Documents informal employment 106 results

"Workers most exposed to economic risk around the world are commonly not covered by labour law either because laws were designed with people with a standard, continuous employer in mind or because of poor enforcement. According to the International Labour Organization's estimates, informal work, as a percentage of non-agricultural employment, continues to account for over 50% of all employment in half of the countries with comparable data across the globe. In onethird of countries, it involves over 65% of workers.1 There are exciting local and national experiments in new forms of labour regulation occurring in various countries that aim to extend labour regulation to non-standard workers, ensuring that they receive living minimum wages. This article compares four experiments in regulating work, including innovations in the regulation of work for head load (Mathadi) workers in India, immigrant industrial clothing outworkers in Australia, garment workers in Cambodia, and workers in Bulgaria who rely on a range of homebased activities to survive. The schemes have enjoyed varying success, providing lessons about what does and does not work in different contexts. "

"This contribution critically reflects on rights-based perspectives in relation to the extension of social security, in particular social insurance coverage to those who work informally, with a focus on the developing world. It is argued that the traditional social security concept is insufficient in this regard, mainly as a result of its particular focus on formal employment-based social insurance, its emphasis on state-regulated and formal forms of social security, and a narrowly focused risk/benefit approach, which does not reflect the true needs and situation of those who work informally. Domestic (social security) legal systems, as is the case with international standards embedded in most of the International Labour Organization (ILO) instruments, have a primary focus on those in the formal economy, who work within the framework of an identifiable employment relationship. In addition, there appears to be little scope to apply employment contracts outside the framework of the traditional employment relationship to support coverage extension of social insurance arrangements. Alternative approaches to and opportunities for coverage extension are suggested. These include: adopting innovative conceptual approaches to extend coverage beyond those who work in terms of a contract of employment; using contractual tracking approaches and deeming measures; and deliberately widening the base of social insurance coverage through targeted accommodation of informal workers. Finally, it is argued that there is need for a strengthened rights-based framework, supported and informed by suitable international standards, regional norms, and constitutional prescriptions, to ensure that social security, in particular social insurance coverage, is extended to informal workers."

"Chance is a prominent feature in the processes by which people become aware of job openings, yet current theories—which emphasize the instrumental job search activities of workers—do not provide a framework for understanding the unsolicited receipt of job leads. The concept of serendipity is discussed as a way to understand the role that chance plays in informal job finding. Interviews with 42 workers in an engineering firm reveal that job information often comes from unlikely sources in unexpected situations. Moreover, nationally representative survey data are used to assess the non-random experience of serendipity, finding that personal, contextual and relational characteristics structure the unsolicited receipt of job leads. The results from this mixed methods approach help to supplement the current theories of job matching and offer a promising research agenda for future investigations of the conditions under which serendipitous job finding is likely to occur."

"The paper empirically tests the relationship between underground labour and schooling achievement for Italy, a country ranking badly in both respects when compared with other high-income economies, with a marked duality between North and South. In order to identify underground workers, we exploit the information on individuals' social security positions available from the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth. After controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic and economic variables and addressing potential endogeneity and selection issues, we show that a low level of education sizeably and significantly increases the probability of working underground. Switching from completing compulsory school to graduating at college more than halves this probability for both men and women. The gain is slightly higher for individuals completing the compulsory track with respect to those having no formal education at all. The different probabilities found for self-employed and dependent workers support the view of a dual informal sector, in which necessity and desirability coexist."

"This article analyses, from a constitutionalism perspective, the ubiquitous ‘due-diligence human rights framework' that aims to hold multi-national corporations accountable for the decent work deficits in their supply chains. The analysis draws on the theories of three scholars: Gunther Teubner, Ruth Dukes and Nancy Fraser. The article's objectives are three-fold. First, the analysis illustrates the value of Dukes' idea of a global labour law constitution, augmented by Fraser's theory of justice, as an analytic to identify who is excluded from participating, and the implications of their exclusion. Second, the article makes a theoretical contribution to debates on constitutionalizing labour rights in a post Wesphalian world, using outworkers/homeworkers to ground the discussion. Finally, it is hoped that the article will contribute to the social, and ultimately the legal recognition of homework as legitimate work. "

"The wide-ranging European perspectives brought together in this volume aim to analyse, by means of an interdisciplinary approach, the numerous implications of a massive shift in the conception of ‘work' and the category of ‘worker'. Changes in the production models, economic downturn and increasing digitalisation have triggered a breakdown in the terms and assumptions that previously defined and shaped the notion of employment. This has made it more difficult to discuss, and problematise, issues like vulnerability in employment in such terms as unfairness, inequality and inadequate protection. Taking the ‘deconstruction of employment' as a central idea for theorising the phenomenon of work today, this volume explores the emergence of new semantic fields and territories for understanding and regulating employment. These new linguistic categories have implications beyond language alone: they reformulate the very concept of waged employment (including those aspects previously considered intrinsic to the meaning of work and of being ‘a worker'), along with other closely associated categories such as unemployment, self-employment, and inactivity."

"Cambodia has developed booming textile, garment, tourism, and entertainment service industries since the mid-1990s. The 2007 global financial crisis pushed many garment workers, who lost their jobs, into the entertainment sector. Entertainment workers are typically engaged informally by their employers and are subjected to long working hours, sexual harassment, and violence. Many who sell beverages are forced into excessive alcohol consumption as part of their work. Many are also expected by their employers and clients to provide sexual services. To address unsafe and unhealthy working conditions for these workers, an innovative occupational safety and health regulation was adopted in 2014. This first-of-its-kind occupational safety and health regulation was developed jointly by the Cambodian Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training and employers' and workers' organizations in the entertainment sector. The implementation of this regulation can also be a viable contribution of occupational safety and health to HIV interventions for these workers."

"Most in the Economic Community of West African States region are employed in the informal sector. While the informal sector plays a significant role in the region's economy, policymakers and the scientific community have long neglected it. To better understand informal-sector work conditions, the goal here is to bring together researchers to exchange findings and catalyze dialogue. The article showcases research studies on several economic systems, namely agriculture, resource extraction, transportation, and trade/commerce. Site-specific cases are provided concerning occupational health risks within artisanal and small-scale gold mining, aggregate mining, gasoline trade, farming and pesticide applications, and electronic waste recycling. These cases emphasize the vastness of the informal sector and that the majority of work activities across the region remain poorly documented, and thus no data or knowledge is available to help improve conditions and formulate policies and programs to promote and ensure decent work conditions."