Sunday 10 June 2012

The Invisible Workers by Afifa Faisal

As the government of Pakistan continues to neither ratify International Labour Organization’s Home Work Convention C-177 nor adopt a national policy on home-based workers, it is crucial to note that for poverty reduction, it is not the absolute creation of more job opportunities, but the nature of employment that matters.
When lack of decent work perpetuates urban slums, addressing the interests of low-income workers requires that the jobs being offered to them satisfy the four pillars of ILO’s Decent Work Agenda – employment opportunities, rights at work, social protection, and social dialogue. However, as access to decent work in the urban labour markets of Pakistan continue to decline, home-based workers (HBWs) as the lowest income group in the informal economy become the most invisible workers.
Home-based workers are either sub-contracted by formal enterprises to work on a piece-rate basis, or they are self-employed in small- scale enterprises that are often operated by families. They produce garments, make bangles, stitch shoes, weave carpets, process food, assemble automobile parts, and engage in other production from within homes. Yet, despite their contribution to the economic growth, HBWs are not defined as ‘workers’ and lack any social and legal protection.
Moreover, women home-based workers face additional concerns. While self-employed women workers may benefit from entrepreneurial enterprises, women workers are often constrained by limited human capital, lack of access to credit and property rights, gendered social norms which restrict them to the domestic space, reproductive responsibilities, and lack of agency over the allocation of space within their urban slum dwellings. In Pakistan, over 65 percent of all women workers and 4 percent of all male workers are estimated to be home-based. With women forming a disproportionate share of home-based workers, gendered implications of the lack of protection cannot be ignored.
In order to protect women home-based workers, Martha Alter Chen proposes a ‘3-V Framework’. The first V – ‘visibility’ –requires that women in the labour force are made visible through gender-specific labour force statistics.

As the least visible of informal workers, the data on home-based workers would help illuminate women workers’ role in the economy for necessary policy formulations. The second V – ‘voice’ – notes that women workers need organizations and trade unions through which they can voice their concerns. ILO’s C-177 for home-based workers is of particular significance here, because it calls for national legislations to acknowledge the contributions of home-based workers and ensure that employers establish minimum labour standards. Other organizations including local trade unions have also been proactive in some countries to improve the conditions of home-based workers.

In India, for example, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a trade union of women informal workers, has been successful in negotiating decent piece-rates for home-based workers. The third and last V– ‘validity’ – demands that in order for women workers to be acknowledged as contributors to the economy, they should be incorporated into the labour laws as ‘workers’.

In commemorating the 101st International Women’s Day on March 8, the Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) carried out a rally in Karachi in support of home-based women workers. Demanding the ratification of C-177 and the need to recognize home-based workers as ‘workers’ so that they are covered under social security schemes that offer health insurance, education, and pensions, the rally demanded protection of over 10 million women who engage in home-based work in Pakistan. As the informal economy of Pakistan continues to be a growing and permanent phenomenon, meeting the challenge of making visible the invisible home-based workers requires an urgent need to formulate a holistic policy framework which pays particular attention to the gender dynamics of home-based work.

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