GROUP FOUR

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The 4th International Trade Union Womens
School Rovinj, 2 October 2003
Women in atypical jobs and in the informal
economy by Giovanna Rossignotti InFocus
Programme on Boosting Employment through Small
Enterprise Development (IFP/SEED)
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Structure of the presentation

• Part I New employment patterns and gender
  dimensions
• Part II Decent work and the informal
  economy

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Part I

• New employment patterns and
• gender dimensions

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Changing patterns of employment

• Erosion of the standard employment patterndue
  to
• Delocalisation of production between and within
  countries
• Contraction of the number of core wage
  employees with regular conditions of employment
• Expansion of the number of workers engaged in
  atypical or informal employment

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What is atypical employment

• Non-traditional, more flexible work
  arrangements
• Generally do not offer the same scope for job
  and income security as comparable full-time
  employment
• Not synonymous with informal employment
• Can be a bridge or a trap in terms of
  labour market participation
• Often representing the last resort for workers
• Importance of effective legal frameworks and
  enforcement mechanisms

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What is informal employment

• Work not recognized, regulated or protected
  under labour legislation and social protection
• Work in small or scattered locations
  individualised work situations ambiguous
  employment relations
• Legal, practical and cultural obstacles to
  organization
• No longer a developing world problem
• Growing everywhere, including in transition
  economies

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Atypical vs. informalSpecificities

• For the enterprises
• - atypical jobs are often a business strategy
• - informality the result of a discouraging
  environment
• For the workers
• - atypical jobs can be a choice, but not
  always are
• - informal work is the gate to survival

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Atypical vs. informalCommonalities

• Cutting across different economic sectors and
  geographical contexts
• Ambiguous status of the worker many of those
  who are in fact employees find themselves
  without the protection of an employment
  relationship
• Job insecurity, although more pronounced in the
  informal economy
• Threatening the security and efficiency
  achieved during the twentieth century

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How do atypical and informal jobs affect women
and men

• Increased female participation not matched by
  improvements in womens status and occupation
• Women more likely to be in insecure and less
  valued jobs (part-time, temporary, home work)
• Women still over-represented in the informal
  economy
• Insufficient decline in horizontal occupational
  segregation and persistent vertical occupational
  segregation
• Women hard hit by migration and trafficking

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Part II

• Decent Work and the Informal Economy

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What is the informal economy

•  all economic activities by workers and
  economic units that are in law or in practice
  not covered or insufficiently covered by formal
  arrangements. Their activities are not included
  in the law, which means that they are operating
  outside the formal reach of the law or they are
  not covered in practice, which means that
  although they are operating within the formal
  reach of the law, the law is not applied or not
  enforced or the law discourages compliance
  because it is inappropriate, burdensome or
  imposes excessive costs.

Report of the Committee on the Informal Economy,
International Labour Conference, 90th Session,
Geneva 2002.
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A new conceptual framework

• Informal economy instead of informal sector
• Expanded concept of informality covering informal
  enterprises and informal employment
• A continuum of relationships, links between
  informal and formal enterprises and workers

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A Decent Work Approach to the Informal Economy

• A comprehensive approach, involving fundamental
  principles and rights at work, greater and better
  employment and income opportunities, social
  protection and social dialogue
• A progressive approach, starting with the bottom
  end of the continuum where decent work deficits
  are most serious and promoting a gradual
  upgrading of workers and economic units to decent
  work
• A realistic approach, acknowledging that the
  diversity of situations that exist requires
  country- and context-specific interventions

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Meeting the global demand for decent employment

• Promoting employability and productivity and
  upgrading employment through education, training,
  skills development
• Fostering a policy and institutional environment
  conducive to higher quantity and quality of jobs
  in small and micro-enterprises
• Stimulating aggregate quantity of employment
  through enabling macroeconomic frameworks
• Securing a more efficient allocation of resources

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Enhancing rights in the Informal Economy

• All those who work have rights at work
  irrespective of where they work and what sort of
  work they do, and no matter what contract they
  have
• ILO Declaration and labour standards provide
  solid international basis for application to the
  IE
• Rights deficits due to how standards are
  expressed and enforced through national law and
  practice. Therefore
• ? Improve labour legislation
• ? Strengthen labour administrations and
  enforce labour rights
• ? Promote legal literacy, especially for
  women workers
• ? Improve regulatory frameworks for
  business

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Improving social protection

• In the long term, extending and adapting
  statutory social security provisions social
  insurance, universal benefits and social
  assistance programmes
• Promoting decentralized insurance schemes as a
  stepping stone to universal coverage
• Linking decentralized schemes with other social
  protection systems for equity and efficiency
  reasons
• Improving occupational safety and health, with
  attention to hazardous occupations and vulnerable
  groups

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Strengthening organization and representation

• Promoting an enabling environment (legal
  framework and governance) for effective exercise
  of the right to organize and bargaining
  collectively
• Devising and strengthening innovative forms of
  action by traditional stakeholders (national and
  local governments, trade unions and employers
  associations)
• Fostering broad-based and all-inclusive dialogue
  and strategic alliances

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What role for trade unions

• Lobbying reforms and policy interventions
• Stimulating action on the part of partners and
  intended beneficiaries
• Extending representation throughout the IE,
  namely through
• New recruitment strategies and modi operandi
• Special services
• Adequate education methodology
• Strategic coalitions and alliances

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Additional documentation is available on our
website www.ilo.org/gems www.ilo.org/seed www
.ilo.org/infeco