.
Needs of informal, migrant workers
The low level of awareness among informal workers about
their legal rights and their low level of organisation are
a reflection of their vulnerability to losing their job
at any time. If, in addition, they are migrant workers,
their problems are compounded.
Yet the seminar heard many positive cases of organising
among migrant workers. For example, the FNV in the Netherlands,
and the GMB and T&G unions in the UK take on organisers
from the same language group or culture as the workers in
question, on the principle that "like organises like".
To meet the needs of migrant workers, there is a great
need to internationalise organising and even union membership.
In the Baltics, gas station workers have been able to have
their union membership recognised while working abroad -
a kind of "union passport". The British union
centre TUC invited Solidarnosc, its counterpart in Poland,
to send organisers to help organise Polish workers in the
UK. The participants were keen to see the development of
international union cards.
Unions were urged to take up a stronger advocacy role on
behalf of migrant workers with the public authorities. No
European country, for example, has yet ratified the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of Migrants, noted Rita
Vandeloo of Wereldsolidariteit in Belgium. There is more
to be done too to raise public awareness about the value
of migrant workers to the economy, and to encourage social
contact between "home country" members and migrant
workers to build mutual understand-ing and combat discrimination.
Push for corporate responsibility
How well are brands and retailers in the garment/sportswear
industries responding to the idea that they are responsible
for the working conditions of all workers in their supply
chains, including informal workers?
Ensuring that proof of employment relationship is included
in all codes is a long-standing demand made by CCC to companies,
but it could be highlighted more, acknowledged CCC's Esther
de Haan.
Company codes of conduct ought to cover entire supply chains
and make specific reference to problems faced by informal
workers, according to seminar participants. Getting companies
to accept this is, however, another story. Camille Warren
of Women Working Worldwide said her research had revealed
"an unwill-ingness among large retailers to know their
supply chains". Beyond the top tiers of suppliers (big
manufacturers and fac-tories), they do not want to know
and some have expressed the belief that it is unreasonable
to expect them to know, she said.
It is important, participants decided, to continue putting
pres-sure on brands and retailers to map their entire supply
chains. These companies need to understand the link between
their own purchasing policies and the informalisation of
workers who are thereby pushed into even greater poverty.
It is their responsibil-ity to ensure that the law is respected
all the way down the chains, as far as and including homeworkers
who are part of their production process. Suggestions included
a campaign targeted in particular at cost-cutting retailers
(sometimes referred to as "price-breakers"), and
more pressure on companies who participate in multi-stakeholder
initiatives.
It has become a widely accepted principle that monitoring
and verifying activities must include consultation with
the workers concerned. The seminar recognised that this
ought to include much better efforts to reach out to informal
workers. Yet many professional auditors already do not adequately
consult workers who are clearly employed within identifiable
workplaces. How much more difficult will it be to persuade
them to cover the whole workforce, including the virtually
hidden homeworkers or the temporary contract workers? There
is no alternative, the seminar concluded, than to build
capacity among local independent NGOs to do auditing that
includes informal workers. Ultimately, of course, the goal
is organisations of informal work-ers, or which include
informal workers, that can represent their own voice.
Opportunities for solidarity action
In order to take up a representational role for informal
economy workers, many trade unions may need to change their
constitutions. However, there is much that trade unions
can do before taking this step. In particular, they can
be advocates for the rights of all workers, including informal
workers, and encourage or stimulate the self-organisation
of informal workers.
When it comes to consumer campaigns and public awareness-raising,
the significant contribution of informal workers in the
supply chains needs to be made more visible. Campaigners
must be in touch with informal economy workers' organisations
to ensure that their demands coincide with what informal
economy workers want. An emphasis on the basic human and
legal rights of informal workers - their right to organise
and earn a living wage, for example - would be a key "hook"
for campaigning. So would creating space for workers' voices
to be heard through speaker tours and international exchanges.
This article is based on a discussion paper written
for the Meissen seminar, and the seminar report. Both documents
can be found at the CCC website:
"Meissen meeting brings together garment industry
labor rights activists and informal economy experts",
the full report of the CCC-IRENE seminar, "Campaigning
Strategies on Informal Labour in the Global Garment Industry",
held on 23-25 September 2004, in Meissen, Germany, can be
found at:
www.cleanclothes.org/ftp/04-12-informal_labour_seminar_report.pdf
"The Global Garment Industry and the Informal Economy:
Critical Issues for Labor Rights Advocates", a discussion
paper written for the seminar, can be found at:
www.cleanclothes.org/ publications/04-09-informal_labour_seminar01.htm
