The ILO Home Work Convention – A DECADE HENCE*
Home work has been described as "a vital and growing part of economic modernization, its growth exponentially linked to the globalization of industry and the never-ending search for less costly sources of labor and more efficient means of production." In this sense, the Home Work Convention is among the most "modern" and relevant of ILO conventions, inasmuch as it addresses a major and ongoing change in the world labor force.
What all the different varieties of home work have in common is the lack of employment-based benefits or social protection. Women are overrepresented among home workers, especially among home workers engaged in manual work, and women home workers in manual jobs are among the lowest paid workers in the world, very often far under the existing minimum wage or the official poverty rate. Because they work in isolation from other workers, they face greater difficulties in organizing and in achieving collective power to defend their interests.
The Home Work Convention seeks to level the proverbial playing field. It calls for national policies promoting the equality of treatment between home workers and other wage earners, and it specifies the areas where such equality of treatment shall be promoted.
Trade unions should remember that the adoption of the Home Work Convention in 1996 was an achievement of the labor movement, but that such an achievement can only be of lasting significance if it is translated into ratifications and into national legislation. As we have seen, ten years on, the battle for ratification has barely begun.
Ratification of the Home Work Convention should be a priority on top of the agenda of trade unions everywhere. Governments that ratify the Home Work Convention commit themselves to policies which include: a) the recognition of the social and economic value of home work; b) an effective anti-poverty strategy, based on gradually raising the living standards of the lowest tier of society, through higher incomes and social protection; c) a progressive and sustainable development strategy, based on strengthening the internal demand by increasing the purchasing power of the masses of the people; d) an affirmative human rights policy, by enabling a sizeable part of its working class to exercise its rights; e) last but not least, a positive policy on gender equality, by empowering millions of women and enabling them to achieve, through their organizations, lives with independence, dignity and security. Let us hope there will be many more: many more governments committing themselves to such policies of justice and progress. (This is an abridged version of Dan Gallin’s paper “The ILO Homework Convention – Ten Years Later” prepared for a Regional Workshop in, Mumbai (Bombay), India, April 7-8, 2008.
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