Workers’ Education and the Informal Sector

In this article, Pat Horn from Streetnet discusses the growth of the informal sector and how workers’ education can strengthen the organising and bargaining capacity of informal sector workers. StreetNet is a global network which aims to promote the exchange of information and ideas on critical issues facing street vendors and on practical organising and advocacy strategies.

At its last world conference in Durban, South Africa, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) had much discussion about the importance of organising workers in the informal sector.  Given the fact that the majority of the trade unions world-wide represent salaried or wage workers, why would the ICFTU be interested in the informal sector?

Very large proportions of the economically active populations of developing countries work in the informal sector.  There has also been a dramatic increase in the informal sector in the former centrally-planned countries of Europe. The ILO has stated that:

“Major changes in the last two decades have accelerated the expansion of the informal sector.  Structural adjustment programmes in most developing countries have led to massive cut-backs in public sector employment and severe contraction of the formal sector.  In former centrally-planned economies, the collapse of production and social insurance systems has disrupted the once secure flows of wages, pensions and other social welfare benefits.  East Asia’s severe economic crisis threw millions of workers out of their jobs.  Finally, the processes of trade liberalization and globalisation have induced further restructuring of national economies and the adoption of new production systems.  The latter involves the decentralization of production through outsourcing and subcontracting , and the increased use of more flexible employment arrangements. …However, the decentralization of production and subcontracting have also led to an increasing informalisation of employment, which is often accompanied by increased employment insecurity and a reduction in the coverage of labour protection and protection systems.”  ( ILO Committee on Employment and Social Policy (ESP(2) - 2000).

The problem which this poses for the trade union movement is that workers are forced out of jobs which have been traditionally unionised, and move to new areas of work where trade unions are either non-existent or, at best, poorly organised.  The more workers move from organised to unorganised work sectors, where they can be more easily and grossly exploited because of their lack of collective voice, the more of a threat this poses to the labour movement and to the ideals and objectives it upholds.  The only way out of this for the international trade union movement is to start organising the workers in the informal sector, building a working class alliance between organised workers in the formal sector and workers becoming organised in the informal sector.  

Challenges for workers’ education

Making a decision to organise workers in the informal sector is one thing.  Actually doing it is another.  There are still very few unions which have successfully organised workers in the informal sector and then sustained such organisation.  It is not suitable to merely try to replicate the methods used to organise formal sector workers, in the informal sector. Since there are very few successful informal sector unions, there are very few active examples of workers’ education in the informal sector.  

SEWA Academy
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India has developed workers’ education for women in the informal sector over many years through the SEWA Academy which offers training in SEWA orientation, leadership (urban leadership and rural leadership) skills, advanced leadership, DWCRA (producers’) groups, training of trainers, grassroots research skills, training for child care workers, health workers, co-operative leaders, administration, research and policy action, exposure and dialogue, video replay, photography,  communication through print and electronic media, and spearhead team training.  They also offer literacy training and the following members education modules: women’s work and contribution to the economy; organised strength and organising; women’s strength; and values of the SEWA movement.

The SEWA Academy is constantly developing new training modules based on their accumulating experience.  This is probably the most advanced example of workers’ education for the informal sector, from which many other organisations involved in workers’ education could learn (see WE, August 1999).  

Leadership training

An obvious starting-point in any workers’ education programme for the informal sector is the empowerment of workers in this sector and developing a culture of powerful union leadership among them.  This enables workers in the informal sector, who are among the most marginalised and vulnerable workers, to take charge in building, strengthening and sustaining their own organisation.  It is no accident that the most successful model of informal sector trade unions is led by women, namely SEWA in India.  Building leadership in the informal sector means overcoming all the forces in society which marginalise workers in the informal sector, including the force of patriarchal domination.  The poorest women in the informal sector who have become leaders (for example, in women’s informal sector unions like SEWA in India and the Self-Employed Women’s Union (SEWU) in South Africa) have developed the confidence to tackle many forms of domination and exploitation, to take a lead in this new form of unionism. 

It is critical that informal sector workers’ organisations are led by informal sector worker leaders and not by formal sector workers on their behalf.  This is not to say that there cannot be unions which organise both formal sector and informal sector workers.  However, for such unions to avoid marginalising its informal sector members in the same way society at large does, the proportion of informal sector worker leadership should be on a par with the proportion of informal sector workers in the industry organised by that union, and the proportion of informal sector members in the union.

Negotiations training

There are many informal sector associations which represent the economic interests of groups of workers or entrepreneurs in the informal sector.  However, many of them do not have the capacity to bargain collectively and therefore to fight for the rights of workers in the informal sector in the way trade unions fight for the rights of workers.  Workers’ education in negotiations skills is one of the key ways to build such capacity.  Not merely the skills of talking to a negotiating partner on the other side of a table, but the whole process of negotiations, starting with how to collect mandates, how to make tactical alliances with other parties with similar interests (such as other organisations around the negotiating table fighting for similar rights), the strategies and tactics of negotiations, reporting back to members and revising mandates, securing agreements and ensuring that they are enforced, and appropriate tactics for pressurising the opponents.  

These negotiating principles do not differ essentially from those that apply to negotiations training for workers in the formal sector.  However, the negotiations context is much more varied for workers in the informal sector – from negotiating with municipalities (street vendors) to negotiating with intermediaries (sub-contracted or outworkers) to negotiating with landowners (agricultural producers) and more.  Each type of informal work, with its specific power relations, throws up a potentially different negotiations scenario.  The challenge for worker educators would be to apply the principles of collective bargaining to each different scenario which presents itself. 

Another major difference with negotiations in the informal sector, is that very few statutory bargaining forums even exist.  Informal sector unions have to use their organised muscle and their advocacy skills to create their collective bargaining arrangements. Informal sector workers therefore have to be trained not just how to negotiate in already existing forums, but how to identify what collective bargaining forums would be most appropriate, to fight for their establishment and then how to participate effectively in them.  

It is encouraging that some workers’ education organisations are starting to tackle the challenges of providing workers education in the informal sector.  An example is the Workers’ Education Association of Zambia (WEAZ) which has recently launched a project to identify the training and capacity-building needs of workers in the informal sector and their organisations (see WE, December 2000).  This project will include exchange visits with SEWA and SEWU to learn more from them about how undertake effective workers’ education in the informal sector.  

email to IFWEA Journal: alana.dave@mcr1.poptel.org.uk