Transcript Document

WORKING POOR IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY
In Unregulated Factories:
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garment makers
shoe makers
In Small Workshops:
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scrap metal recyclers
shoe makers
weavers
garment makers and embroiderers
paper-bag makers
On Streets or In Open Spaces:
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street vendors
push-cart vendors
garbage collectors
roadside barbers
construction workers
In Fields, Pastures, and Forests:
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small farmers
agricultural labourers
shepherds
forest gatherers
At Home:
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garment workers
embroiderers
shoemakers
artisans or craft producers
assemblers of electronic parts
Social protection for women in informal employment:
the links between
poverty, economic growth and care work?
Francie Lund
WIEGO: Social Protection Programme Director
and
Senior Research Associate, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Presentation at Centre for Social Development in Africa
International Symposium
24th and 25th May 2011
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Main argument and questions:
• Women are increasingly active in paid work, and do most of the
work in paid care work, and unpaid care work
• A gendered view of the changing labour market, and the extra need
for care in light of HIV/ AIDS, are seldom put together in the same
analysis.
• Who is going to DO social development, take up on the new
opportunities, at what additional cost?
• How will those who promote social development challenge
governments and employers on this issue?
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The informal economy
–
The informal economy is the diversified set of economic activities,
enterprises, and workers who are not regulated or protected by the
state.
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Employment in the informal economy is categorised (formal ILO
definitions) as:
Self-employment in informal enterprises:
 employers
 own account operators (don’t employ anyone else)
 unpaid contributing family workers
Wage employment in informal jobs:
 non-standard employees of informal enterprises
 non-standard employees of formal enterprises
 casual or day labourers
 industrial outworkers (also called homeworkers)
Sub-Saharan Africa
• Sub Saharan Africa has high rates of informal
employment, especially among women (South Africa is
the outlier)
• Informal traders in African countries (where data is
available) constitute between 85 and 99 percent of total
employment in trade (ILO 2002: 53)
• Under-employment in low-end economic activities may
be a greater problem in Sub-Saharan Africa than open
unemployment (Heintz and Valodia 2008)
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Employment, informality and poverty
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Most of the poor in SADC countries are working.
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Informal rather than formal employment is increasing.
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The vast majority of the working poor – those who earn less than US$ 1 per
day - earn their living in the informal economy where:
– average earnings are low
– risks are high
Poverty reduction over the long term is not possible without
a)
b)
Increasing formal employment opportunities AND
Increasing the assets and earnings of those who work informally AND
c) Reducing the risks of those who work in the informal economy.
Segmented labour markets/ employment
structures
What do we mean by segmentation?
• Constraints exist which prevent individuals from moving into better
employment opportunities (or improving the quality of existing
employment)
What causes segmentation?
• Discrimination, social norms, unequal wealth/assets, lack of credit,
lack of public goods/services, etc
• Unpaid care responsibilities
Why does segmentation matter?
• Reinforces existing patterns of poverty and social exclusion.
• Issue of equity: class, gender, racial, caste segmentation.
• Issue of basic rights and the choices available to individuals.
Segmentation of the informal economy:
by sex, average earnings, and poverty risk
Poverty Risk
Low
Average Earnings
Segmentation by Sex
High
Employers
Predominantly Men
Informal Wage
Workers: “Regular”
Own Account Operators
Men and Women
Informal Wage Workers: Casual
Industrial Outworkers/Homeworkers
Predominantly
Women
High
Low
Unpaid Family Workers
Social protection
• The vast majority of poor who work informally:
– have no social security coverage to protect against short term
risks or life-time contingencies
– cannot afford private insurance, have little access to social
insurance
• Poorer people live and work in poor communities, where it is
hard to insure against risk
• In ‘developing’ countries:
– state systems of social insurance do not target informal workers,
wage employed or self-employed
– state systems of social assistance for poorer and vulnerable
people do not target able-bodied people of working age
The problem: paid and unpaid care work
• Most of the unpaid care work done inside the household
is done by women – and it is underestimated and not
properly valued
• Most workers in the formal caring professions – nurses,
social workers, teachers – are women, and there is a
‘care penalty’ (nurses versus engineers)
• Policies of ‘community care’ assume that poorer women
will do a lot of the community-based work at the end of
the ‘continuum of care’ (e.g. Ruth Meena’s work in
Tanzania)
• Volunteer work has costs which are borne by poorer
people, mostly by women
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Valuing unpaid care work –
evidence from Time Use Surveys
Unpaid household-based care work is invisible and undercounted.
In the South African 2000 TUS it comprises
1) household maintenance
2) person care (of others in the household)
3) community services and help to other households
Unpaid care work as a whole was worth 11 percent of total GDP,
using median wage of domestic workers (a conservative measure)
‘Person care’ contributed between 1.4 percent and 3.7 percent of
GDP (narrower and broader measure)
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The care penalty - nurses and engineers:
Same years training; same skills level in official
categorisation of occupational status
• Professional engineers
–
92% male
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91% female
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65% earn more than R6000 a month
35% earn more than R16000
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54% earn more than R6000 a month
1% earn more than R16000
• Associate engineers
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• Professional nurses
• Assistant nurses
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68% male
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89% female
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8% earn more than R16000 a month
–
1% earn more than R16000 a month
Source: Debbie Budlender and
UNRISD project, in Lund 2010
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Task shifting within nursing
• Tasks preserved for those with a certain level of skill are
delegated to those with another level of skill –
downwards or upwards
• Primary health care – much wider and better sharing of
skills within health professions – auxiliaries, community
health workers
• Now under global skills shortages and migration, and
HIV/ AIDS, and pressed health budgets – task-shifting
downwards and into ‘community care’ end of ‘continuum
of care’.
• When done in the context of scarce resources, it means
that women in poorer communities do even more of the
health- and welfare-related work.
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Volunteer care-giving – ‘community care’
Budlender (2009): ‘Compensation for contributions’ – Report on a
survey of 1400 care-giving volunteers across six countries –
Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda
• Two thirds were women
• Two thirds were between 30 and 49 years old (own household
caring responsibilities )
• They worked an average of 4.6 hours per day (using the diary
method - more accurate than recall)
• 55% also did income-earning work
• They mostly did home visits, monitoring ARTs, visiting patients in
clinic or hospital
• 87% had transport costs not covered by the organisations with
which they volunteered
• Only a third received care kits and cleaning materials
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Research questions for social development
• Volunteer work leading to informal/ casual employment
(though low paid) – appears to be a step into more
secure work. Does it keep hope alive? How could social
development be crafted to support and enable such
transitions?
• What does it cost for people to attend training to build
their skills?
• How are men going to be encouraged to do more of the
work of care, and of social development, so that women
can take/make more paid work?
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What to do?
• Social policies, and the social development approach,
cannot remediate the effects of economic policies which
make poor people even more vulnerable.
• Helps to think about it by sector – for example
– Domestic workers – more formalisation is possible in some
countries
– Street vendors – stop beating them up and taking away their
livelihoods; provide infrastructure which helps to secure small
but reliable incomes
– Industrial outworkers – integrate more social development
agreements into trade agreements? Into corporate social
responsibility budgets?
– Waste recyclers – much to learn from organisations such as coops in LA who move themselves up the value chain
• Formal trade unions need to understand the need for
alliances with and integration of informal workers.
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