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COMBINING OUR EFFORTS:
by Pat Horn
In the Conclusions adopted at the International Labour Conference in Geneva on Decent Work in the Informal Economy in June 2002, it is clear that the best way to promote decent work in the informal economy is to increase and advance the level of organisation and representation of workers in the informal economy.
StreetNet International and the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India decided that it would be good if trade unions and other membership-based organisations organising workers in the informal economy could meet and consider how best to take further the organisation of workers in the informal economy worldwide. The co-operation between the few (but growing) existing organisations of workers in the informal economy with the mainstream trade union structures, which achieved such good results in the Committee on Decent Work in the Informal Economy at the International Labour Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in June 2002, can now be taken further - and it needs the joint endeavours of both these movements to succeed.
As yet, we are not aware of any existing forum in which both trade unions and the organisations of informal workers are both properly represented. A start has to be made somewhere. So StreetNet raised some funds from the Ford Foundation for such a meeting, and an international organising committee has been established consisting of the following organisations:
- StreetNet International
- SEWA
- Ghana Trade Union Congress (TUC)
- Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)
- HomeNet Thailand
We hope, at the conference, to have sufficient representatives of the organisations of workers in the informal economy as well as the mainstream trade union organisations, that an appropriately-constituted steering committee of organisations could be selected to drive and co-ordinate the process of promoting the organisation of workers in the informal economy. We hope that such a steering committee could bring together the organisations of workers in the informal economy with the mainstream trade union movement, and also consolidate the efforts of different sectoral organisations (such as global union federations - GUFs) and international confederations in this area of work. Such a steering committee should provide a focus which prioritises the organisation of workers in the informal economy over all the other more immediate issues which always legitimately take up the time of the trade union movement.
The conference will take place from 3 - 6 December 2003 in Ahmedabad, India. The international organising committee met in Ahmedabad on 9 & 10 July 2003 to start planning and preparations. The objectives of the conference have now been defined as follows:
- sharing of experiences between organisational practitioners, and identifying the issues affecting informal workers;
- development of strategies to intensify organisation in the informal economy;
- identification of existing and new partnerships and alliances;
- identification of processes of representation at international forums (eg. ILO, World Trade Organisation [WTO], etc.)
- discussion about co-ordination between organisations of workers in the informal economy, and development of mechanisms for such co-ordination.
Ela Bhatt, the founder of SEWA, and the Minister of Labour of India, will be speaking at the opening of the conference. The Chairperson of the Workers’ Group of the ILO, Leroy Trotman, has also been invited to speak at the opening.
Unfortunately, the number of participants will be limited by our budget. Although we have a list of over 50 organisations in the informal economy alone, our current budget only allows us to pay for six participants from each of the three regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and six national trade union centres that cannot pay for themselves.
We are working hard to raise more funds in order to be able to invite more participants.