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BUILDING A SUBREGIONAL PRESENCE
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Introduction
The unprecedented growth of the informal economy worldwide has given birth to a global movement to redefine the concept “worker” away from very narrow notions associated with formality, regularity, and clear employer-employee relations which refer only to a shrinking male minority of working people in the world. A much more inclusive definition of worker is “anyone who lives by selling his or her capacity to work, either for wages or for other forms of income.” (Gallin, 2002: 1). Such a definition covers the majority of workers in the world who work in the informal economy, or all those who have unprotected and unregulated work. This means “all work in informal enterprises as well as informal jobs (jobs that pay no benefits or provide no social protection), thus including the self-employed in informal enterprises (for example home-based workers or street vendors) and paid workers in informal jobs (for example casual workers without fixed employers, most domestic workers, even factory workers in unregulated and unprotected work).” (Ibid).
The informal economy has been growing in both North and South, due to the combined effects of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization which altogether drove out millions of workers from the formal economy ( 24 million, according to the ILO, in East Asia alone in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, in itself a consequence of the liberalization and deregulation of financial markets culminating in the successive domino-like devaluation of Asian currencies). At the same time, as exem
plified by the production or value chains spearheaded by transnational corporations particularly in the garments industry , the informal economy serves as the bottom end of the production ladder, providing cheap and unprotected labor vulnerable to exploitation while management saves on costs by retaining a small core of permanent and regular workers.
The informal economy is also highly gendered, consisting mostly of women who were among the first to be displaced from formal work as globalization progressed. But women have also been the mainstay of the informal economy even before the onslaughts of globalization since informal work (e.g., homebased work) is compatible with their reproductive work (child care, domestic chores), and since their status as secondary or supplemental earners often deprive them of opportunities to find formal employment. In their particular case, class, gender, ethnicity, and other issues often intersect.
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* Presented during the Regional Workshop on Homebased Workers in Asia sponsored by Homenet South Asia and FES India, 7-8 April 2008, Mumbai, India
In the current context of unbridled globalization, homebased women workers exhibit strengths as well as weaknesses, and face opportunities as well as threats. Many of them have the capacity, the resilience, and the adaptability to enter many forms of employment during times of crises because they need to seize every opportunity to earn in order to ensure family survival. However, these very same forms of employment in the informal economy are also subject to the vagaries of the global and local markets, and can be threatened by competition, instability, and lack of support. Under such circumstances, women’s overburdened state becomes a vicious cycle of having to shoulder various means of making a living while tending to domestic as well as community responsibilities. As with other informal workers, homebased women workers have little access to education, credit, healthcare and other resources needed to meet basic needs. Homeworkers generally suffer from substandard wages, poor working conditions, exposure to occupational health and safety hazards, and lack of social security.
Among the informal and homebased workers’ groups, a significant development that stands out is the realization of their being organized. Their continuing growth and increase in membership is a manifestation of awareness that indeed they need collective strength for better representation and advocacy towards uplifting their plight, and advancing ways towards the improvement of their working conditions in accordance with globally acceptable standards associated with decent work and fair trade principles.
Homebased and workers and other workers in the informal economy hope to realize their economic, political, and social rights through the strengthening of their own organizations and networks, the improvement of their working and living conditions, the enjoyment of income and employment security, including social protection, and participation in governance related to homebased workers’ and informal workers’ concerns.
Organizing among homebased workers in Asia has had a long herstory/history, beginning with the founding of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India and its multi-pronged approach to women’s empowerment which include mass mobilization and negotiation along industry lines (particularly in the case of the bidi workers), formation of production and service cooperatives, establishment of a bank where even illiterate women can borrow, provision of insurance and other social protection schemes, engagement in trade facilitation, international advocacy and networking.
The SEWA experience has inspired organizing in other Asian countries, and this has taken different forms, given the specificity of national and even regional contexts.
Emergence of Homenet Southeast Asia National homebased workers' networks in Southeast Asia are called HomeNets - in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Lao PDR and most recently, Cambodia. The first three emerged as part of a major subregional project undertaken from 1988 to 1996 by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and funded by DANIDA, while the latter two came as a result of expansion initiatives by subregional and country Homenets. Subregional networking, advocacy and networking is channeled through Homenet Southeast Asia, where common goals include greater visibility, recognition and participation of homebased workers in the ASEAN context ; access to
resources and social protection (including occupational safety and health); and better policies and programs through improved legislation and the ratification of ILO Convention 177 on Home Work. Coordination with Homenet South Asia and WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing) has led to an even broader global solidarity anchored on a rights-based approach.
Homenet SEA’s persistent advocacy towards the ratification of ILO Convention on Homework is in response to the changing global employment system, characterized by lack of social security, particularly among homeworkers, majority of whom are women. The Convention aims to protect millions of homeworkers in terms of their right to organize, non-discrimination in employment and occupation, maternity protection and attention to occupational safety and health, ability to access and receive capacity development training in various aspects, and obtaining other entitlements to be of equal status with workers in other occupations defined as ‘employees’.
The institutional base of the HOMENET SEA rests on the relative strengths of the national networks of its members. Each national network - PATAMABA (and more recently Homenet Philippines), Homenet Thailand (otherwise known as the Foundation for Labor and Employment Promotion - FLEP), Homenet Indonesia, CDEA Lao, and Artisans Association of Cambodia (AAC) - offers a diversity of organizing strategies which seem to work best given particular national circumstances, but which need to be more focused on sustainable membership-based organizing.
The National Homenets
- PATAMABA (National Network of Informal Workers in the Philippines)
PATAMABA is a grassroots organization which from its founding in 1991 has been run and managed by women homebased workers. In the past few years, it has also opened its membership to other subsectors of informal workers, including men. PATAMABA’s networking now spans a wide range different sectors and groups - from informal ones like street and market vendors to official policy-makers and formal academic institutions. PATAMABA, with the support of Homenet Southeast Asia, spearheaded the successful launching of Homenet Philippines in May 2006, a broad coalition of 23 organizations comprised of homebased workers’ groups and NGOs of various persuasions with a total membership reach of about 60,000. The formal launching of the advocacy agenda of Homenet Philippines helped boost the advocacy campaign on ILO Convention 177 on Home Work and the Magna Carta for Workers in the Informal Economy.
Broad based policy advocacy for a rights-based legislation for informal workers, who now comprise 24.6 million or 76 percent of total employed, took a significant leap with the formation of MAGCAISA (Magna Carta for the Informal Sector Alliance) in October 2OO7. MAGCAISA is a loose coalition of POs, NGOs and academe-based institutions with a long record of involvement in informal worker issues. The driving forces of the coalition include Homenet Philippines, the Association of Construction and Informal Workers (ACIW) and the National Union of Building and Construction Workers (NUBCW); and ASAPHIL, which includes tricycle and other small transport operators.
The policy advocacy work of PATAMABA has occurred at various levels. It has influenced the national anti-poverty policies and programs through its presence and leadership in the Workers in the Informal Sector Council (WISC) of the National Anti Poverty Commission (NAPC). After more than a decade of trying, it has aided in persuading the Social Security System (SSS) to allow self-employed homeworkers to avail of social insurance and to facilitate this process through the Automatic Debit Account (ADA) arrangement whereby self-employed SSS members can use the facilities of partner banks to make their contributions.
PATAMABA’s expanding influence among the informal workers has been manifested in orientation activities for new members and organizing in other subsectors. The latest count (2007) of PATAMABA membership reached 16,295 in 276 chapters covering 34 provinces nationwide. Of these numbers, 2567 are in subcontracted work, 12,069 are self-employed and 1,524 are combinations of both. The subcontracted workers are in the production of garments, handicraft, papier mache, bags, Christmas balls,, fashion accessories, bamboo and embroidery products. The self employed members are into livestock, agri-based products, garments, bags, slippers, fashion accessories, novelty items, food, woodcraft, and weaving.
As a people’s organization (meaning it is membership-based) its leaders are elected at every level – from the barangay or village, to the municipal, provincial, regional, and national. In terms of organizational management and administration, PATAMABA has eight National Executive Committee members. It has a National Council elected every three years during a national congress, and an Executive Committee based in Metro Manila which manages its day-to-day operations. Through its coordinator for organizing, PATAMABA regularly monitors local chapters throughout the country on a quarterly basis. The PATAMABA youth sector has been actively recruiting from among their ranks and has reported a membership of 3167. Training of youth and local leaders is ongoing to facilitate later accession to national leadership positions, but resources for this are very inadequate.
PATAMABA’s long-term strategies were conceived underscoring organizational and membership strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Reports on the ground show that PATAMABA remains cohesive as an organization while it continues to grow and increase membership, thereby expanding some degree of influence towards attaining advocacy goals. PATAMABA leaders also acknowledge the urgency of developing a new generation of leaders from the ranks of the youth. Financial constraints remain to be a lingering problem as well as a threat to organizational sustainability and membership commitment. In terms of how the political environment has affected access to services and resources, experiences among the local chapters have been quite diverse. Nonetheless, PATAMABA can claim to be the duly recognized voice of informal workers in most communities where local chapters exist as these receive full backing and support from their respective local governments and supplemented as well by proper networking. PATAMABA has continually campaigned for membership in the SSS and Philhealth while encouraging the setting up of indigenous social protection schemes for homebased workers like “damayan” and “paluwagan” .