Case Studies

Year: 1999
Authors: Chen, Martha; Sebstad, Jennefer and O’ Connell, Lesley
Title: Counting the Invisible Workforce: The Case of Homebased Workers
Format: Journal Article from World Development Report
Pages: 8
This paper illustrates the limitations of statistics on the informal economy using the case of homebased women workers. It suggests that homebased work is an important source of employment throughout the world, especially for women, and that homebased workers comprise a significant share of the workforce in key export industries.

Year: 2003
Authors: International Labour Organization
Title: Street traders and Their Organisations in South Africa
Format: Booklet
Pages: 24
This booklet describes how street traders have started organising in Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa. The main aim of the booklet is to help build strong local and national organisations so that street traders, especially women, can speak with one voice and influence policy makers

Year: 2004
Authors: Oxfam International
Title: Made At Home: British Homeworkers in Global Supply Chains
Format: Briefing paper
Pages: 38
This paper exposes the double standards of retailers who want to meet their ethical public image but who are refusing to meet the costs of paying the national minimum wage to British workers. The report also shows how the British government is failing to protect the rights of these vulnerable workers.

Year: 2004
Authors: Valenzuela, Richard G.
Title: Kasambahay (domestic worker) Program: Working Together Towards a Magna Carta for Filipino Domestic Workers
Format: Case Study
Pages: 5
This case study illustrates how the Visayan Forum Foundation’s (VF) Kasambahay (Domestic Worker) Program is beginning to reap the fruits of its decade-long struggle to recognize and protect local and migrant domestic workers from the Philippines.

Year: 2004
Authors: Devenish, Annie and Skinner, Caroline
Title: Organising Workers in the Informal Economy: The Experience of the Self Employed Women’s Union, 1994-2004.
Format: Research Report
Pages: 40
This report focuses on the former Self Employed Women’s Union (SEWU), whose constituency was self employed women working in the survivalist end of the economy – largely street traders and home based workers. It argues that SEWU presents a good model for membership empowerment, through leadership training as well as training relevant to members’ businesses.

Year: 2005
Authors: International Labour Organization
Title: Organising Waste Management Workers: The South African Experience
Format: Booklet
Pages: 35
This booklet describes how municipalities in South Africa have ‘externalised’ waste management work and made it less formal through giving contracts to private companies, or by organising the work through poverty alleviation projects and volunteer schemes. This booklet shows what this externalisation has meant for waste workers and discusses how workers have started organising to fight for better wages and conditions.

Year: 2006
Authors: International Labour Organization
Title: Handbook on Decent Work in the Informal Economy in Cambodia
Format: Booklet
Pages: 36
This book was prepared in response to queries from local Cambodian stakeholders who wanted to understand what it means to have decent work in the informal economy. It shows facts and trends in the informal economy, matched with images, stories, and description of the work done by the ILO’s social partners.

Year: 2006
Authors: Mather, Celia
Title: Respect and Rights: Protection for Domestic/Household Workers!
Format: Conference Report
Pages: 66
This report is based on the proceedings of a conference organised by the Dutch trade union federation, the FNV, in collaboration with the International Restructuring Education Network Europe (IRENE). The Conference focused on the self organisation of domestic/household workers all around the world.

Year: 2006
Authors: Roever, Sally
Title: Street Trade in Latin America: Demographic Trends, Legal Issues, and Vending Organizations in Six Cities
Format: Paper Prepared for the WIEGO Urban Policies Programme
Pages: 48
This paper reviews street vending issues in six major Latin American cities: Bogotá, Caracas, Lima, Mexico City, Santiago, and São Paulo. For each city it examines demographic trends and working conditions among street traders, legal issues, and information on the organisation among street traders, with a focus on unions and other types of associations, and their strategies and effectiveness.

Year: 2007
Authors: War on Want
Title: Growing Pains: The Human Cost of Cut Flowers in British supermarkets
Format: Research Report
Pages: 16
This report presents the results of research and consultation with workers in Colombia and Kenya who grow the cut flowers sold by the major supermarkets in the United Kingdom (UK). It reveals the true human cost of the flowers sold to consumers in the UK. While focussing on Colombia and Kenya, the problems highlighted are systemic and can be found throughout the cut flowers industry.

Year: 2007
Authors: Hearson, Martin (for Labour Behind the Label) and Morser, Anna (for War on Want)
Title: Let’s Clean Up Fashion: 2007 Update
Format: Research report
Pages: 20
This report returns to the biggest fashion brands and retailers on the United Kingdom (UK) high street to find out what they are doing to improve wages for the workers in their supply chains. This report focuses on living wages.

Year: 2008
Authors: Oxfam Great Britain (GB) and Kalayaan United Kingdom (UK)
Title: The New Bonded Labour? The Impact of Proposed Changes to the UK Immigration System on Migrant Domestic Workers
Format: Research Paper
Pages: 18
This paper examines migrant domestic workers (MDWs) as a particular group of non-EU migrants who enter the UK accompanying a specific employer to undertake a range of different activities within a private household. It explores how the pointsbased system (PBS) for immigration to the UK, will impact on MDWs