International
Labour
Organization
Kementerian PPN/
Bappenas
MAMPU
Maju Perempuan Indonesia
untuk Penanggulangan Kemiskinan
Home-based workers:
Decent work and social protection
through organization and empowerment
Experiences, good practices and lessons from
home-based workers and their organizations
International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Indonesia and East Timor
ILO/MAMPU project: Maju Perempuan Indonesia untuk Penanggulangan Kemiskinan or
Programme on Empowering Indonesian Women for Poverty Reduction
Home-based workers:
Decent work and social protection
through organization and empowerment
Experiences, good practices and lessons from
home-based workers and their organizations
International Labour Organization (ILO) Ofce for Indonesia and East Timor
ILO/MAMPU project: Maju Perempuan Indonesia untuk Penanggulangan Kemiskinan
or Programme on Empowering Indonesian Women for Poverty Reduction
ii Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Copyright © International Labour Organization 2015
First published 2015
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Nelien Haspels; Aya Matsuura
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment, Experiences, good practices and
lessons from home-based workers and their organizations/International Labour Office – Jakarta: ILO, 2015
xii, 97 p.
ISBN 978-92-2-130434-0 (print)
978-92-2-130435-7 (web pdf)
Also available in Bahasa Indonesia: Pekerja berbasis rumahan: Kerja layak dan perlindungan sosial melalui organisasi dan pemberdayaan:
Pengalaman, praktik baik dan pelajaran dari pekerja berbasis rumahan dan organisasi mereka./International Labour Office – Jakarta:
ILO, 2015
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Printed in Indonesia
iii
Contents
Pages
List of abbreviations v
Foreword vii
Summary ix
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Aims, rationale, users and sources 1
1.2 Key terms, denitions, scope and context 3
1.3 Report content in brief 8
2. Home-based workers’ organizations and their environment 9
2.1 CECAM in Chile 9
2.2 HomeNet, the FLEP and HNTA in Thailand 12
2.3 MWPRI and the ILO/MAMPU project in Indonesia 14
2.4 PATAMABA in the Philippines 16
2.5 SEWA in India 19
3. Good practices and lessons to start the organizing process 22
3.1 Organizing principles 22
3.2 Holistic and phased approach and integrated strategies 24
3.3 Working with many parties at different levels 26
3.4 Horizontal organizing 26
4. Good practices and lessons to promote HBWs’ working and living conditions 31
4.1 Action research and data collection 31
4.2 Capacity development: Awareness raising, education and training 33
4.3 Labour protection and law enforcement 36
4.4 Economic empowerment 38
4.5 Gender equality 46
4.6 Policy advocacy and representation 48
4.7 Involving employers, workers, their organizations and companies 54
iv Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
4.8 Safe work 56
4.9 Social security and assistance 58
5. Building sustainable HBWs organizations 61
5.1 How to develop and grow HBWs’ organizations 61
5.2 HBWs’ alliances and networking at the national and international levels 72
6. The way forward 78
6.1 Conclusions 78
6.2 Suggestions for future action 84
End Note 89
Bibliography 91
Annexes
1. PATAMABA step-by-step guide for organizers on how to start organizing with
home-based workers in communities 92
2. SEWA organizational structure 96
3. Structure of HNTA and FLEP in Thailand 97
v
AnaClara Women Labour Rights Organization, Santiago, Chile, later renamed CECAM
APINDO Indonesia Employers Association
Barangay Community or neighbourhood, Philippines
BITRA Yayasan Bina Ketrampilan Pedesaan Indonesia
CBO Community Based Organization
CITU Centre of Indian Trade Unions
CSO Civil Society Organization
CSR Corporate Social Responsibility
CECAM Centro de Capacitation para la Mujer Trabajadora, or Training Centre for
Working Women, Chile
DANIDA Danish International Development Agency
DO Department Order, Philippines
DOLE Department of Labor and Employment, Philippines
ETI Ethical Trade Initiative
FLEP Foundation for Labour and Employment Promotion, Thailand
FNV Federation of Dutch Trade Unions, Netherlands
FGD Focus Group Discussion
HBWs Home-based workers
HNSA HomeNet South Asia
HWW HomeWorkers Worldwide
HomeNet Networks of home-based workers and their support organizations within
countries or at regional or international levels
HNT HomeNet Thailand, network of home-based and informal workers and FLEP
HNTA HomeNet Thailand Association, membership-based organization of home-
based and informal economy workers in Thailand
IASEW, India Indian Academy of Self Employed Women, India
ICLS International Conference of Labour Statisticians
IE Informal Economy
ILO International Labour Organization, International Labour Ofce
IDR Indonesian rupiah
INR Indian rupee
IT Information Technology
KABAPA Katipunan ng Bagong Pilipina or Association of New Filipina
LGU Local Government Unit, Philippines
MACWIE Magna Carta for Workers in the Informal Economy, Philippines
MAGCAISA Magna Carta for Workers in the Informal Sector Alliance, Philippines
List of abbreviations
vi Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
MCW Magna Carta of Women, Philippines
MAMPU Maju Perempuan Indonesia Untuk Penanggulangan Kemiskinan or Programme
on Empowering Indonesian Women for Poverty Reduction, Indonesia
MBO Membership-Based Organization
MWPRI Mitra Wanita Pekerja Rumahan Indonesia or NGO network for homeworkers
in the putting out system and those in own account work or self-employment,
East Java, Indonesia
MOL Ministry of Labour, Thailand
NGO Non-Government Organization
NHSO National Health Security Ofce, Thailand
NSO National Statistical Ofce
OSH Occupational safety and health
PATAMABA Pambansang Kalipunan ng mga Manggagawang Impormal sa Pilipinas or
National Network of Informal Workers, Philippines since May 2003, formerly
Pambansang Tagapag-ugnay ng Manggagawa sa Bahay or the National
Network of Home-based Workers, Philippines
PhilHealth Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, Philippines
PHP Philippine peso
SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
SEWA Self Employed Women’s Association, India
SHGs Self Help Groups
SNC SEWA National Council, India
SSS Social Security Scheme/System
THB Thai baht
TOT Training of Trainers
TURC Trade Union Rights Centre, Indonesia
WIE Workers in Informal Economy, Philippines
WISC Workers in the Informal Sector Council, Philippines
UN United Nations
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women
UK United Kingdom
UN Women United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
WIEGO Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing
YASANTI Yayasan Annisa Swasti, Indonesia
vii
Worldwide, the 21
st
century has seen an increase in informal employment and growing numbers
of women in remunerated work, many of them combining work and family responsibilities. Home-
based workers form a signicant proportion of the informal workforce in manufacturing, services and
agriculture, and the overall majority are women who live and work in poverty. They are self-employed
or subcontracted homeworkers, often with little education who spend many working hours in labour
intensive, low productivity occupations and trades, earning a pittance. Home-based work can provide
a valuable opportunity to earn income but home-based work is not decent work for the majority of
women and men who perform it. Without legal protection, home-based workers are vulnerable to
exploitation, since they work through informal arrangements and in isolation. Their work is invisible
to the public eye, as it is considered a typical women’s occupation, not ‘real’ work, even if it is vital to
family income security.
While there is no ofcial data on the prevalence of home-based workers and their working conditions
in Indonesia, the incidence of self-employment and piece rate work is considered to be increasing due
to the increase in the exibilization of the labour market, the externalization of production processes
and the high rates of underemployment and informal work. Women have less access to formal
employment than men, and they are more likely to be working informally. A majority of women work
without sufcient income and they have limited access to decent work. This has negative impacts on
their welfare, despite their active contribution to the national and household economy in Indonesia.
In order to help increase women’s access to decent work in Indonesia, the International Labour
Organization (ILO) and its constituents in Indonesia partnered with the Programme Empowering
Indonesian Women for Poverty Reduction (Maju Perempuan Indonesia untuk Penanggulangan
Kemiskinan – MAMPU) of the Government of Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning
(Bappenas) and the Government of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) from
2012 to 2015. The ILO/MAMPU project aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of women’s
employment in Indonesia and providing decent work to women in vulnerable employment conditions
in home-based and piece rate work.
As part of its strategy to promote better working conditions and social protection for home-based
workers in a sustainable manner, the ILO/MAMPU project cooperated with civil society organizations
and trade unions in Indonesia to organize home-based workers. In order to support these workers and
their support organizations in Indonesia and beyond, this report synthesizes the experiences, good
practices and lessons learned of organizing home-based workers based on case studies prepared for
the ILO/MAMPU project by home-based workers’ organizations in Chile, India, Indonesia, Philippines
and Thailand. The report highlights important organizing principles, approaches and strategies,
developed by home-based workers’ organizations for working at the local, organizational and policy
levels to develop, empower and organize HBWs, improve their working and living conditions, and
establish sustainable HBWs’ organizations.
Foreword
viii Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
The ILO Jakarta Ofce would like to thank the many colleagues and organizations who provided
valuable contributions to this report by generously sharing their knowledge and expertise in organizing
and promoting decent work for home-based workers. Our deep appreciation goes to Namrata Bali
and colleagues from the Indian Academy of Self Employed Women, Yasasipa Suksai and Poonsap
Suanmuang Tulaphan from Homenet Thailand, including HomeNet Thailand Association and the
Foundation of Labour and Employment Promotion, Jane Tate and Annie Delaney from HomeWorkers
Worldwide, Mylene Hega and colleagues from PATAMABA or the National Network of Informal Workers,
Philippines, and Agnes Gurning, Lilis Suryani and Novita Hendria from Indonesia for contributing to
the case studies. A special word of thanks goes to Nelien Haspels and Aya Matsuura who prepared
this synthesis report.
Many thanks also go to the ILO colleagues from the Cooperative Branch, the Gender, Equality and
Diversity Branch and the eld gender structure, and the International Labour Standards Department
for participating in the peer review for this report, and to Tolhas Damanik and Maya Iskarini for helping
to publish the report.
Our sincere appreciation also goes to the ILO constituents in Indonesia, the Ministry of Manpower;
employers’ and workers’ organizations; as well as to the Ministry of National Development Planning
(BAPPENAS), BITRA, MWPRI, TURC, and Yasanti who contributed to the ILO/MAMPU project, as well
as to DFAT and Cowater.
We hope that this report will be useful for home-based workers and their organizations, as well as
ILO constituents in their work to promote respect, rights and decent working and living conditions for
home-based workers around the globe.
Francesco d’Ovidio
Director
ILO Ofce for Indonesia and East Timor
ix
Home-based workers (HBWs) are workers who are self-employed and/or subcontracted piece rate
workers, and most of them are women. This report shares experiences, good practices and lessons
from home-based workers, their organizations and support agencies on how to:
l Develop, empower and organize HBWs.
l Improve working and living conditions of HBWs.
l Build sustainable membership-based organizations of HBWs.
HBWs have been organizing for over 30 years and this report synthesizes the knowledge and learnings
provided by HomeNet Thailand, including the HomeNet Thailand Association and the Foundation
of Labour and Employment Promotion; by HomeWorkers Worldwide on the Training Centre for the
Working Woman (CECAM) in Chile; by the Indian Academy of Self Employed Women; by PATAMABA or
the National Network of Informal Workers, Philippines, and by BITRA, MWPRI, TURC and Yasanti and
the ILO/MAMPU project in Indonesia. These organizations have been working with mainly women
workers who earn incomes for their families under extremely precarious and vulnerable working and
living conditions in or around their home.
Over the past 25 to 40 years, SEWA in India, PATAMABA in the Philippines, and HNTA and FLEP in
Thailand managed to develop HBWs’ human resources and social capital, and attract local, national
and international nancial resources to successfully:
l Organize HBWs at the primary level in occupational or trade groups, or as cooperatives or
associations in communities.
l Establish a membership-based organizational structure of HBWs with elected leaders from
the local up to the national levels.
l And in the case of SEWA, set up a range of sister institutions run by members to provide
economic, nancial, research and capacity building support functions to members.
SEWA registered as a trade union from the start and later developed many other types of membership-
directed support organizations, many of them in the economic sphere. PATAMABA registered as an
NGO but later also as a workers’ organization. It also registered with government departments in
charge of cooperatives, women’s development, and trade and industry at the national level and with
Local Government Units at the decentralized levels. In Chile, CECAM’s women trade union leaders
had the explicit vision of establishing an MBO directed by the HBWs themselves, but in the end could
not successfully reach this goal within the limited available timespan of three to four years. HomeNet
Thailand started and operated as a HBWs and NGO network for many years. The HomeNet Thailand
Summary
x Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Association (HNTA) was established as an MBO only in 2013 while FLEP, the ‘parent’ NGO continues
to carry out major support functions for the HNTA.
In Indonesia, the ILO/MAMPU project worked with existing and new support organizations to organize
HBWs with a focus on homeworkers. The MWPRI which has operated as a network of CSOs supporting
HBWs and HBWs’ leaders for around 20 years remains predominantly active in East Java province
with its outreach waxing and waning depending on the provision of external support. The new CSO
partners engaged in the ILO/MAMPU project just started work since mid-2014. Setting up a vertical
structure of HBW’s organizations with elected HBWs’ leaders representing the community at the
district up to the provincial and the national level remains a priority for future action in Indonesia.
The reports highlights many lessons and good practices of the HBWs and their organizations. Collective
organizing for rights and representation, achieving labour and social protection under the law and
economic empowerment are crucial to enable HBWs to earn adequate income through decent work
and ensure that they and their families can escape poverty and live a decent life. In summary, main
suggestions for future action are as follows.
The start of action: Develop, empower and organize HBWs
l Build in the principle of self-reliance from the start, avoid doing things for HBWs which they
can learn to do for themselves, by themselves.
l Ensure that both social and economic goals and objectives are set by HBWs for their
organizations at the different levels which are clear and agreed upon among the members
and leaders.
l Address the economic need of HBWs which is often the main driver for HBWs to seek help
and work with others with an emphasis on capacity development and collective action. Do
not provide nancial services or facilitate orders or marketing only, as it creates dependency.
l Organize regular meetings around, for example, a savings groups and make use of an easy
accessible local gathering place. Invest time, energy and support to enable learning-by-
doing and collective decision-making processes.
l Educate and train people on how to operate viable MBOs with economic, social and gender
equality goals, including fair incomes and workloads, and shared decision-making between
women and men. Build self-condence, leadership and negotiation skills so that HBWs can
engage in policy advocacy.
l Broaden perspectives of HBWs to understand that individual problems often relate to larger
inequalities. Address HBWs’ practical and strategic needs as women and as workers from
population groups in poverty, and invest in equality and non-discrimination training for
HBWs, their families, and their leaders.
Decent work and social protection: Improve HBWs working and living conditions
l Develop and design a holistic and phased approach with integrated strategies to address
the multiple needs of low-income women HBWs and their families. The agenda for the social
and economic empowerment of HBWs depends on each local situation, but strategies
usually include a combination of ensuring respect for HBWs rights and increasing access to
income and assets, safe work, social security and representation in decision-making.
l Develop an agenda for legal and policy reform, and law enforcement at the decentralized
and national levels.
xi
l Set priorities and objectives within specic timeframes.
l Identify, take into account and address the intertwined vulnerabilities and disadvantages of
specic groups of HBWs.
l Promote work-life balance for HBWs.
l Carry out extensive awareness raising on gender and HBW among the authorities and other
important stakeholders.
l Call for and facilitate evidence-based surveys for quantitative data and/or qualitative in-
depth research.
Building sustainable membership-based HBWs’ organizations
l The development of HBWs’ organizations starts with jointly developing an internal vision
and goals, and scanning the environment to identify opportunities, entry points, and priority
action.
l Draw up and implement an organizing strategy and campaign to recruit and retain members.
l Build in decision-making processes for the HBWs members to decide on the main directions
of the organization and hold elected leaders and staff accountable.
l Clearly dene and decide on the division of duties and responsibilities of both members and
leaders within HBWs’ organizations.
l Establish clear programming, implementation, monitoring, evaluating, auditing and
recording procedures.
Networking and alliances
l Cultivate relationships and engage with the government, employers’, workers’ and other
relevant organizations to identify areas and measures to contribute to improving the living
and working conditions of HBWs.
l Identify available support programmes or schemes by the government or enterprises so that
HBWs can access and benet from them.
l Maintain contacts with HBWs’ organizations, other membership-based organizations of
informal workers and their support agencies at all levels to share knowledge and develop
HBWs’ agenda for action.
l Call on the ILO, UN Women and other relevant UN agencies in charge of developing,
promoting and supervising international labour and human rights standards to ensure that
HBWs are covered by these labour and human rights standards.
l Call on external donors to provide reliable nancial support over longer timeframes.
l Call on multinational, national and local companies, international and other buyers, retailers
and others to subscribe and adhere to the ETI Homeworker guidelines.
l Celebrate the 20
th
anniversary of the Home Work Convention No. 177 and Recommendation
No. 184 in 2016.
It is hoped that the wealth of knowledge shared by the HBWs’ organizations in this report will be
useful for HBWs’ organizations, trade unions, women’s human rights and other organizations to
promote respect, rights and decent working and living conditions for HBWs around the world.
xii Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
1
1.1 Aims, rationale, users and sources
Home-based workers (HBWs) carry out paid work in or around their home. They are self-employed
or subcontracted homeworkers, and most of them are women. Home-based workers have been
organizing for over 30 years, inspired by the women’s, trade union and cooperative movements. This
report shares experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers, their organizations
and support agencies on how to:
l Develop, empower and organize HBWs.
l Improve decent work and social protection of HBWs.
l Build sustainable membership-based organizations of HBWs.
The report is based on an analysis of case studies on HBWs’ organizations and their support agencies
in Chile, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. It reviews the strategies used by these
organizations over the past 30 to 40 years to organize and empower home-based workers. It shares
the extensive knowledge and experience of HBWs’ organizations in making home-based work visible,
organizing and representing their members, and improving their working and living conditions. The
report aims to highlight what has worked and what has not and why – to inspire discussion and action
to strengthen the HBWs’ movement worldwide.
Decent work, fair incomes and social protection for HBWs and other informal economy workers
continue to be one of the major challenges of our times. Productive work for HBWs is essential
for effective poverty reduction, as is a fair distribution of the wealth these workers help generate.
HBWs and their organizations have raised their voice on the fragile socio-economic position of the
majority of HBWs and other informal economy workers, and this concern is a recurring subject of
debate among local, national and international organizations engaged in international cooperation
on development and the promotion of social justice and a fair globalization.
Several international labour standards that are especially relevant for HBWs have been adopted by
the member States of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Most recently, in mid 2015, the
International Labour Conference adopted Recommendation No. 204 to guide the transition from
the informal to the formal economy. Next year, 2016, marks the 20
th
anniversary of Home Work
Convention No. 177 and Home Work Recommendation No. 184, which were adopted in 1996 to
protect and support the development of subcontracted homeworkers. Convention No. 177 has been
ratied by 10 countries to date, and continues to serve as guidance for national policies on home
1. Introduction
2 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
work.
1
A general discussion on decent work in global supply chains – where many subcontracted
homeworkers are found – will also be held at the International Labour Conference in 2016.
The report was commissioned by the ILO/MAMPU project in Indonesia. MAMPU is the Programme
on Empowering Indonesian Women for Poverty Reduction or Maju Perempuan Indonesia untuk
Penanggulangan Kemiskinan. MAMPU is implemented by the Ministry of National Development
Planning (BAPPENAS) with funding provided by the Government of Australia. The ILO/MAMPU project
aims to improve access to employment and decent work for women homeworkers and women with
disabilities in home-based work and promote equality for these groups of women workers in Indonesia.
The ILO/MAMPU project’s strategy consists of knowledge and capacity development of the ILO
tripartite constituents in Indonesia – the government, employers’ and workers’ organizations – and
other relevant partners on improving the working conditions and social protection of HBWs. As part of
this strategy, the ILO/MAMPU project partnered with selected civil society organizations (CSOs) and
trade unions to encourage the organization of HBWs, especially homeworkers. In order to support
these partner organizations in organizing and developing practical and strategic initiatives to respond
to the challenges faced by these workers, the project commissioned four case studies to capture
the experiences in organizing and promoting better working conditions for HBWs in Chile, India, the
Philippines, and Thailand in 2014.
The four case studies were prepared by researchers and/or leaders from HomeWorkers Worldwide for
Chile, PATAMABA (the National Network of Informal Workers) for the Philippines, the Indian Academy
of Self Employed Women (IASEW) for India and HomeNet Thailand, including the HomeNet Thailand
Association and the Foundation of Labour and Employment Promotion for Thailand.
The report on good practices is intended for use in Indonesia and beyond by:
l Leaders and members of groups of HBWs and membership-based organizations (MBOs) of
HBWs.
l CSOs, NGOs, trade unions and other workers’ organizations, regional and international
agencies and networks supporting the promotion of decent work for HBWs and other
informal economy workers.
l Employers, companies and their intermediaries and associations, buyers, retailers and
suppliers, including agents, exporters, contractors and subcontractors, cooperatives and
other organizations, supporting socially responsible and ethical employment practices.
l Government ofcials working on the promotion of decent work for workers from the local to
the national levels.
It is hoped that the experiences and recommendations from the HBW organizations reviewed in this
report will help HBWs and their organizations in Indonesia and other countries to decide what steps to
take to grow and professionalize their organizations and the HBWs’ movement for the advancement
of their members.
3
1.2. Keyterms,denitions,scopeandcontext
Home-based work: Home work and own-account work
There have been many discussions about the nature of informal work done mostly by women, and the
denitions of home-based work and home work. In this report the term home-based workers refers to
two types of workers who carry out paid work in or around their homes:
l Homeworkers: Dependent, subcontracted workers who work directly or indirectly for
employers or their intermediaries, usually on a piece rate basis – also known as piece rate
workers, outworkers or workers in the putting-out system.
l Self-employed, own-account workers: Independent workers who design, produce and market
their own products but cannot be considered to be running small businesses.
The terms home-based work and home work do not include:
l Unpaid care work in one’s own home.
l Paid domestic work and care work in the households of others.
l Subsistence production for household consumption.
Both home work and own-account work involve production for the market, but there is a fundamental
difference. Homeworkers are in an – often complex, hidden and unrecognized – employment
relationship with an employer, usually through one or more intermediaries, while self-employed own-
account workers need to identify their own marketing outlets.
Both groups, especially own-account workers but also subcontracted workers are usually dened
and treated as micro-entrepreneurs, even if homeworkers are dependent subcontracted workers and
own-account workers are not fully-edged entrepreneurs. Women working at home, producing goods
for subcontractors or selling their products or services in their local communities, are usually only able
to earn a survival income. Yet in policy terms, they are perceived as potential small business people
who with appropriate support, can take care of their own business and social protection needs, the
latter through private provision of health care and pensions from their prots and savings. The reality
for the majority of these workers, however, is that they have no capital to invest, have no access to
loans and no potential or prospect to develop into a viable business. They have no or little access to
the necessary business development infrastructure and services and they are often excluded from
the most basic labour and social protection legislation.
HBWs usually involve unpaid family workers, such as spouses, children or other household members,
on a regular or irregular basis, e.g. during peak-times. Groups of women may also work together in or
around their houses, and the informal arrangements between them may vary considerably. In some
cases, women who act as intermediary in obtaining work orders, share the work and payment equally
with the others. In other cases, the intermediary becomes a subcontractor or employer, taking a
commission from the payments.
As mentioned in the case studies, it is important to keep the difference between dependent home
workers and independent own-account workers in mind for statistical, legal and policy purposes.
However, in practice, many HBWs fall in a grey, intermediate zone between being fully independent
and being fully dependent:
4 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
l Subcontracted HBWs are neither fully independent self-employed nor fully dependent
employees. They typically have to absorb many of the costs and risks of production, including:
buying or renting and maintaining equipment; providing workspace and paying for utility
costs; buying materials or other inputs; and paying for transport. They lack legal protection
and work without help and direct supervision from those who contract work to them.
l Self-employed home-based workers are not fully independent because they have limited
access to capital, limited knowledge of markets, limited bargaining power, and limited
control in commercial transactions.
Homeworkers and own-account workers share many common features, such as irregularity of work,
low incomes, poor working and living conditions often in substandard housing and lack of access
to public or private support services. Both groups also have little voice in decision-making about
public policies and services that are crucial to their productivity, such as land allocation and housing
policies, as well as basic infrastructure and transport services.
In practice, both groups do both kinds of work depending on what is available at any point in time,
completing orders when available, seeking market outlets when orders dry up or earning income
through street vending or domestic work, because they can not afford not to work. They are
predominantly women, many of whom can only carry out remunerative work from home because of
household or family care duties and/or because of cultural, religious or societal gender norms which
conne women to their homes. For organizing purposes, therefore, the needs of both groups are
usually addressed jointly.
The HBWs in this report are engaged in survival strategies, eking out a living in the margins. Other
HBWs’ groups, such as business people and well-paid professionals working from home, as well as
teleworkers are not included in this report as they are generally better protected under the law, and
better educated and remunerated.
Worldwide, since the 1980-90s, due to globalization, economic liberalization and exibilization in
employment, there has been a trend to increase subcontracting and self-employment. As a result
the numbers of HBWs and other informal workers have been growing rapidly at different points in
the supply chain, with homeworkers at the end of these chains. It is, however, difcult to give precise
estimates of the number of HBWs within countries and globally, and, for this reason, it is useful to
look at the larger population of which they form a part, namely informal economy workers.
Informal economy
Millions of people, including HBWs, earn a living in the informal economy. ILO estimates
2
that, globally,
between 45 to 90 per cent of workers are situated in the informal economy. The share of women in the
informal economy is higher than men in most countries. Population groups, such as children, young
and older people, ethnic minorities, migrants and people with health conditions, such as disability or
HIV, are also disproportionally present in the informal economy.
The informal economy
3
refers to all economic activities that are, in law or in practice, not covered
or insufciently covered by formal arrangements. It comprises workers and entrepreneurs who are
often not recognized or protected under national legal and regulatory frameworks. Difculties faced
by informal economy workers include lack of access to infrastructure, services and markets, denial of
labour rights, and lack of social protection.
5
Economic units – including enterprises, entrepreneurs and households – in the informal economy
consist of:
l Units that employ hired labour.
l Units that are owned by individuals working on their own account, either alone or with the
help of contributing family workers.
l Cooperatives and social and solidarity economy units.
Workers in the informal economy, include in particular:
l Those in the informal economy who own and operate economic units:
w own-account workers;
w employers; and
w members of cooperatives and of social and solidarity economy units.
l Contributing family workers, irrespective of whether they work in economic units in the
formal or informal economy.
l Employees holding informal jobs in or for formal enterprises, or in or for economic units in
the informal economy, including but not limited to those in subcontracting and in supply
chains, or as paid domestic workers employed by households.
l Workers in unrecognized or unregulated employment relationships.
The informal economy is universal and very diverse. Informal enterprises and jobs persist in both
high- and low-income countries, and indications are that it is growing in many countries. Dening and
measuring the informal economy is a challenging work in process. In 1993, the 15
th
International
Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) adopted an enterprise-based denition of the informal
sector covering employment and production in unincorporated small or unregistered enterprises. In
2003, 10 years later, the 17
th
ICLS dened informal work or informal employment as “all employment
arrangements that do not provide individuals with legal or social protection through their work, thereby
leaving them more exposed to economic risk than others, whether or not the economic units they
work for or operate in are formal enterprises, informal enterprises or households.”
4
Important gender dimensions of the informal sector are
5
:
l A higher percentage of economically active women, than men, are in the informal sector.
l The majority of women in this sector are self-employed traders and producers, casual
workers, or subcontracted workers, and relatively few are employer-owners who hire others
to work for them.
l The types and scale of activities between men and women tend to be different: In many
countries, female traders tend to have smaller-scale operations and to deal in food items
while male traders tend to have larger-scale operations and to deal in non-food items.
l While the average incomes of both women and men are lower in the informal than in the
formal sector, the gender gap in wages and earnings appears higher in the informal sector.
This is largely because informal incomes tend to decline as one moves across the following
types of employment: employer – self-employed – casual worker – subcontracted worker.
Women are under-represented in high-income activities and over-represented in low-income
activities. The vast majority of subcontracted homeworkers, who earn some of the lowest
6 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
wages worldwide, are women. Even when they are self-employed in petty trade or production,
women tend to earn less than men.
Employmentandgenderdimensionsofhome-basedwork
The majority of home-based workers are found in manufacturing and trade, but they are also engaged
in services and in producing/collecting and processing agricultural, forest and sea resources.
While progress is being made in measuring informal employment in and outside the informal economy,
home-based work is not captured adequately in local, national and international data collection
systems. The work and contribution of HBWs to their family, community and the economy, therefore,
remain largely unrecognized and invisible in ofcial statistics. This is because statistical surveys may
not include all relevant questions which are necessary for identifying this group, such as precise
questions on the ‘place of work’. The full range of informal work arrangements today is also not
easily captured in existing classications, and international and national classication systems are
not sufciently detailed to cover all types of informal employment, especially informal employment of
women.
6
Available evidence suggests three basic facts about the employment dimensions of HBW:
l HBW is an important source of employment in many parts of the world, often carried out by
migrants in some parts.
l HBW is an especially important source of employment for women, particularly for economically
and socially disadvantaged women.
l HBWs comprise a signicant share of the workforce in key industries, such as the textile and
garment industries, the leather industry, carpet making and electronics.
Decent work
Decent work refers to productive work performed in conditions of freedom, equity, security and
human dignity to which women and men have access on equal terms. Decent work sums up the
aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and
delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for
personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize
and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for
all women and men.
Productive and decent work is key to achieving a fair globalization and poverty reduction. The ILO’s
decent work agenda aims at creating more and better jobs, upholding rights at work, providing social
protection, including safe work and social security and ensuring fair representation of all women and
men in achieving these goals through social dialogue.
7
Empowerment
Due to its widespread usage there are a variety of understandings of the term empowerment. It is
also used in many different contexts and by many different organizations. Although the term is often
used in development work, it is rarely dened.
7
This may lead to unclear outcomes or unintended
negative effects.
The following denition
8
captures the term as follows: Empowerment is about people – both women
and men – taking control over their lives: setting their own agendas, gaining skills, building self-
condence, solving problems and developing self-reliance. No one can empower another: only
individuals can empower themselves to make choices and to speak out. However, institutions can
support processes that can nurture the self-empowerment of individuals or groups.
Empowerment is a process in which individuals gain power, with power to be understood not in terms
of domination (‘power over’), but rather as creative power (‘power to’), shared power (‘power with’)
and personal power (‘power from within). Women’s movements have, since long, emphasized the
importance of increasing women’s ‘power to, with and within’. Thus, while achieving gender equality
is about reversing men’s undue domination over women, the goal is not more domination of women
over men. The goal is about equal opportunities, incomes and treatment for both men and women,
resulting in ‘more power to, with and within’ for both sexes and a win-win situation for all.
More instrumental denitions of empowerment can be found, among others, at the World Bank
9
which
denes empowerment as “the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate
in, negotiate with, inuence, control and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives” and
“empowerment is the process of increasing the assets and capabilities of individuals or groups to
make purposive choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes.”
However, empowerment in the sense of having more choices does not automatically mean achieving
autonomy, gender equality, and respect for human, women’s and workers’ rights. Empowerment is
both a goal and a process. Hence, it is important to understand that empowerment is a bottom-up
process and cannot be bestowed from the top down. Empowerment is best dened as an expansion
of ‘agency’ and ‘autonomy’ throughout women’s and men’s life-cycles, and successful empowerment
initiatives truly enable them to make informed choices in the psychological, social, economic and
political spheres by themselves.
Goodpractices
10
In this report a good practice is dened as anything that has worked in some way in organizing and
empowering HBWs, achieving decent work and social protection for HBWs, and building sustainable
organizations of HBWs. Documenting good practices on how HBWs have organized themselves and
how they managed to improve their position means documenting and recording positive outcomes
and the steps made towards achieving these goals:
l A good practice is something that actually has been tried and shown to work. It is different
from what may be a good idea but has not been tested. It can represent work in progress,
such as preliminary ndings, or a nal outcome.
l An important criterium for selecting a good practice is its potential usefulness to others in
stimulating new ideas or providing guidance on how one can be more effective.
8 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
l There should be some evidence that the practice is indeed effective, although denite or
hard ‘proof’ may not be essential.
l A good practice can represent any type of practice, small or large and can be at any level.
Good practices can range from broad policy-level activities to workplace practices. It can
include a transformational shift in law, policy and strategy or involve a specic nitty-gritty
process, activity or procedure that ‘makes things work’.
l Although a law, policy, programme, measure or practice (old or new) may not yet be perfect,
it is important to record small and large successes, that is, substantive changes or positive
steps in the right direction, that are useful to share with other persons and organizations.
l It is not expected that good practices should be copied from one setting to another as what
works in one place may not work elsewhere. However, successful interventions can provide
‘food for thought’ and inspire ideas for possible adaptations and new ways of looking at
things.
l Criteria for determining what makes a practice ‘good’ are: relevance and responsiveness
in addressing the needs of HBWs; impact, effectiveness and efciency; creativity and
innovation; sustainability and possible replicability.
l Information about ‘bad practice’, ‘issues to avoid’ or ‘measures to prevent unintended
negative effects’ can also be included. This is because learning from mistakes and how to
overcome obstacles or inhibiting factors can be more useful to others than perfect ‘success
stories’.
1.3 Reportcontentinbrief
Chapter 2 introduces the HBWs’ organizations that are covered in the case studies, and gives a brief
overview of the larger environment in which HBWs and their support organizations operate in the
concerned countries as relevant. Chapter 3 explains and analyzes the experiences and learnings
of HBWs and their organizations. It highlights good practices and draws lessons from the HBWs’
organizations described in the case studies. It sets out key principles and strategies, as well as
some of the main steps in organizing, developing and empowering HBWs, promoting decent working
and living conditions for HBWs, and setting up sustainable HBW organizations. Chapter 4 draws
conclusions, summarizes key lessons and sets out suggestions for future action by HBWs and their
support organizations.
9
This chapter gives a brief overview of the origins and key characteristics of four main HBWs’
organizations, the Centro de Capacitacion para la Mujer Trabajado (CECAM) in Chile, the Self-Employed
Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, the National Network of Informal Workers in the Philippines
(PATAMABA) and the organizations supporting HBWs in Thailand, respectively HomeNet Thailand, the
HomeNet Thailand Association and the Foundation for Labour and Employment Promotion (FLEP).
It provides an overview of existing protective legislation for the self-employed and homeworkers and
the larger environment, and gives an overview of the main aims, achievements and challenges of the
HBW organizations in each of the four countries. In addition, a brief overview of the work on home-
based workers in Indonesia is presented to explain the history and introduce the recent efforts made
to promote decent work for homeworkers under the ILO/MAMPU project during 2014 – 2015.
2.1 CECAMinChile
The case study documents work undertaken in Chile from 1999 to 2006 to build organizations of
HBWs. In 1994, three women leaders who had been political prisoners under the military rule of
the Pinochet regime founded Ana Clara, a women’s labour rights organization to support women in
trade unions. Following the adoption of Home Work Convention No. 177 at the International Labour
Conference in 1996, Ana Clara started reaching out to home-based workers through their networks
of women trade union and community leaders in Santiago and other parts of Chile in 1999. Contacts
were made with around 100 home-based workers through a simple survey. They participated in a
series of local meetings and in 2000, a national meeting brought together 70 home-based workers to
establish a common identity as women workers, identify their needs, seek solutions to their problems
and explore different forms of collective organizing.
In 2001, Ana Clara became a partner in an international programme to support new forms of
organizing HBWs, coordinated by HomeWorkers Worldwide (HWW), an organization based in the
United Kingdom (UK) supporting HBWs’ organizations in various countries. This programme funded
by the Department for International Development of the UK Government consisted of systematic
action research, organizing, capacity building among home-based workers and policy advocacy
to improve their situation. The processes involved in the programme which became known as the
mapping programme, consisted of six main stages: making contact with home-based workers;
organizing meetings; forming research teams; horizontal and vertical mapping in new areas; training
and education; and forming organizations. In 2003, Ana Clara renamed its organization as Centro de
Capacitacion para la Mujer Trabajadora (Training Centre for the Working Woman) (CECAM).
2. Home-based workers’ organizations
and their environment
10 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Legalandpolicyenvironment
The majority of countries in Latin America have some form of legislation to protect dependent
homeworkers, but in Chile, the 1931 regulations on home work were repealed in the 1980s by the
Pinochet government, thus ruling out the existence of an employment contract for those working
at home. In 1992, Law No. 19250 ‘allowed the possibility of recognizing a labour relationship (and
thereby an employment contract), if all necessary elements can be proven.’ According to CECAM,
inefcient application of this law maintained the lack of protection for homeworkers.
By the end of 2001, the labour code made an exception for telework providing that teleworkers with
an employment contract with a company could work at home and keep their labour and social security
rights. Subcontracted home workers, however, remained without any effective legal recognition.
Similarly, own-account workers disqualied from labour protection as they were considered to be self-
employed micro-entrepreneurs.
However, there was one provision in the Labour code (Article 216) that facilitated organizing. This
regulation enabled the setting up of local branches of trade unions, provided 25 members registered,
and this was later reduced to eight members. This made it possible to organize local groups either
as trade unions, or if the home-based workers preferred another format, as labour workshops, where
groups of women worked together to make products and market them. Even with this legal provision,
the authorities were initially reluctant to register organizations of own-account workers as a trade
union but CECAM was able to use clause (c) of the above article which specied that it was possible
to set up a trade union of workers not dependent on an employer.
Aims,mainachievementsandchallenges
From the outset, it was Ana Clara’s aim to support HBWs to establish their own membership-based
body, independent of Ana Clara and directed by the HBWs themselves. By renaming Ana Clara as the
Centro de Capacitacion para la Mujer Trabajadora (CECAM: Training Centre for the Working Woman)
in 2003, the support agency conrmed its vision of its own role as a small support organization
focused on training, education and coordination.
By 2004, the efforts of CECAM and the HBWs’ organizations had resulted rst of all, in the collection
of information on this group of hitherto invisible workers in Santiago, Chile’s capital and in the second
major city, Concepcion, and surrounding areas. Surveys were undertaken with 1,334 home-based
workers. The main results were:
l Home-based workers were found in the following economic sectors: 41 per cent in textiles
and clothing; 23 per cent in food processing and 20 per cent in footwear. Other sectors
included the printing industry, general services and handicrafts. Home-based work in rural
areas consisted of processing natural products such as (alpaca) wool, seaweed and forest
produce.
l Although a minority of men was found in home-based work, CECAM focused the surveys
(and the organizing and capacity building activities) on women HBWs. The majority of the
surveyed women were between 20 and 40 years old. Heads of households (single, separated
or widowed) made up a substantial proportion, and 27 per cent depended on home-based
work as their sole source of income.
11
l Both homeworkers and own account workers had low incomes and worked without any form
of labour or social protection. Out of 933 women asked about their monthly income from
home-based work in 2001, 406 were able to calculate an approximate gure: 80 per cent
earned less than the minimum wage; 13 per cent around the minimum wage and only 7 per
cent earned more.
l More than half of the HBWs could only access free health care at government centres for
indigent or destitute people, and more than nine out of every 10 could not contribute to
pension schemes or save for their old age.
l For many, the main concern was to nd regular work. Some women combined home-based
work with other activities, such as street-vending, paper recycling, seasonal horticultural
work, or domestic work to make a living.
Organizing work had ourished too. By the end of 2004, national and regional structures of HBWs
existed, and around 750 women had organized in 15 local independent HBWs’ organizations. These
included six trade unions with a mixture of homeworkers and own-account workers, three labour
workshops organized around the production of goods, an artisan group of indigenous women, a group
producing honey and four other groups.
Examples of economic empowerment through group action:
l In the case of Caleta Timbes, 200 seaweed collectors, after value chain research and a
long process of education on marketing and collective negotiation, developed a strategy
that allowed them to eliminate several intermediaries and negotiate directly with the
purchasing company. They also improved product quality by doing their own quality control,
and diversied their markets, thereby, increasing further sales (See also 4.1.).
l The women in the trade unions of seaweed collectors of Punta Lavapie, Llico, El Morro,
la Convhilla and Lota Bajo, on the coast of Arauco province, were trained on caring for
marine resources and collecting seaweed without destroying the roots. They learned how
to do quality control, thus delivering a better product for a better price. They also started
collection of a new seaweed that they had discounted earlier because of ignorance of its
properties and sold it to the pharmaceutical industry.
l Collective organization improved the working conditions of dependent and own-account
HBWs in the textile sector in terms of xing pay rates and accessing more and better market
outlets. The four groups included: trade union No. 1 of women home-based workers of La
Pintana (Santiago) with 15 active members; production workshop La Pintana sector 2 with
11 members, Rancagua trade union of women home-based workers with 17 members; and
the grassroots group of Puente Alto with 10 members.
In Chile, policy advocacy at both the local and the national level by CECAM in cooperation with workers’,
women’s and faith-based organizations aimed at raising the visibility of HBWs to persuade authorities
to acknowledge the existence of home-based workers, to recognize their contribution to the economy,
and to supply more appropriate services to them. The country case study indicates that, on the
whole, advocacy initiatives carried out through such alliances were more successful at the local level
than at the national level. As in other countries, it takes many years and a favourable political climate
to persuade governments to make major changes in law or policy in favour of workers, and up to the
ending of the project in Chile in 2006, little substantial progress had been made at the national level.
After 2004 external funding for the CECAM’s community level organizing work was considerably reduced
and CECAM received project funding mainly to support the establishment of HBWs’ organizations in
12 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
other countries in Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico). After 2006 there was even less nancial
support for the continuation of the work and CECAM was dissolved. Although groups of HBWs still
exist, the national and regional structures of home-based workers could not operate independently
and were not sustained. However, many lessons were learned from the work done in this period that
may be useful for organizing HBWs, and other workers in informal employment.
2.2 HomeNet,theFLEPandHNTAinThailand
Since the late 80s a group of NGOs in Thailand from the North, the North-East, the South and
the Central regions as well as the capital Bangkok formed a network of HBWs’ groups, including
homeworkers and self-employed workers as well as NGOs. The network was supported by a sub-
regional ILO project for protecting and organizing women HBWs in Indonesia, the Philippines and
Thailand which was funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). The network
continued to operate after the project’s completion in 1996. It was known as HomeNet Thailand
(HNT) or as the Informal Workers’ Network in Thai, and, by 1998 had a coordinating unit, known as the
Homeworkers’ Study and Development Centre, and a Committee structure at the local, provincial and
national levels representing the occupational groups of HBWs based in rural or urban communities.
In 2003, the NGO part of the network registered as the Foundation for Labour and Employment
Promotion (FLEP) which aims at developing HBWs, including homeworkers and other informal workers
such as contract farmers and domestic workers. HNT had its own executive board and committees
but was not registered and relied on FLEP staff, nances and facilities to organize its members.
From the late 90s onwards, FLEP and the network members of HomeNet Thailand continued to
strengthen homeworkers and other occupational groups of informal workers, such as motorcycle-taxi
drivers and domestic workers by promoting safe work and health care among HBWs and sensitizing
local health and other authorities about occupational risks in HBW and through policy advocacy for
legal protection of homeworkers and social protection for all informal economy workers.
A start was made with transforming the HBWs’ network into a membership-based organization during
2009 - 2010, when HomeNet Thailand organized skills training and exposure visits for 184 HBW
leaders and members throughout the country with WIEGO support. In addition, with support from
HomeNet South Asia, 36 leaders and organizers visited SEWA in India and learned about membership-
based organizing. In 2010, HomeNet Thailand HBWs’ leaders and members identied employment,
fair wages and social security as the three main priorities for HBW members and set the goal of
setting up a separate organization of HBWs, entitled the HomeNet Thailand Association (HNTA).
The HNTA was successfully registered with the Ministry of Interior as an MBO in 2013 with the
following objectives:
l Promote members’ groups and informal workers’ networks.
l Promote and support members’ economic capacity.
l Develop and provide welfare support to members.
l Advocate for laws and policies for social protection for members.
l Support and preserve local wisdoms, resources and the environment.
13
In 2004, the HNTA had 4,500 members. In 2015 over 5,000 ordinary members from more than 50
production groups paid a THB 20 application fee and an annual membership fee of THB 20. Most
ordinary members are home-based workers, including homeworkers and some are street vendors,
motorcycle taxi drivers and casual workers. Experts or other supporting individuals can be invited to
join the HNTA as extra-ordinary members: they have no voting rights and do not pay the fees.
Legalandpolicyenvironment
Home-based workers and other informal workers are generally not protected under the Thai labour
law which covers mainly workers in a formal employer-employee relationship. However, due to policy
advocacy by HomeNet Thailand and the FLEP, among others, the Ministry of Labour (MOL) issued a
Ministerial Regulation on the Protection of Homeworkers B.E. 2547 (2004), to ofcially recognize
homeworkers and protect their rights. The Regulation stipulates:
l Homeworkers must be at least 15 years old. Any employment of a person who is under 15
years old as a homeworker is strictly prohibited.
l The employer has to produce a working contract, give a copy to the worker, and have it ready
for review by labour inspection ofcials.
l Employers are prohibited from giving hazardous work to homeworkers.
l If employers do not comply with applicable laws, employees have the right to complain to
labour inspection ofcials or the Labour Court. Breaches to the Regulation are considered a
criminal offence.
l Employers are prohibited to discriminate in employment and must comply with the equal
treatment principle between male and female workers with regard to remuneration.
A year later, in 2005, the MOLs Department of Labour Protection and Welfare drafted the Homeworker
Protection Act and this Act was enforced on May 2012 with the following essential provisions:
l Home work is recognized as work and as part of an industrial business.
l Labour disputes between employers and homeworkers are under the jurisdiction of the
labour court.
l Homeworkers must be paid a similar wage for work of similar type, quality and quantity and
must get similar wages received by workers protected under the labour law, irrespective of
whether the homeworkers are men or women.
l Pregnant women or children under the age of 15 years are prohibited from employment in
hazardous or unsafe work.
l Homeworkers are prohibited from being employed to work with hazardous substances or
engaged in the work that may affect their health, safety or environment.
l An employer is responsible for medical treatment and funeral expenses of homeworkers
who are injured or die because of the home work, and the occupational hazards or injuries
do not result from the homeworkers’ intention or gross negligence.
l A Home Work Committee will be established to propose policies on the protection, promotion
and development of homeworkers. The Committee will consist of ve representatives of
the Ministry of Labour, one representative of the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry
14 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
of Labour shall appoint three representatives of the employers, three representatives of
the homeworkers, and three representatives of experts in law, nancial economy, or the
environment.
l The Ministry of Labour shall conduct labour inspections through its labour inspectorate.
In the view of FLEP and the HNTA, there are some major loopholes in the law that need to be addressed.
These include:
l The denition of homeworkers should be clear and include the existing different types of
home work, which cover the manufacturing, cottage and service industries.
l If there is no standard monitoring mechanism, it is likely that mediation will represent the
interest of the employer or contractor rather than the interest of homeworkers. Therefore,
a Dispute Mediation Committee should be appointed, consisting of local administration
organizations and labour experts, to settle disputes by mediation.
l Labour and human rights specialists should be added to the Home Work Committee
besides the experts in law, nancial economy, or the environment to ensure a rights-based
orientation in the Committee.
l Community participation should be encouraged by recruiting local volunteer labour
inspectors as assistants to labour inspectors.
l Measures for the promotion and development of homeworkers should be established as
legal rights.
11
2.3 MWPRIandtheILO/MAMPUprojectinIndonesia
In the late 90s, NGOs, local universities and the government in Indonesia started to look into the
situation of home workers with the support of the above-mentioned ILO project to protect and organize
homeworkers. In 1996, NGO
12
and academicians
13
founded Mitra Wanita Pekerja Rumahan Indonesia
(MWPRI or the National Network of Friends of Women Homeworkers) in Malang, East Java with a view
to improve the socio-economic situation of Indonesian home-based and informal economy workers.
Since then, MWPRI has engaged in developing HBWs’ organizations and represented HBWs at the
local, national, subregional and international levels, though the scale of activities has depended on
the availability of external resources.
As mentioned in the rst chapter, in 2012 the ILO partnered with the Ministry of Manpower, employers’
and workers’ organizations to increase women’s access to decent jobs and remove workplace
discrimination and became part of MAMPU (Maju Perempuan Indonesia untuk Penanggulangan
Kemiskinan, or Empowering Indonesian Women for Poverty Reduction), a cooperation programme
of the Indonesian and the Australian Governments, to improve access to jobs and social protection
and livelihoods for poor women in Indonesia in selected geographical areas. In 2013, in cooperation
with the National Program for Community Empowerment or Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Mandiri
(PNPM), the ILO/MAMPU project increased the business skills of women HBWs in North Sumatra and
supported the organization of homeworkers in East Java. Since early 2014, following a reorientation
of the overall MAMPU programme cooperation between the Governments of Indonesia and Australia,
the ILO/MAMPU project focused on improving the working conditions of homeworkers, including
women with disabilities in home-based work.
15
Legalandpolicyenvironment
Since home work is carried out by women in and around their houses, homeworkers are often not
considered as workers and homeworkers themselves often do not realize that they are workers.
There is also a general notion in Indonesia that the labour law is applicable only for workers in formal
employment and not for workers in the informal economy. It is therefore commonly considered that
the labour law does not cover homeworkers and the overall majority of homeworkers do not have
access to legal and social protection.
However, an ILO review
14
of the labour law indicates that homeworkers are implicitly covered by the
Manpower Act No. 13 (2003) based on the following provisions:
l Article 1 (2): Manpower is every individual or person who is able to work in order to produce
goods and/or services either to fulll his or her own needs or to fulll the needs of the
society.
l Article 1(3): A worker/labourer is any person who works and receives wages or other forms
of remuneration.
The review further establishes that homeworkers are in an employment relationship and entrepreneurs
are under an obligation to observe various provisions of the Manpower Act No. 13 (2003) as follows:
l Article 1 (5): An entrepreneur is an individual or partnership or legal entity that operates a
self-owned enterprise.
l Article 1 (6): An enterprise is every form of business, which is either a legal entity or not,
which is owned by an individual, a partnership or legal entity that is either privately owned
or state owned, which employers workers/labourers by paying them wages or other forms of
remuneration.
l Article 1(15): An employment relation is a relationship between an entrepreneur and a
worker/labourer based on a work agreement, which contains the elements of job, wages
and work order.
l Article 51: Work agreements can be made either orally or in writing.
l Article 86: Every worker/labourer has the right to receive protection on a) occupational
safety and health.
l Article 88 (1): Every worker/labourer has the right to earn a living that is decent from the
viewpoint of humanity.
l Article 90 (1): Entrepreneurs are prohibited from paying wages lower than the provincial
or district/city-based minimum wages or provincial or district/city-based sectoral minimum
wages.
Aimsandachievements
Given the lack of understanding of homeworkers as ‘workers in an employment relationship’ among
employers, government ofcials and homeworkers themselves, the ILO/MAMPU project worked with
the government, the employers’ association, trade unions, NGOs and HBWs to raise awareness on
homeworkers’ issues and to facilitate policy dialogue to advocate for the recognition of homeworkers
as workers.
16 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
In addition, from mid 2014 to early 2015, the project partnered with BITRA in North Sumatra, TURC
in Central Java, YASANTI in Yogyakarta and MWPRI in East Java to create awareness on gender
equality and workers’ rights among homeworkers and improve their working conditions by facilitating
the organization of homeworkers’ groups and building their capacity in areas such as organizing,
leadership, negotiation and advocacy skills, occupational safety and health, and nancial literacy.
Trade union partners also created awareness on homeworkers’ issues to start extending trade union
support to homeworkers. Despite the relatively short time frame, the project partners supported 2,104
homeworkers (1,958 women and 146 men) to improve their knowledge and working conditions and as
many as 34 groups of homeworkers have been formed covering 1,197 homeworkers. A homeworkers
trade union, Serikat Pekerja Rumahan Sejahtera (Prosperous Homeworkers Trade Union), initially
consisting of 10 occupational groups of around 300 homeworkers in total, has been established in
January 2015 in North Sumatra, and at least 429 homeworkers successfully negotiated with their
employers for better working conditions, resulting among others, in wage increases, provision of
holiday allowance, and coverage of some of the production costs.
2.4 PATAMABAinthePhilippines
Organizing HBWs also has a long history in the Philippines. The National Network of Informal Workers,
Philippines (PATAMABA or Pambansang Kalipunan ng mga Manggagawang Impormal sa Pilipinas) was
established in 2003, expanding the former National Network of Home-based Workers (Pambansang
Tagapag-ugnay ng Manggagawa sa Bahay) which was founded in 1991. This grass roots organization
was the brainchild of HBWs belonging to the Association of New Filipina (Katipunan ng Bagong
Pilipina – KaBaPa), which had been set up by mainly rural women in 1975 and engaged in research,
training, organizing and institution building of women’s organizations.
PATAMABA organizes home-based and other informal workers towards greater visibility, recognition
and participation of these workers in their immediate community and the society, so that they can
gain access to productive resources and social protection and obtain better policies and programmes
for these workers through improved legislation.
Legalandpolicyenvironment
The 1987 Philippine Constitution mandates the State to ensure the welfare of all workers. Article
II, Section 9 declares “The State shall promote a just and dynamic social order that will … free the
people from poverty through policies that provide adequate social services, promote full employment,
a rising standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all.” And Section 3 of Article XIII
provides: “It shall guarantee the rights of all workers to self-organization, collective bargaining and
negotiations, and peaceful concerted activities, including the right to strike in accordance with law.
They shall be entitled to security of tenure, human conditions of work, and a living wage. They shall
also participate in policy and decision-making processes affecting their rights and benets as may
be provided by law.”
HBWs, spearheaded by PATAMABA, succeeded in lobbying for the issuance of specic labour protection
for homeworkers. The Labor Code of the Philippines regulates the employment of industrial home
workers, and the implementing rules and regulations of Articles 153-155 in Chapter 4 (Employment
of Home workers) in Department Order (DO) 5 to provide for the implementation of law popularly
17
known as DO 5 was signed in 1992. DO 5 afrms the rights of home workers to labour protection as
follows:
l Registration of home workers’ organizations, and their employers, contractors and
subcontractors (and provision of assistance to those who have registered).
l Immediate payment for home work.
l Standard output rates based on time and motion studies, individual/collective agreement
between the employer and workers; or consultation with representatives of employers and
workers in a tripartite conference.
l Prohibition of home work in the production of explosives, reworks, poisons and other toxic
substances.
l Designation of the Department of Labour and Employment’s (DOLE) regional directors to
administer compliance and hear complaints.
The PATAMABA case study indicates that attempts to urge contractors and subcontractors to register
have been a failure. In reality, PATAMABA members nd that the Labor code covers mainly the formal
sector of the economy. The laws on labour standards (wages, hours of work, employee benets,
etc.) and labour relations (unionism, collective bargaining, dispute settlements, etc.) apply largely to
formal sector workers only because the enjoyment of such rights and entitlements requires proof of
the existence of a formal employer-employee relationship.
The Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act (R.A. 8425) which took effect in 1998, was the rst
national legislation to recognize the informal sector as one of the basic sectors in the economy. It
denes workers in the informal sector as “poor individuals who operate businesses that are very
small in scale and are not registered with any national government agency, and the workers in
such enterprises who sell their services in exchange for subsistence level wages or other forms
of compensation.” In 2002, the National Statistical Coordination Board, through Resolution No. 15
Series of 2002, released the ofcial denition of the informal sector: “The informal sector consists
of ‘units’ engaged in the production of goods and services with the primary objective of generating
employment and incomes to the persons concerned in order to earn a living. These units typically
operate at a low level of organization, with little or no division between labour and capital as factors
of production. It consists of household unincorporated enterprises that are market and non-market
producers of goods as well as market producers of services. Labor relations, where they exist,
are based on casual employment, kinship or personal and social relations rather than formal or
contractual arrangements.”
The PATAMABA case study concludes that the limited coverage and problematic implementation of
the above-mentioned laws show clearly that effective national and local mechanisms that focus on
the need and ensure the rights of the informal workers are still not in place. This is an anomaly in the
light of the fact that informal workers comprise the majority of Filipino workers.
Aims,mainachievementsandchallenges
In the late 80s KaBaPa carried out a study of rural women HBWs with ILO support. In 1989 it became
part of the above-mentioned subregional ILO project for protecting and organizing HBWs. The project
brought the government, employers’ and workers’ organizations and HBWs together to improve the
latter’s situation.
18 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Starting with a group of 29 home-based worker leaders from nine provinces in 1989, the National
Network of Homeworkers in the Philippines or PATAMABA held its founding Congress a year later to
raise awareness among home-based workers, national and local governmental agencies and the
general public on home-based workers’ concerns, needs and priorities. Training was provided to
facilitate the organization of HBWs by industry or craft in communities, and help them to develop
their social and income earning skills.
Following the closure of many garment factories in the late 80s, and the increase in informal
employment during the 90s, PATAMABA decided to expand its membership to other groups in the
informal economy. During its fth Congress in 2003, the organization was renamed as the National
Network of Informal Workers, Philippines but it kept the acronym PATAMABA.
PATAMABA envisions a free, peaceful, prosperous and democratic nation, where everyone enjoys
human rights, with a sustainable and environment-friendly lifestyle and active and comprehensive
empowerment of workers in the informal economy towards individual and collective self-reliance.
Through continuous capacity development and organizing it seeks to:
l Ensure the rights and uplift the economic, political and social conditions of workers in the
informal economy.
l Integrate the rights, needs and interests of women in its policies and programmes.
l Establish networks and linkages nationally and internationally for resource mobilization,
capacity building, planning and implementation, monitoring and evaluation of various
development programmes and projects for sustainability and self-reliance.
l Serve as a vehicle for initiating and supporting activities addressing the needs of informal
workers through its local chapters all over the country.
PATAMABA has individual and afliate members. Individual membership has reached a total of
around 19,000. The overall majority (98 per cent) are women, between 18 and 75 years of age
who are organized into 300 chapters in 34 provinces located in 12 regions. Of these, 4,102 are
subcontracted home workers, 14,986 are self-employed own account workers and 1,667 do both.
The subcontracted workers are engaged in sewing, smocking and weaving; and producing handicraft,
paper mache, bags, Christmas balls, fashion accessories, embroidery and sawali (woven strips of
split bamboo used for walls). Self-employed members are raising livestock, weaving and or otherwise
producing agri-based products, bags, slippers, fashion accessories, novelty items, food, woodcraft
and garments.
Besides home-based workers, the expanded PATAMABA also includes 11 afliate group members
with their own legal identity, composed of vendors (market, street and ambulant), small transport
operators of tricycle/pedicab and bancas (boats), non-corporate construction workers (carpenters,
masons, plumbers who are project-based), service workers (beauticians, barbers, laundry persons)
and youth (youth advocates and working youth).
Besides registering PATAMABA with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1991 as a non-
stock, non-prot NGO, PATAMABA registered as a workers’ organization with the Department of Labor
and Employment (DOLE) in 2005. It also registered with the Cooperative Development Authority, the
Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) and the Department of Trade and Industry. PATAMABA local
chapters are accredited as people’s organizations in several local government units like Quezon City,
Caloocan City, Iloilo City, Davao City, Angono and Taytay in Rizal, and Bulacan. This enables them to be
part of the decision-making bodies at the ground level and to avail of government livelihood training
19
and assistance, to participate in the government’s bottom-up planning and budgeting processes and
to become a partner of government and private institutions in programmes and projects for informal
workers.
2.5 SEWA in India
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was born in the early 70s as a trade union of self-
employed women. It grew out of the Textile Labour Association (TLA), India’s oldest and largest union
of textile workers founded in 1920 by a woman, Anasuya Sarabhai. The inspiration for the union came
from Mahatma Gandhi, who led a successful strike of textile workers in 1917. He believed in creating
positive organized strength by awakening the consciousness in workers. By developing unity as well
as personality, a worker would be able to hold his or her own against tyranny from employers or the
state. To develop this strength he believed that a union should cover all aspects of worker’s lives both
in the factory and at home.
The ideology of Mahatma Gandhi and the feminist seeds planted by Anasuya Sarabhai led to the
creation of the TLA Women’s Wing in 1954 which at the start mainly engaged in skills training and
welfare for the wives and daughters of mill workers. TLAs scope expanded in the early 1970’s when
a survey probed complaints by women tailors of exploitation by contractors and revealed the large
numbers of women workers untouched by legal protection and unionization.
In 1971, a small group of migrant women working as cart-pullers in Ahmedabad’s cloth market came
to the TLA with their labour contractor to nd some housing for these women as they were living in
the streets without shelter. They spoke with Ela Bhatt, the head of TLAs Women’s Wing, and she
joined them to the places where they lived and worked. There she also met women who worked as
head-loaders, carrying loads of clothes between the wholesale and retail markets and suffered from
insecure access to work and low and erratic wages.
The TLA Women’s Wing started campaigns to improve the working conditions of these groups of
women workers and help them negotiate with their employers. Soon, a group of used-garment dealers
approached the TLA Women’s Wing with their own grievances. A public meeting of used-garment
dealers was called and over hundred women attended. During the meeting in a public park, a woman
from the crowd suggested they form an association of their own. Thus, on an appeal from the women
and at the initiative of the leader of the Women’s Wing, Ela Bhatt, and the TLA president Arvind Buch,
the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was born in December 1971.
The women felt that as an association of informal workers, SEWA should establish itself as a trade
union. This was a fairly novel idea, because the self-employed had no real history of organizing.
The rst struggle SEWA undertook was obtaining ofcial recognition as trade union. The Labour
Department refused to register SEWA because they felt that, since there was no recognized employer,
the workers would have no one to struggle against. Initially, the trade unions were also against SEWA
registering as a union because HBWs and other informal sector workers are not formally employed.
SEWA, however, argued that a union was not necessarily against an employer, but embodied the unity
of workers. SEWA also had to argue convincingly that informal women workers are, in fact, workers,
entitled to the same rights as men. SEWA was registered as a trade union under the Trade Union Act
of India in 1972.
Thereafter SEWA continued to grow, increasing its membership and including more and more different
occupations within its fold. The beginning of the rst women’s decade in 1975 gave a boost to the
20 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
growth of SEWA, placing it within the women’s movement, and since the late 70s, SEWA has become
a recognized advocate for HBWs at the international level.
By 1981, relations between SEWA and TLA had deteriorated. The TLA did not appreciate an assertive
women’s group in its midst. Also, the interests of TLA, representing workers of the organized sector
often came into conict with the demands of SEWA, representing unorganized women workers. The
conict came to a head in 1981 during the anti-reservation riots when members of higher castes
attacked the Harijans
15
, many of whom were members of both TLA and SEWA. SEWA spoke out in
defense of the Harijans, whereas TLA remained silent. Because of this outspokenness, TLA threw
out SEWA from its fold. After the separation from TLA, SEWA started new initiatives. In particular, the
growth of many new co-operatives and other economic ventures, a more militant trade union and the
provision of many other support services to HBWs gave SEWA a new shape and direction.
HBWs’situationandenvironmentinIndia
Economic growth in India has been encouraging and poverty has been decreasing since the mid
1980s; however, the informal economy has been growing. The IASEW case study reports that
protective labour legislation covers seven per cent of the workers only and the remaining 93 per cent,
namely more than 370 million workers belong to the informal economy. This means HBWs and other
informal economy workers have insecure access to employment, earn low incomes, face difculty in
sending children to school and covering risks such as illnesses and have no support in old age.
In India, in 2009–2010, nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of all HBWs – 65 per cent of men and 40 per
cent of women – were own-account workers. A far larger percentage of women (39 per cent) than
men (19 per cent) were unpaid, contributing family workers. A small percentage of HBWs were wage
workers: nine per cent of all, eight per cent of men, and 18 per cent of women; and a somewhat
smaller percentage (except of men) were employers: eight of all, eight per cent of men and three per
cent of women.
16
The case study reports that women who work in the informal sector in India face gender discrimination
and come from sections in society which need income to survive at any cost. An average woman
spends some seven to eight hours on household duties and family care, and those who do not have
remunerative work spend an additional ve to eight hours as unpaid family workers. A mere 7.5 per
cent of all women workers are a member of a registered trade union. Most of the women lack proper
education and training. They have few options as far as gainful jobs are concerned. Still, nearly half
of these women are sole income earners of their families.
Aimsandmainachievements
SEWA denes itself both as an organization and a movement, rooted in the labour, co-operative and
women’s movements. “It is a movement of self-employed workers; their own, homegrown movement
with women as leaders. Through their own movement, women become strong, visible and their
remarkable economic and social contributions get recognition.”
SEWA has two basic goals: full employment and self-reliance of members. Full employment means
employment whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security, and social security
(at least health care, childcare and shelter). Similarly, self-reliance (or self-sustainability) means that
21
women are autonomous and can rely on themselves, individually and collectively, both economically
and in terms of their decision-making ability. Members believe that full employment and self-reliance
increases the bargaining power of workers.
SEWA has created membership-based organizations of home-based workers, engaged in making bidis
(local cigarettes), incense sticks, garments, candles, kites, reworks, agricultural or forest products,
etc. By 2012, SEWA’s country-wide membership had increased to 1.4 million. In Ahmedabad, Gujarat,
SEWAs home State, alone, the 2012 membership was 396,654, of which almost 121,000 were
HBWs. Today, SEWA is recognized as a national trade union and a unique organization of women
members in the informal economy. SEWA membership base stands at 1.7 million women members,
one-third from urban areas and two-thirds from rural areas who live and work in 15 districts in Gurajat
State and another nine states in India.
In the process of organizing women for sustainable livelihood and self-reliance, SEWA has initiated
several sister institutes, formed by SEWA members to pursue specic goals, such as policy advocacy,
access to credit and marketing support, cooperative development, capacity building and housing
support. A list of the main SEWA sister institutions is given as follows.
1. Many SEWA members have formed district-wise associations, for example, SEWA members
from Kheda and Anand districts have formed Kheda Jilla Swashrayi Mahila Sewa Bachat
Mandal (Kheda District Self Employed Women Savings Association).
2. The SEWA Federation of Gujarat Co-operatives is a federation of more than 120 women co-
operative societies formed by SEWA members for income generation in Gujarat State.
3. SEWA Cooperative Bank provides a wide range of loan products to meet the productive
credit and emergency needs of its clients.
4. SEWA Social Security Net provides for childcare, healthcare and other types of social
insurance for its members.
5. The Indian Academy of Self Employed Women (IASEW), formerly known as the SEWA Academy
functions as a university and provides training, literacy, research and communication to
HBWs, their organizers and leaders and members of support organizations and governments
from India and other countries.
6. The SEWA National Council (SNC) was established to initiate national level advocacy
initiatives and to guide and monitor state-level bodies of women from the informal sector.
7. SEWA Bharat in Delhi coordinates SEWA programmes and activities in various states at the
national level.
8. SEWA Gram MahilaHaat was set up by SEWA members to market and distribute agricultural
products from SEWA members from rural areas.
9. The SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre provides marketing support to help grassroots producers
to access mainstream global markets.
10. The SEWA Mahila Housing Trust is a charity trust set up by SEWA members to provide
housing support to the members.
22 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
A major challenge for organizing HBWs relates to the difculty of responding to the multiple and multi-
faceted economic and social needs of women HBWs, whose incomes are low and whose working and
living conditions are often extremely precarious. The HBWs’ organizations in all four case studies
responded to the variety of problems faced by home-based workers by (i) setting holistic goals using
integrated strategies to address the practical and strategic needs of their members and (ii) working
with HBWs and a range of workplace and government actors from the local to the national and
international levels to reach those goals, and (iii) building their organizations both horizontally and
vertically.
This section introduces important organizing principles, goals and strategies for working at the local,
organizational and policy levels to develop, empower and organize HBWs. It highlights good practices
in the above three areas and provides two tools to start the organizing process.
3.1 Organizingprinciples
The main organizing principle for success and sustainability seems to be the explicit emphasis on
self-reliance and self-help for and by HBWs. This is most visible in SEWAs and PATAMABAs ideology
and value system:
l In the case of SEWA self-reliance and full employment are the two basic goals of the
organization. These goals emphasize the importance of women’s empowerment. Women
obtain bargaining power because they are autonomous and can rely on themselves, as
individuals and as a group, both economically and in terms of their decision-making ability,
and because they have secure access to work, income, food and social security.
l Similarly, PATAMABA underlines the importance of self-reliance and self-organization: “The
strength of PATAMABA lies in the fact that it is organized and governed by home-based
workers themselves. As it is an organization of poor and marginalized women, from the very
start, it was clear to the membership that positive changes would happen only if they help
themselves and if they work together for a common goal: In the early years of organizing
work, the members had to bring their own food and pay for their own transportation when
attending seminars conducted by the group.”
3. Good practices and lessons to start
the organizing process
23
Goodpractice3.1.1:EmpowerHBWswithanemphasisonself-reliance,collectiveorganizing
andcapacitydevelopmentfromthestart
PATAMABA sticks to the golden ground rule: ‘Instead of giving people sh to eat, teach them
how to sh’. PATAMABA does not organize HBWs mainly to respond to their economic needs
and does not promise better and improved income right away. Its socio-economic projects are
introduced only after members have gone through organizational skills training.
In essence, PATAMABA focuses rst on guiding new chapters (groups of home-based or other
informal workers) in basic membership and leadership training on workers’ and women’s
rights, and PATAMABA’s mission, vision and goals; development of project proposals, resource
mobilization, organization of campaigns and self-development. Socio-economic concerns are
tackled after the members and their leaders already have the basic skills that help facilitate
access to government funds and/or funding opportunities from private organizations and other
productive resources and address other needs, such as social protection, as identied by the
members. PATAMABA believes that only when women HBWs are aware of their problems and
are armed with the necessary skills can they have the condence to take actions to change
their situation for the better.
Example 3.1.1: PATAMABA’s organizing work is guided by the following principles:
M - otivation through awareness raising and inspiration.
O - rganizing and seizing opportunities.
V - ision, visibility, voice, victories.
E - nergy and empowerment.
M - oney, and multiple stakeholders approach.
E - cology and solidarity economy.
N - etworking and new technologies.
T - rust in grassroots women, young women and men.
S - ecurity, sustainability, solidarity in diversity.
24 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
3.2 Holisticandphasedapproachandintegratedstrategies
Goodpractice3.2.1:Developanintegratedapproachandstrategies
“SEWA believes that multiple inputs and interventions are essential for women (i) to emerge
from poverty, vulnerability and years of deprivation and (ii) to move towards securer livelihoods.
SEWA takes an integrated approach towards any initiative that it undertakes for creating
sustainable livelihoods and enhancing the quality of life.
SEWA’s integrated approach comprises of the following:
l The poor need collective, organized strength (through their member-based
associations) to be able to actively participate in the planning, implementation and
monitoring processes of the programmes meant for them, and also in other affairs
of the nation.
l The poor need capital formation at the household level through access to nancial
services (savings, credit and insurance) to build up and create assets in their own
names (land, house, workplace, equipment, cattle, bank account). Asset ownership
is the surest weapon to ght poverty.
l The poor need building of their capacity to stand rm in the competitive market
i.e. access to market infrastructure, technology, information, education, knowledge,
technical and managerial skills. Such capacity building is also essential for women
to run their own organizations.
l The poor need social security – at least health care, childcare, shelter and insurance
(i) to combat the chronic and acute risks faced by members and their families; (ii) to
enhance their well-being and productivity and to (iii) ensure that sickness or sudden
crises do not become a drain on their fragile household economies.
PATAMABA’s agenda for empowerment to uplift HBWs’ lives is as follows:
l “Recognition and representation. Registration and accreditation with the
appropriate government bodies increases the visibility and voice of home-based and
other informal economy workers.
l Access to productive resources. Government agencies are identied to enable the
workers to access national and local government programmes to help them improve
their sources of livelihood.
l Access to safe work, social protection and social justice. Members are encouraged
to enroll in existing social security programmes and contribute to Damayan (traditional
culture of helping one another) schemes. PATAMABA addresses occupational hazards
and safety issues among informal workers by prodding the Occupational Health and
Safety Commission (OHSC) to look at the situation of specic sub-sectors of informal
workers.
l Asset reform relates to accessing governments’ housing programmes for the poor.”
The HNTA aims at meeting the following priority needs of their members:
l Employment.
l Fair wages.
l Social security.
25
ThephasedapproachtoorganizinginChile
Another example of an integrated, phased approach to improve the situation of HBWs is the
mapping programme implemented by CECAM in Chile, which consists of six main phases.
In practice, this phased organizing process was more complex, and did not follow a uniform
pattern, as it was needs-based and depended on the pace and priorities of the HBWs’ groups.
Sometimes, different stages went step-by-step, took place in parallel, or a particular step had
to be repeated, with the process going both backwards and forwards. The six main phases
were as follows:
1. Door-to-door contact with HBWs to nd women in HBW and engage them in a two-way
communication process: asking them what they do, providing them with information
with an introductory leaet and/or photo-pack about HBW, and inviting them to
meetings.
2. Holding small meetings for HBWs to identify their aspirations and difculties, analyze
their situation as workers and women, and come up with strategies to address their
needs through organizing and collective action. At the start, HBWs’ leaders organized
these meetings at people’s homes. Later neigbourhood organizers were responsible
for organizing small group discussions and, nally, larger meetings were organized by
CECAM at central locations.
3. Forming research and organizing teams consisting of the NGO organizers, HBWs
and researchers. HBWs were included in the research teams and several were trained
as interviewers. Their involvement shaped the action research content and process
but HBWs’ ongoing support was not sustainable because of their time and economic
constraints.
4. Horizontal mapping of HBWs and vertical mapping of selected value chains.
Horizontal mapping consisted of action research through quantitative surveys among
HBWs by the research teams to identify the type of work they were doing, their
problems and the possibilities for organizing. Organizing teams carried out follow-up
work to identify potential HBWs’ leaders and start addressing the needs of HBWs.
Vertical mapping consisted of tracing selected value chains to understand the place
of subcontracted home work in the wider local, national and global economy, the
factors governing these chains and identify possible allies and pressure points for
lobbying and advocacy work.
5, Training and education using the participatory ‘popular education’ methodology
developed in Latin America for HBWs and potential organizers and leaders among
them. For more information, see section 4.2.
6. Organizing and forming organizations. While all activities aimed at encouraging
women home-based workers to participate in and drive the organizing, this did not
occur naturally. HBWs needed extensive support, condence building and training
to take the step from interviewee to organizer. Many HBWs faced time and nancial
constraints to participate in action research, to organize and support others, and
asked CECAM to provide the interviewers and organizers. While the process of
forming viable organizations proved to be challenging and time-consuming, faced
numerous setbacks and went through various transformations, several groups of
HBWs managed to develop into stable organizations.
26 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Goodpractice3.3.1:Workatmultiplefrontssimultaneously
3.3 Workingwithmanypartiesatdifferentlevels
HBWs organizations and their support organizations need to address the challenges faced by their
members in the communities as well as the larger systemic, institutional and legal or policy-related
challenges which cause the problems at the local level. Work usually starts at the community level
when the income, working and living conditions and security of specic groups of HBWs are jeopardized
and trigger the need for organizing. The immediate challenges faced by HBWs are often related to
limited access to work, deciencies in working and living conditions, and the socio-economic, cultural
and gender constraints of HBWs.
However, these problems are usually caused by exploitative trade or labour practices toward
marginalized women workers in poverty who face discrimination on the grounds of their sex,
gender, class/caste and, often, ethnicity and, hence, can only access substandard work. Thus, their
challenges are related to inadequate trade, labour and social practices, laws and policies in the larger
economic, legal and institutional environment. This calls for legal trade, labour and/or social reform,
and changes in public institutions and private companies. Therefore, HBWs and their organizations
need to engage in policy advocacy, negotiate and seek partnerships with the local authorities and
local middlepersons or traders all the way up to the district, provincial, regional, state, national and
international levels.
3.4 Horizontalorganizing
At the community level HBWs leaders and their organizations, opted for organizing in trade unions,
as well as labour workshops and trade groups in Chile and India respectively, while HBWs’ groups in
Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are organized in craft and occupational groups respectively in
specic communities or areas. In practice, most community HBWs’ groups today organize as groups
of mainly women engaged in the same type of occupation, trade or craft. Sometimes an area-based
approach only is chosen, especially in rural areas or among indigenous groups.
It has been challenging for HBWs to register as a trade union as the validity of a union of
homeworkers in the informal economy is questioned by government or among trade unions used to
organizing formal sector workers only. For example, in Malang, East Java, Indonesia, a trade union
of homeworkers, Himpunan Wanita Pekerja Rumahan Indonesia (HWPRI or the Association of the
HomeNet Thailand (HNT) started working in communities using safe work as an entry point
to organize HBWs in communities and improve their working environment by themselves. In
doing so, HNT engaged the local health authorities in this work by sensitizing them to the
occupational health risks of this invisible group of workers. At the same time, at the national
level, HNT lobbied for reliable data collection by the National Statistical Ofce and engaged
in extensive policy advocacy with the Ministry of Labour. This contributed to the issuance of
a Ministerial Regulation on the Protection of Homeworkers in 2004, the drafting of an Act
to protect and develop homeworkers a year later, and the enforcement of the Homeworker
Protection Act in 2012. More information is found in section 2.2 on the content of the legal
provisions and in section 4.7 on safe work promotion.
27
Indonesian Homeworkers) was registered in 2005 and MWPRI helped the union to mediate a dispute
regarding a worker who was dismissed after sharing her story on the poor working conditions with
the media. The case was dismissed as the trade union was considered different from trade unions in
the formal sector, and homeworkers were considered not to have the same rights as other workers.
More recently, however, 10 community based occupational groups established a local trade union of
informal workers in North Sumatra in early 2015.
However, as mentioned, the main SEWA umbrella organization is a trade union and PATAMABA is
registered as both a people organization and a workers’ organization at the national level.
Goodpractice3.4.1:SEWA’sstep-by-stepstrategiesinorganizingHBWs
Membership-directed or grass roots strategies to support HBWs include:
l Capacity development.
l Improving the home as the workplace.
l Fighting for better working conditions, negotiating with employers and subcontractors
for better prices or raw materials or with the authorities to improve labour regulations
or access to services.
l Developing business and technical skills, and facilitating product development and
marketing support.
l Facilitating access to social security and/or welfare.
SEWA begins its organizing work by carrying out simple surveys by area and by occupation/
trade and to organize informal meetings with HBWs to understand their concerns, needs and
priorities, and use these as entry points for organizing. SEWA identied 11 indicators which
help to determine whether groups of women will be motivated and able to organize. These
include: (i) deciencies in employment, income, nutrition, health care, childcare, housing, and
in access to assets, credit and insurance; (ii) availability of organized strength such as existing
groups or cooperatives, and leadership; and (iii) interest in self-reliance and education.
Foundation training is then provided covering issues like member education; women’s role
as workers and their contribution as HBWs to the economy; leadership training; SEWAs values
and work. During such meetings pro-active women with leadership potential emerge who
are selected as group leaders. They receive training as organizers and are responsible for
organizing meetings among HBWs to start addressing the priorities identied by the group, and
to decide on becoming a membership-based trade group afliated to SEWA. From these leaders,
trade representatives are elected who start participating in trade committee meetings every
month. At these meetings they discuss their groups’ problems, priorities and aims with SEWA
leadership and develop action plans to address these for implementation in their communities.
28 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Goodpractice3.4.2:Empoweringwomenhomeworkers–frominvisibilitytoleadersin
Indonesia
In Indonesia, organizing work among homeworkers has ourished over the past year with
homeworkers taking on responsibilities from the start. This has been a great achievement
for the members many of whom had been engaged in home work for many years without
questioning the situation until they started working towards improvements. BITRA, MWPRI, TURC
and YASANTI used the following strategies and steps to empower and organize homeworkers:
1. Locating homeworkers.
2. Developing a relationship and trust.
3. Building capacity to organize into groups.
4. Building solidarity and negotiation power.
5. Bargaining with employers or their intermediaries.
6. Forming sustainable groups.
Step 1. Locating homeworkers. Each NGO employed eld facilitators who were responsible for
identifying homeworkers, facilitating group development, and coaching homeworkers’ leaders.
They identied homeworkers using the term ‘piece rate worker’ or ‘Pekerja borongan’ in the
local language. Since they found homeworkers engaged in many different types of occupations,
they selected types of jobs with high numbers of homeworkers (e.g. sewing baby seats, wallet,
plastic oor mattress, and clothes, cutting sandals, cleaning/processing vegetables or seafood).
Step 2. Developing a relationship and trust. The eld facilitators approached homeworkers in
the selected occupations to establish a relationship and trust. Many homeworkers were initially
hesitant as they did not fully understand the purpose of the eld facilitators and did not want
to waste their time. After regular visits and repeated discussions, homeworkers started joining
activities, such as training on gender equality, workers’ rights and negotiation skills.
Step 3. Building capacity to organize into groups. The next step was to organize the
homeworkers into groups. The women homeworkers who participated in training were asked
to share the new knowledge with their group members after the training. Facilitators supported
these leaders in sharing the new knowledge in the rst two to three meetings, but thereafter
the group leaders became capable of facilitating meetings and sharing new knowledge
independently. Grouping the homeworkers according to their job worked well for building
solidarity as homeworkers were interested in sharing job-related issues with others in the same
occupation.
Ms. Putri, in Central Java described the changes she experienced: “I’ve been doing this
homework for years. No difference between then and now. I still do the same thing for work.
But the way I view my work is different now. Before I just did the work without thinking – only
for the sake of money whatever the amount is. But now I do the work with a consciousness
that I deserve better working conditions and better protection. And we should strive for that to
happen”.
Step 4. Building solidarity and negotiation power. Over time solidarity among the homeworkers
became stronger, and they started to recruit more homeworkers to join their groups by sharing
their experience and new knowledge. When they faced problems, they discussed possible
solutions, and they jointly decided on how to further develop their group.
29
Step 5. Bargaining with employers or their intermediaries.
After several trainings, the homeworkers’ groups became condent to discuss their working
conditions with their intermediaries or employers, and negotiate for better working conditions.
The NGOs also trained the homeworkers in policy advocacy, and they held various discussions
with the local departments of manpower to lobby for the development of local regulations on
home work. See section 4.4 and 4.6 for more information.
Step 6. Forming sustainable groups. Many of the groups formed ‘arisan’ or traditional savings
and loan groups. This enables the women homeworkers to meet regularly for a specic purpose
without continuous dependency on community facilitators. It also builds group cohesion and
nancial management skills and discipline.
Key messages used by homeworkers
to reach more workers:
• Homeworkers are workers, not
cheap workers.
• No one will change the condition
unless you change it.
• Fight for homeworkers to achieve
common goals.
• Fight for yourself to improve the
livelihoods.
• Homeworkers are not domestic
workers.
• If you do not want to pass the same
situation to your children, you need
to act now.
Things to avoid when recruiting
homeworkers shared by homeworkers:
• Be careful with words: do not make
promises you can’t keep (e.g. the
wage will be similar to that of a
factory worker if you join the group).
• Losing temper: Have to be patient.
• Think about your own interest only.
Based on experience on the ground and reections on organizing work, PATAMABA has
developed a step-by-step guide for organizing HBWs for use by organizers. The guide provides
practical tips and explains how to scan the community environment, how to draft a recruitment
plan, how to hold a recruitment meeting and start a membership campaign and how to start
building the HBWs’ organization in the community. See Annex 1 for the tool.
Tool box 3.4.1: PATAMABA step-by-step guide for reaching and organizing home-based
workers
30 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
SEWA members and institutions regularly scan their ‘business’ environment to help them set
priorities and plan and review their work. Part of the business environment scan relates to
issues which directly affect HBWs and their families, including their economic, socio-cultural
and work-related prole and their mindset capabilities and constraints. The other topics relate
to the larger political, legal and policy environment, the status of the HBW organization in
terms of technology, research, marketing and supply chain scenarios, and the main functions
within HBWs’ organizations, including the nancial and institutional frameworks, the human
resource development and training infrastructure and work-related systems and practices.
It is useful for HBWs organizations to carry out a scan of their environment to identify entry-
points for action, opportunities and threats which may facilitate or hinder the operation of
HBWs organizations, and decide on the priorities to address at any given time and place.
Figure 1. Environmental scan for a HBW organization
Tool box 3.4.2: SEWA tool to scan the environment of HBWs and their organizations
Direct HBW-related environment
Systemic and policy-related environment
31
4.1 Actionresearchanddatacollection
Organizing usually starts with fact nding or horizontal mapping of HBWs through some form of action
research, surveys or environmental scanning. Involvement of HBWs in action research at the design
and validation stages increases the research quality as they know what are the burning issues. Their
engagement in research builds trust with potential interviewees, and attracts new members and
potential leaders during the interview stage. However, HBWs leaders should not be over-burdened or
receive payment for the time spent on the research as their rst priority is to earn income. Involvement
of researchers is necessary to ensure credible, valid and reliable data collection, analysis, and
reporting.
4. Good practices and lessons to
improving HBWs’ working and living
conditions
Goodpractice4.1.1:Value-chainresearchresultsinimprovedbargainingandmarketing
positions
Research on the production and marketing chains in which HBWs are working (also known as
vertical mapping or value chain research) enables HBWs and their organizations to nd out
the interests of the various actors along the value chain at the local, regional, national and
international levels, and identify entry points for improving the conditions of HBWs.
As mentioned in section 2.1, one example of successful value chain research was when
seaweed collectors in the South of Chile carried out vertical mapping to understand the supply
chain in which they were harvesting and drying seaweed with researchers and CECAM. The
study identied the multinational cosmetic and food companies that used the seaweed. The
seaweed workers registered a union through which they negotiated improved payment, and
eliminated the need to work through a middle person. The union used the process of mapping
the supply chain to increase their capacity. This learned how to negotiate directly with buyers,
arrange their new work and distribution processes and collectively bargain for better prices.
This resulted in a threefold increase in their incomes. They also discovered the commercial
value of a type of seaweed that they had hitherto discarded.
CECAM also carried out a vertical mapping study of one major transnational footwear
company that was the source of homework for many women, through layers of subcontracting
to intermediaries and workshops. In addition to desk-based research on the international
structures of this company and its different production sites, the vertical mapping process
involved contacting organizations linked to workers in other parts of the chain, particularly
32 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Goodpractice4.1.2:MeasuringHBWandinformalemployment
the trade unions, in what remained of organized factories and other organizations linked to
workshop workers. This resulted in homeworkers’ better understanding of the value of their
labour in the whole of the chain and the larger economic structures. It also created greater
awareness among the trade unions of the changes that were occurring within the unionized
garments and footwear industries, and the need to improve conditions for both factory and
informal workers.
In India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) has worked for many years with
national and international research and statistical ofces to develop statistics on working poor
women in the informal economy. The 1999-2000 survey on employment and unemployment
initiated by SEWA and the National Sample Survey Organization was the rst ofcial survey in
India that measured the informal sector in urban and rural areas and enabled the classication
of HBWs, both self-employed and industrial out-workers or homeworkers, and of street vendors.
Other countries too, have started to measure informal employment. For example, the HNT case
study refers to two surveys, carried out by the Thailand’s National Statistical Ofce, one on home
work including contract workers and unpaid contributing family workers in 2007 and another
on informal employment in 2013. In Indonesia, the National Statistics Ofce (BPS) in October
2015 shared their plan to include questions to better understand the working conditions of the
workfoce and identify home-based workers in the labour force survey questionnaire to be used
from 2016.
An International Expert group on informal sector statistics, known as the Delhi Group plans to
further improve the measurement of informal employment and on the informal sector and its
contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with the ILO responsible for labour statistics
and the United Nations Statistics Division responsible for national accounts and gender
statistics. As part of a global project ‘Inclusive cities for the rural poor’ Women in Informal
Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) carried out an informal economy monitoring
study to provide an in-depth understanding of how the informal workers including home-based
workers are affected by and respond to economic and social forces in selected cities around
the world.
Sources: ILO; WIEGO: Women and men in the informal economy: A stascal picture, 2
nd
Edion (Geneva, 2013), pp. 40,
56; and ILO/MAMPU project: Progress Report, October 2015
Within countries, it is also useful for HBWs organizations and their support agencies to engage
national statistical ofces (NSOs) to identify what relevant quantitative information is available from
labour force, household, establishment or other surveys, and what data are missing, and to call for
the inclusion of questions that capture HBW and other informal economy workers.
33
4.2 Capacitydevelopment:Awarenessraising,educationand
training
As mentioned in 3.1 on organizing principles, self-development of the HBWs is the starting point of all
action, so that they are able to help themselves and obtain the necessary support in their immediate
living and working environment, and at the community and national levels. Skills development,
building condence and learning how to organize one’s self and others were priorities in all capacity
development.
Goodpractice4.2.1:Trainingandmentoring
PATAMABA believes that, only when women are aware of their problems and are armed with
the necessary skills, will they have condence to take action and change their situation
for the better. By and large, PATAMABA ofcers face the problem of upgrading their skills
to effectively and efciently manage a chapter (in case of local leaders) and the national
network (in case of national leaders) because most of them attained at most high school
level. Through seminars, training-workshops and on-the-job training conducted with the help
of supportive professionals, PATAMABA leaders have demonstrated that they are capable of
acquiring skills they lacked and that they were able to produce HBW-leaders who are good
organizers, educators and policy advocates.
PATAMABA provides organizational skills training as follows:
l The basic membership course includes topics such as vision, mission, goal and
strategies of PATAMABA and the organization’s structures and by-laws.
l Leadership training comprises topics such as facilitating meetings, minutes taking,
roles and responsibilities of leaders and members.
l Other skills training includes subjects like trainers’ training, alternative livelihood,
business management, simple bookkeeping, product development, proposal writing,
paralegal training, proposal writing and organizational development.
PATAMABA utilizes different strategies that combine education and mentoring programmes:
l Approaches to capacity development and organizing are tailor made to t the overall
complexity and diversity of the HBWs situations.
l Training activities are also utilized to network with representatives of various
governmental and non-governmental organizations who act as resource persons.
l Empowering and participatory educational approaches and indigenous training
methods are used to explain complex concepts that are connected to the personal
and community issues of the HBWs.
Mentoring proves to be a good strategy in developing leaders. Potential leaders go through
an empowering leadership skills training, where trainees learn-by-doing and are very much
involved in the process of enhancing their skills. Concretely, they are given particular tasks that
they have to deliver on their own. Then, they will be asked to evaluate their own performance
and draw insights from the learning experience. In the process, PATAMABA makes women
realize their potential that otherwise would have been left unexplored because of their socio-
economic situation.
34 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
PATAMABA also nds that every leader is different. The quick or slow development of leaders
depends on many factors such as commitment and conviction of a person to learn, existing
skills, resources available, etc. It is important to treat leadership development as a never
ending process and maximize opportunities for self-development.
Goodpractice4.2.2:Populareducationandtraining
CECAM used the concept of popular education developed by Paolo Freire which has been
widely implemented in Latin America and beyond. This participatory training methodology
is a way for building awareness among people and turning them into active participants in
social change movements. The starting point for learning is people’s own experience rather
than abstract concepts. It is based on a two-way communication process where the practical
reality of people’s lives is the entry point for discussion and systematic reection of wider
perspectives and deeper understanding which participants can then test in practice and apply
in their own life as they see t. In this way HBWs can connect personal and community issues to
problems at the structural and macro levels. Popular education provides a set of dynamics that
builds the identity of the women home-based workers through collective learning processes
with gender and class perspectives. Both dimensions are social constructions that require
a learning process as the necessary condition for achieving the development of independent
and critical thinking among the women.
In Chile, two-way communication started during the rst contact. HBWs were interviewed about
their activities and given information about home-based work and other HBWs. An introductory
leaet was used, soon followed by the introduction of a photo pack with pictures of home-
based workers in other countries and in Chile, because many women were illiterate. The latter
was an eye-opener, showing other women worldwide engaged in the same type of activities.
This helped HBWs to realize that their work is not invisible: the work they do is real work and
they are real workers.
CECAM regularly organized seminars each year to train HBWs’ leaders and organizers. Women
came together for a weekend away from their homes so they could leave behind their everyday
tasks and worries. Training on the economy, political analysis, labour, social, women’s and
workers’ rights, trade unionism and other forms of association building were combined with
practical training for home-based workers’ personal development and economic empowerment.
The overall themes of these weekends were self- and group-development, organizing and
condence building. Different techniques were used to ensure active participation and learning
in a way that was also fun and built solidarity, skills and knowledge among the women. The
methods included:
l Life techniques or dynamics – games or sessions where everyone needs to play a
part to share real life experience and build relationships in the group.
l Acting techniques – creating and acting out small dramas and role-plays or producing
dramatized stories.
l Audio-visual aids – lms, talks, slideshows, use of photography.
35
l Writing and drawing with the use of ip-charts, brainstorming with written cards, using
symbols and drawings, making posters etc.
Miriam Ortega, Director of CECAM explains:
“After talking about their needs, we started basic workshops on the history of organizing in
Chile, self-development, the position of homework in the economy, using videos with interviews
with homeworkers so they can see people and recognize themselves. We also did workshops
on presenting their demands, not only identifying needs, but presenting solutions... They
discussed how they represent these needs by breaking down into small groups, then coming
back together. We have our own ideas but we want the ideas to come out of the discussion.
The issue of the history of women is very important, through looking at the history of the family
we can look at how women have solved problems throughout the country’s history. To the
next meeting they bring the history of another woman, who can be famous or can be their
grandmother. Another one is gender needs identifying where men and women have different
issues: 40 per cent of the families have a female head. Male chauvinism is very strong in Latin
America so the issue of domestic violence is regularly raised at weekly meetings.
Issues running through the workshops, local and national meetings are class identity, gender
identity, values – solidarity and respect for diversity, social commitment, voluntary support to
make us independent of outside nances, importance of organizing and collective work, not
just for the organization but for production, as working together and selling together is not so
easy in cities in Chile.”
In CECAM’s experience, carrying out popular education and training was not without its
challenges, because some of its leaders and staff, as well as HBWs’ leaders and organizers
suffered from an ‘overly maternal’ approach, that is thinking and deciding for people rather
than inviting them to do this themselves. This required frequent meetings, discussions and
systematic self-evaluations of training events and planning of new ones.
CECAM also assisted HBWs with attending longer-term training. This consisted of functional
and nancial literacy programmes, as many women could not read, write and calculate; help
with obtaining educational qualications; basic business management skills such as costing
and pricing and including their labour costs; and hands-on vocational and technical training on
product design and improvements, and producing for new markets, including export markets.
36 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
4.3 Labourprotectionandlawenforcement
HNT, PATAMABA and SEWA successfully lobbied for the development and adoption of protective
labour legislation for HBWs, in particular homeworkers, after persistent efforts but the process
is long and laborious. New labour legislation for homeworkers was adopted in the Philippines in
1992, and in Thailand in 2004 and 2012, as described in sections 2.3 and 2.2 respectively. These
regulations and laws are a start but they do not provide adequate protection and there continue to be
problems with effective implementation.
Example 4.3.1: SEWA’s strategies to promote legal protection for HBWs
Where laws and policies exist to protect the rights of HBWs, such as minimum wage
legislation, SEWA’s rst strategy is to get them implemented. As a union, SEWA has organized
HBWs to demand higher rates and better working conditions, and helps them to directly
engage in dialogue and negotiations with their contractors and to obtain support from the
local authorities. Another strategy is to use collective strength to get practical measures
implemented such as an immunization drive for children, or improved housing or sanitation.
Women producing bidis (indigenous cigarettes) at their homes were one of the rst SEWA
groups to organize and unionize. Bidi rolling is one of the few home-based trades which are
covered by protective legislation under the Minimum Wages Act (1966), the Bidi and Cigar
Workers Act, and the Bidi and Cigar Welfare Fund Act (1977). These laws cover workplace
conditions, minimum wages, maternity leave, creche facilities, scholarships for workers’
children, medical services, and housing.
Bidi work had been mostly done by men in factories but following the adoption of the above
laws, the production shifted from factory-based workers to women homeworkers where none
of the above legal provisions could be enforced. The HBWs saw the emergence of a complex
contracting and subcontracting system which “made it impossible to grab the choti (hair) of
the principal employer”. Bidi workers obtain the raw materials from the contractors, roll the
bidis and hand the nished product over to them. However, the work is often done under the
sale-purchase system: Women ‘purchase’ the raw material from the contractor who ‘buys’ the
completed bidis back. The employer then records the homeworkers as self-employed workers
and does not have to provide the welfare benets.
Bidi work done at home is extremely unhealthy due to the tobacco dust in tiny rooms and
nutritional levels were extremely poor due to the low wages. Action started with a bidi worker
asking SEWA for help to go to a hospital for bidi workers and their families which stood
empty as employers refused to issue identity cards to the bidi workers. The rst SEWA trade
organization of women bidi workers was formed in 1978 and many others, belonging to bidi
workers of different religions and ethnicities followed.
When SEWA rst began organizing the bidi workers in 1978, they were earning Indian Rupees
(INR) 4-5 per 1,000 cigarettes rolled, which was less than half the minimum wage. After a
struggle of more than a decade – during which SEWA workers held rallies, sit-in protests,
a strike, and led four cases in various courts – an agreement was nally reached with
employers, and bidi workers started earning the minimum wage and getting identity cards. A
few groups had also started to set up cooperatives, among others, to obtain better housing.
37
SEWA has also assisted bidi workers with obtaining social protection, rst by setting up a group
insurance scheme and later by ensuring the establishment of nancially viable provident funds
and welfare boards for bidi workers. For example, after a long struggle in every place where bidi
workers became SEWA members, SEWA successfully organized the issuing of identity cards to
the HBWs which are essential as proof that they are workers eligible for these benets.
SEWA lobbied successfully for an increase in the sales tax on bidis to nance the Bidi Worker
Welfare Board. Then, they had to engage in and nally won court cases to ensure social
security payments from these funds to bidi workers, and to ght corruption in the collection
of the sales tax from employers. Policy advocacy to ensure proper minimum wage xing and
discontinue the sale-purchase system required continued struggles and SEWA was able
to lobby successfully for the participation of SEWA’s bidi worker member groups in policy
formulation and enforcement provided under the law.
To this day, SEWA organizes and unites bidi workers to inform them about their rights under
the law, increase their wages, and issue them with identity cards to access welfare funds in
various parts of India. Membership today stands at around 10,000, and new groups organized
in Ajmer, a new location in 2011.
Where laws and policies do not exist, SEWA lobbies for legal or policy reform. For example,
garment stitchers, were not protected by any laws, including the Minimum Wages Act. In this
case, the union’s struggle took the form of trying to get them protection under the law. It took
ve years, but a law was nally passed. Today garment stitchers too are covered by laws which
provide for piece rate minimum wages which amount to a daily livable wage, social security
benets and participation in policy formulation and enforcement. SEWA has carried out similar
struggles on behalf of incense stick workers, cotton pod shellers, and embroiderers.
However, SEWA soon found that getting laws passed was not enough. Extensive follow-up
was needed to ensure implementation and enforcement of the laws. The IASEW case study
indicates that it is excruciating and very difcult to ght systemic corruption. For example, if
labour enforcement ofcials enter into an alliance with contractors for a share of the benet,
they will overlook transgressions in record keeping. In one area, organizers found that while
the wages of all the bidi workers were being deducted for the provident fund, none of them
were issued receipts, and the contractors were only recording and paying 20 per cent of what
they collected. They could perpetrate this because the labour ofcials helped them get around
the law.
Even in the case of honest labour inspectors, the human resource constraints they face
make enforcement almost impossible. In one ward of Ahmedabad, for example, there is one
inspector for nearly 10,000 establishments. Moreover, promotion quotas are based on the
number of how many complaints they register, not how many prosecutions result, and labour
inspectors are often transferred.
The courts are also slow and cases often remain unresolved for years. These realities shed
light on why it takes years of struggle by the same women to effect change. They often have to
re-explain the same problem and re-convince consecutive groups of ofcials or judges of the
same issue. For these reasons SEWA leaders consider it vital that their own representatives
sit on labour monitoring boards, that women be appointed as labour inspectors for home-
based workers and that a separate labour department be established for the self-employed
38 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
trades. Similarly, PATAMABA monitors election promises of elected politicians and their parties
to ensure that they deliver on their promises, and, in Thailand, HBWs’ organizations are
represented on the Homeworkers Committee established under the law.
Over the years SEWA concluded that effective implementation of the law means long and
arduous processes requiring hard and often bitter struggles. Given that HBWs are economically
and socially vulnerable and have little or no bargaining power, it is very difcult for them to
sustain such long-term struggles. For this reason, SEWA’s emphasis has shifted to the adoption
of alternative economic systems like cooperatives. By working together in cooperatives,
women learn how to access markets, bypassing middlepersons and moneylenders, and are
better able to access social benets such as healthcare, childcare, savings programmes, and
insurance.
4.4 Economicempowerment
Economic empowerment strategies will vary to some extent in each situation depending on whether
HBWs are self-employed and/or subcontracted workers, and whether labour and social protection is
provided by law or not. For example, homeworkers facing insecure jobs and poor working conditions
require increased bargaining power and more, secure contracts. Self-employed, own-account
producers facing competition in often, overcrowded and low-budget markets, need better market
access and other business development services. In both cases, however, it is important to increase
HBWs’ capacities in terms of income-earning and management capacities. Many lessons have been
learned on how to do this most effectively, and how not to do it.
As mentioned in section 3.1, HBWs often have urgent economic needs and request support agencies
to solve these for them. While these needs must be addressed as a matter of priority the emphasis
must be on helping people to learn how to do this by themselves rather than do it for them. For
example, in Chile, CECAM decided to work on creating an economic alternative for a relatively small
number of HBWs through a project to produce and sell honey. While this initiative was successful, it
was a time- and resource-consuming process. This meant that CECAM’s energies were increasingly
spent on helping this small group earn a regular income rather than on further mobilizing a member-
based organization of HBWs and advancing their political, economic and social rights.
This example shows the importance of striking a balance between meeting both the immediate,
practical economic needs of women HBWs, and meeting their strategic needs by addressing
the root causes of their problems. This means motivating them to join and become active in MBO
organizations of their choice and build up the critical mass and momentum to change exploitative
trade and/or business practices and laws, policies and institutions, rather than focus on addressing
their immediate economic needs only.
In Thailand, the earlier HNT, and the current FLEP and the HNTA also found that many HBWs, in rst
instance, want immediate help to address their economic problems, especially access to markets
or subcontractors, rather than sacrice time and resources to learn how to do things differently. In
interviews for the country case study, HNTA committee members mentioned that the expectation to
‘take’ among potential and new members is rather high. As one HNTA Committee member and group
leader of garment workers commented:
39
“I have seen lots of progress among active groups that would like to pursue better conditions for
homeworkers and they are dedicated to contribute to the Association. Nevertheless, some groups of
homeworkers still think that they are aid or benet recipients from HNTA. They want HNTA to solve
their groups’ problems rather than collectively contribute to HNTA so we can address their issue
structurally.”
As mentioned in section 3.1, PATAMABA meets HBWs’ economic needs by emphasizing skill
development and awareness raising as the main means of helping them to improve their incomes,
and provides economic support services only at a later stage. Another successful strategy used in
Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand to effectively address the economic needs of HBWs consists
of enabling HBWs’ groups to participate in local or national development programmes, and, thereby,
gain access to funds and economic support services.
In Thailand, FLEP and HNTA explain clearly to potential and new HNTA members that the HBWs’
organizations are not responsible for meeting the economic demands of members without their
active involvement. The HNTA and FLEP may provide some seed money but they do not aim to secure
major funds for the HNTA grassroots members. However, they do help with resource mobilization by
connecting their members to local state funding agencies or other local partners to provide market
access, credit, grants or other business development support services. MWPRI in Indonesia also
identies local partners to mobilize resources for HBWs. For example, it coordinated with Bank BPTN
to make low interest loans available to homeworkers in the garment industry, and facilitated online
marketing sale for HBWs’ products through the Bank’s CSR programme. Matching HBWs initiatives
with local administrative bodies and budgets requires extensive policy advocacy and is labour intensive
but it ensures sustainability and continuation of activities. It enables HBWs groups to access larger
loans or grants from public or private sources, than the limited resources that are available to the
HBWs’ organizations.
Goodpractice4.4.1:Fromfactoryworkertoa‘sweatshop-free’home-basedworkercooperative
inThailand
The HBWs’ organizations in Thailand also aim at supporting groups of subcontracted
homeworkers to become organized groups of own-account workers. After six years of preparation
and training, the ‘Solidarity Group’, a sweatshop-free production group of homeworkers and
some own-account workers in the garment industry registered as a workers’ cooperative
securing a legal entity under the Thai law in 2014. The HBWs’ group consists of unionized ex-
garment factory workers who had been dismissed in 2002. In rst instance, HNT had helped
this group like other groups to register as an occupational group to enable them to apply for
micro or bank loans and gain access to occupational skills training from the Ministry of Labour
and other government services. In addition, HNT had been assisting the group with product
design, marketing, quality and skills improvement.
When government procurement ofces became interested in buying the sweatshop-free
garments from the Solidarity Group, they became interested to transform from a group of mainly
homeworkers to a group of self-employed workers, and to secure a larger volume of orders from
local government and other state sectors. However, the group could not join the procurement
bidding process because they were not registered and did not pay taxes. Registering the group
as a partnership or a company limited required initial capital to pay for company registration
and technical staff to help the group with accounting and other corporate functions which the
group could not afford.
40 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
The HNTA and FLEP trained the Solidarity Group to manage its own administration and
nances. The group members prepared extensively, they learned management, business and
marketing skills and adapted their production methods to meet their customers’ demands
and requirements. Changing from subcontracted workers to own-account producers and
cooperative members required a different mentality and mindset, and the Solidarity Group
members went through a massive change process.
After registration as a workers’ cooperative, the Solidarity Group could nally take bulk orders
from public procurement agencies, and increase production and income stability. The Solidarity
Group now aims to have sufcient orders from entrepreneurs or public procurement agencies.
They do take on subcontracted work if they do not have enough orders and they subcontract
work to other HNTA members, if they have too much work.
However, the case studies note that not all homeworkers’ groups have the ambition to shift to own-
account work and become entrepreneurs. Where homeworkers groups believe that they can earn
enough and gain income sustainability from subcontracted orders, they are less willing to change their
way of production, learn new technical skills and strive for their own autonomy even if they can earn
a more stable income. Moreover, there are also homeworkers who consider that ‘exploitation from
middlemen’ is preferable to managing their own affairs even if this means they remain in a vicious
circle of dependency. As the HNT case study notes: “Lack of access to markets forces homeworkers
to work as subcontracted workers to ensure that they can sell their products and do not have to be
responsible for other aspects of production or design and nding markets themselves. This lack of
willingness to change pushes homeworkers deeper in poverty because they do not have negotiation
power, nor the means of transportation to go and bring or receive the work, and they totally depend
on the limited numbers of contractors who agree to bring the work to their areas.”
Goodpractice4.4.2:DevelopmentofalternativeeconomicorganizationsbySEWA
In India, a large majority of self-employed women do not own capital nor the tools and
equipment of their trade. Consequently, they remain vulnerable to private moneylenders and
remain indebted indenitely at interest rates that can be as high as 10 per cent per day. The
indebtedness puts them in a weak bargaining position with the middlemen and traders on
whom they are dependent for their livelihood, thus perpetuating their low wages and insecure
access to work, and creating many other problems. To free women from this vicious circle,
SEWA rst aimed at linking them to the credit facilities from registered banks, but decided to
establish SEWA Cooperative Bank in 1974, two years after SEWA was registered as a trade
union.
SEWA Bank started with 4,000 members, each contributing Indian Rupees (INR) 10 as share
capital. The bank aims at reaching a maximum number of unorganized, poor women workers
and provide them with suitable nancial services for socio-economic empowerment and self-
development through their own management and ownership. SEWA Bank is a women’s space.
The women say, “It is like my mother’s place,” where they feel comfortable and at home. They
also refer to the bank as ‘the village well,’ which in Indian tradition is the common place where
women go to fetch water, meet each other, talk about issues, and learn and share experiences.
41
Most of the loans made by the SEWA Bank are unsecured because initially poor women have
little besides their jewelry that can be offered as security. But the women in the union and in
the cooperatives are all encouraged to own their own tools, maintain a savings account in their
own name and, if possible, to have their land or home registered in their own name, or at least
jointly with their husbands.
Forty per cent of SEWA bank loans are for housing. Since a home-based worker’s house is also
her workplace, women take loans to buy land and building materials; they add on to existing
houses by building a porch or putting down a cement oor, and they install connections that
will provide access to running water and electricity.
SEWA Cooperative Bank brings illiterate, poor women workers and producers in the mainstream
of the formal banking system, where SEWA Bank deals with the Reserve Bank of India on par
with other Co-operative Government banks. The auditors of the Reserve Bank of India have to
sit at the same table and discuss – maybe for the rst time – banking matters with the Board of
Directors of SEWA Bank who are representatives of bidi workers, artisans, labourers, hawkers
and vendors. This provides a unique experience of exposure and dialogue to both sides.
The formation of SEWA Bank, recalls Ela Bhatt, came out of the union’s struggle to organize
women workers. While it was not easy to obtain recognition at the start it gave us condence
to organize more HBWs cooperatives in both urban and rural areas. In the urban areas, the
specic experiences of chindi (making textile products like quilt from leftover textile pieces
from garment factories) workers, hand block printers and bamboo workers showed the way
for setting up alternative production systems. After years of exploitation by merchants, over
600 chindi makers organized in 1977 to pressure for the payment of minimum wages. After a
long series of negotiations a compromise agreement was reached between the homeworkers
but the merchants broke the agreement within 24 hours. Not only did they refuse to pay the
women the agreed upon piece rate, but they also began to harass the workers by giving them
bad materials and less work. In many cases, they stopped giving them work altogether. So
with SEWA’s support, the women decided to start a chindi production unit of their own in
the form of a workers’ cooperative. This formed the start of building many more alternative
economic institutions through which poor, self-employed women can acquire skills training,
and assistance in marketing nished products, purchasing raw materials, securing storage and
workspace, and acquiring capital.
In SEWA’s experience, the development of alternative economic organizations goes through
three distinct phases. During the rst phase women are trained in a new skill or upgrading
an existing skill. The second phase consists of organizing an economic unit of the workers to
earn an income from the skill. And the nal phase is the formation of a cooperative. These
cooperatives enable HBWs to break away from exploitation by directly procuring raw materials,
manufacturing goods and selling them against bulk orders or directly to consumers. The
surpluses from these business transactions are used to put the cooperatives on a sound
nancial footing and enable the workers to truly control their own units.
42 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Goodpractice4.4.3:Micro-nance,organizingandempowermentintheWesternVisayas
regioninthePhilippines
PATAMABA also found that meeting the economic needs and expectations of members,
especially those in newly organized chapters, dispersed all over the country who are looking for
concrete interventions such as gaining access to credit, is a continuing challenge. In the past, a
revolving credit fund was set-up at the national level to respond to this concern. Unfortunately,
it was not sustained and local-based initiatives have proven to be more effective.
PATAMABA Region VI in the Western Visayas, like other PATAMABA chapters, suffered a severe
setback when the national level credit fund oundered at the height of the nancial crisis in
the late 1990s. This experience did not faze the Regional PATAMABA Coordinating Council and
Committee – a group of 15 active, committed, inspiring and disciplined women leaders who
have been elected since its formation up to the present – but led to a greater resolve to rise
from failure and institute a micro-nance programme that really works.
Starting with a small village chapter in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo in 1992, PATAMABA Region VI
membership quickly spread to 41 village chapters in 12 municipalities and in four provinces
in the region. Today, it has 3,400 active members. PATAMABA also helped establish two group
enterprises for their members – an eco-bag production unit from recycled products in Sta.
Barbara, and a bakery in Carles, Iloilo.
PATAMABA Region VI has a credit plus approach to micro-nance, combining lending with
capacity building towards greater women’s participation and empowerment. Its integrated
programmes and services include nancial services like livelihood loans, savings mobilization
and capital build-up; skills training; awareness-raising on gender issues and reproductive
health; community organizing; entrepreneurship development; marketing assistance; and
emergency assistance through the establishment of a mutual aid or ‘damayan’ (helping one
another in times of crisis) programme for burial assistance.
Features of the micro-nance programme. Before loans are released, borrowers are briefed
on loan policies and procedures, loan forms and documents, and undergo training on
value formation, skills training, enterprise development and gender sensitivity. The training
programmes are held in the PATAMABA ofces, in community village halls and other centers, as
well as in the homes of members. Loan sizes vary depending on the members’ kind of business,
and their position in the organization. Borrowers with business experience, entrepreneurial
skills, a sound track record and good repayment record, whose products have ready markets,
can have an initial loan size of Philippine peso (PHP) 5,000.
17
Interest (2 per cent per month)
is spread out and included in the amortization payment collected every two weeks by the
PATAMABA treasurers and coordinators.
Borrowers’ features. Most of the borrowers’ projects are in food processing, producing candles,
candle handicrafts, give-aways or novelty items; or services like a sari-sari store (small-scale
convenience store) or eatery. Most of these are low-growth enterprises which need little capital,
although some borrowers have the need and the capability to borrow more. The borrowers are
individual women, most of them are HBWs and market vendors, and some are village health
workers. Many of them are married, but there are also widows, single parents, and live-in
partners. Most of them have a low level of formal education, a few have gone to college or a
vocational school without completing their education.
43
Management of the micro-nance scheme. The Regional Committee is in charge of policy-
making for all programmes, projects, and activities, including the micro-nance programme.
Three women in the Regional Committee directly manage the micro-nance programme: the
regional coordinator, the project coordinator, and the treasurer. They receive honoraria of PHP
1,000 each a month to cover their transportation and meals during repayment collection and
project monitoring. They monitor the various groups, receive and deposit collections twice a
month, and keep the nancial records. The same is done at the decentralized municipal and
village levels while HBWs’ group leaders collect repayments in far-ung areas of the villages.
The provincial coordinator receives the overall collection at the PATAMABA Regional Ofce at
the municipal hall of Sta. Barbara, Iloilo. A bookkeeper records the nancial transactions on a
monthly basis at a monthly honorarium of PHP 2,000, and the treasurer deposits the repayments
in a bank. The PATAMABA Region VI Committee keeps the following records: baseline data
on clients; bilingual application form and proposal; bilingual business plan; promissory notes;
records of loan releases; loan amortization schedules; repayment and collection; savings and
capital build-up; and monthly reports.
Coaching, monitoring and repayment discipline. The three Regional Committee leaders in
charge of the micro-lending programme carry out monthly coaching and monitoring visits to
each client to see if the loan was used for its intended purpose, to give advice on the client’s
business, and to track changes in the client’s income and asset base, as well as her role in
the household and community. They know that clients are all right if they see investments
in assets and in home improvements, and if the clients can expand their economic projects.
In terms of repayment discipline, sometimes member beneciaries delayed their repayment
due to reasons beyond their control. However, the management team imposed discipline on
delinquent borrowers such as conscating some of their properties or even personal belongings
(such as cell phones or household appliances) after meeting with the village chiefs/captains
who act as witness and as co-maker or guarantor, that is, by contract, they will repay the loan
if the original borrower fails to do so.
Achievements. A 97 per cent repayment rate has been maintained. As of April 2014, the
beneciaries of the micro-nance programme reached 580. In 2008, PATAMABA Region VI
had a total capital fund of PHP 1.4 million. Additional funding came from the Foundation for
Sustainable Society Incorporated (FSSI) at PHP 500,000 in 2006 and PATAMABA Region VI
savings. Thereafter, the total capital fund reached PHP 1.9 million but went down by 40 per
cent in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda, the most powerful typhoon in recorded history which
struck the Philippines in late 2013. Since then PATAMABA is helping members rebuild their
livelihood also with the support of various international donor agencies.
Emergency assistance. The regional leadership incorporated a traditional mutual aid
(damayan) scheme in case of death into the micro-nance programme, because they were
frequently asked to assist families of members who have died. At rst, it was only the ofcers
who took it upon themselves to contribute PHP 5.00 a month to a reserve fund in order to
nance this need. When the micro-nance programme went on stream, they expanded the
mutual burial aid scheme by enrolling the borrowers into the scheme. So far, about 480 have
joined in, contributing PHP 2.50 twice every month, and the campaign is ongoing to build in
burial assistance into the new lending cycles of the micro-nance programme.
Success factors. Features that contributed to the success of the PATAMABA Region VI micro-
nance programme include:
44 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
• Orientation programme on the scheme followed by training on value formation,
enterprise development and women’s participation and empowerment.
• Strong networking, lobbying and advocacy.
• Establishment of good relationships with partners/stakeholders.
• Good credit standing.
• Membership and representation in Local Special Bodies (e.g. Municipal Development
Councils, Local Zoning Board, Bids and Awards Committee, Local Health Board,
Municipal Peace and Order Council for the Protection of Children).
• Accreditation with government agencies.
• Dedicated and committed PATAMABA leaders and members.
• Good PATAMABA implementers with regular and frequent monitoring and evaluation of
projects.
• Space for the PATAMABA VI Regional Ofce provided by the Municipality of Sta. Barbara
in Iloilo.
The way forward. The PATAMABA case study concludes that experience thus far shows that
PATAMABA Region VI has the capacity to make a small fund grow and to use it well. Regional
leaders have set up a lending and collection scheme system based on regular monthly visits to
every chapter. Overall, PATAMABA client borrowers have also shown sound credit discipline and
can absorb higher loans if given the opportunity.
The case study concludes that PATAMABA Region VI needs to upscale and formalize its micro-
nance programme in the future towards further sustainability and institutionalization. For
the scheme to be expanded and formalized, however, it should be able to afford paid staff.
This means increasing the lending fund to about a million pesos, which is of sufcient scale
to justify the hiring of dedicated personnel. One way would be to place the micro-nance
programme under the umbrella of the two existing cooperatives, and motivate the clients to
contribute more if they are already members, and to provide membership shares if they are
not yet members. This way the lending fund will grow and client members will be more eager
to borrow and save as they will receive dividends and patronage refunds.
45
Goodpractice4.4.4:Increasinghomeworkers’bargainingpowerinIndonesia
Following training in negotiation skills homeworkers started to negotiate with their employers
or subcontractors to increase their wage or be reimbursed for some of the production cost.
This was not always successful, and always met with (initial) resistance but some groups
managed to improve their employment conditions. For example, in North Sumatra, a group of
homeworkers making barbeque grills was intimidated by their employer and did not receive any
jobs for a month when they negotiated for a pay increase. In total, 27 homeworkers including
non-group members did not receive any job orders. However, they did not give in to the threats
of the employer, and after an open discussion between the homeworkers and the employer
about the mutual benets of maintaining the working relationship, the two parties agreed
on new working arrangements: the work by homeworkers must be neat, and the employer is
responsible for dropping off the materials and picking up the nished products. As a result the
employer started giving job orders again and provided a pay increase.
In Malang, East Java, a group of women making badminton rackets, and a group making
embroidery held a collective strike for a few days to demand for an increase in the piece
rate payment with positive results. Some other groups were also successful in negotiating
for the reimbursement of production costs such as electricity and transportation. In Batu, a
homeworkers’ group sought help from the village leader to negotiate with a middleman to
demand for the reimbursement of electricity cost. The strategy to engage the village leader
worked well and the demands of the group were met, even though the price increase was
small.
Types of improvements gained by homeworkers in North Sumatra and East Java, Indonesia
after negotiation with their employers or subcontractors
Typeofwork
Sewing cloth/
patchwork
Cutting onions
Cutting sandals
Putting
strings on the
badminton
rackets
Improvement
Product delivery cost
waived (used to be
Rp2,000/delivery)
Pay increased by
Rp50/kg, from Rp100/
kg to Rp150/kg
Pay increased by
Rp500/sack, from
Rp5,500/sack to
Rp6,000/sack
Pay increased by
Rp500 per dozen, from
Rp2,500 to IDR3,000.
Typeofwork
Sewing baby seats
Weaving sh grills
Packing prayer
papers
Embroidery
Improvement
Pay increased by
Rp1,000/dozen from
Rp7,000/dozen to
Rp8,000/dozen
Pay increased for small
sized grill to Rp1,500/
package, middle
sized and big sized to
Rp2,000/package
Pay increased by
Rp300/package, from
Rp2,000/package to
Rp2,300/package
Pay increase by
Rp5,000, from
Rp50,000 to
Rp55,000.
NorthSumatra
Medan DeliSerdang
East Java
46 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
4.5 Gender equality
The HBW organizations, portrayed in this report, started out as women’s organizations. Overcoming
gender constraints is central to their mission, vision and aims and gender equality promotion is
integrated into their organizing approach.
This starts with including gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s rights in all awareness-
raising and capacity building training activities for the HBWs. The women’s group meetings provide a
safe space enabling women to share and discuss thoughts without fear of judgment. Through gender
training, women learn to value their contribution to their families and communities. For example, one
leader emphasized that it was in PATAMABA that she understood the importance of women having
their own money to provide for their needs. Accordingly, in her chapter, women are encouraged to save
5 per cent from their earnings so that when PATAMABA calls for a meeting they have the resources to
at least cover their transportation expense.
Women also build their self-condence, as one homeworker from East Java, Indonesia said: “Gender
and leadership training was very useful. It was my turning point to become what I am now. I used to
be shy, quiet and afraid of my husband, and I often felt worthless. The training made me realize the
potential in me and I learned to negotiate with my husband. He is now very supportive and I am now
brave to speak about my concerns even in front of the public”.
The four case studies give examples of the various forms of gender biases that work against women
HBWs. Societal pressures to conform to traditional gender norms continue to be powerful barriers
hindering women’s entry into decent work in formal labour markets and even making it difcult to
carry out HBW. Gender perceptions are reinforced by attitudes of discrimination against the lower
income classes and/or lower caste occupations and trades, or on the basis of women’s ethnicities,
social origins or health conditions leading to cumulative disadvantages. Specic gender constraints
mentioned in the case studies were:
l Illiteracy and low levels of education among women are listed as severe challenges in the
country case studies from Chile, the Philippines and India.
l The SEWA case study from India reports that young girls in rural areas have to assist their
mothers making textile products, incense sticks or processing food at home, and thereby
forego their education.
l Several case studies indicate that women have to resort to carrying out subcontracted
home work because they are not allowed to go out for procurement of material or for product
delivery due to limits set on their mobility.
l The country study from India gives examples of unequal pay for work of equal value: Women
who make bidis or incense sticks receive a lower piece rate wage than men, who do the
same work.
Changing such attitudes and perceptions and building up a critical mass to promote and support
gender equality and HBWs’ causes through awareness raising and policy advocacy remains very
necessary. Gender relations are starting to change but this is generally a slow process.
Combining work and family responsibilities. In practical terms, many women HBWs are bound to
work at home when they are raising children as they have no access to other childcare. For this
reason, PATAMABA provides a children’s corner where leaders take turns in taking care of children
47
during meetings and seminars. In the other countries, women with children also bring their children
to meetings and training, if they cannot arrange for childcare.
The ability to carry out both paid work at home and household and childcare duties is often pictured
as an advantage of HBW. This is certainly true if women or men have the opportunity to make an
informed choice among viable economic alternatives, but this is often not the case for low income
HBWs. For example, a recent study on HBW in 10 states by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU)
found that – contrary to the general perception that women prefer to work at home so they can
combine HBW with their household – only 3 per cent of women workers reported that they prefer to
work at home so that they can simultaneously take care of their children whereas the other 73 per
cent preferred to work at a workplace other than their home.
18
Work-life balance issues and gender norms also form an obstacle in organizing HBWs. Demands of
work coupled with domestics chores are burdensome for women HBWs especially those with small
children and/or unsupportive spouses, as some men do have doubts about their wives’ involvement
in an organization. The HBWs’ organizations discuss with their members how to deal with such issues.
For example, PATAMABA members inform their families about the aims of their organization. Wives
with doubtful husbands invite their spouses to observe or participate in their activities or enable
them to earn income by providing transport or other services to the organization. As a result, conicts
between spouses decreased. The men were able to understand what the women were ghting for,
and they also developed friendship among themselves. Some of the children of PATAMABA members
who grew up in the organization established PATAMABA Youth. PATAMABA reports that most of its
members, because of their long term organizational involvement and their exposure to gender
training, manifest empowerment within the home – husband and other male members of the family
share housework and childcare – within the organization, and within the community.
ILO/MAMPU project research and needs assessments in 2012-2013 in East Java and
North Sumatra found that there was an unmet demand for childcare in many lower-income
communities. Women and women’s groups were interested in better running or starting
childcare centres but insufcient guidance was available on how to provide affordable, quality
childcare for working parents in communities.
A training manual
19
was therefore prepared by international and national experts to provide
practical information and guidance on how to establish and manage a childcare centre in
Indonesia and beyond. The manual is intended for use by community members already
engaged in providing childcare services, and those interested in doing so, such as women’s
groups and entrepreneurs in communities, as well as community extension workers with
expertise in child, gender, equality, business and cooperative development, facilitators,
trainers and leaders. It is hoped that the manual will:
l Promote affordable and quality childcare that contributes to optimum growth and
development of children.
l Increase the availability of decent jobs for women and men in the childcare sector.
l Facilitate women’s access to paid employment outside of the home, thereby reducing
household poverty.
Tool box 4.5.1: Community childcare: Training manual
48 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
In Indonesia, women homeworkers often needed to get permission from the husband or their family
members to participate in group activities. For example, Ms. Sinta in East Java said: “In the beginning,
my husband approved my participation in the group, but once I started to be active and was away for
travel to join training for a few days, then he started to prohibit my participation in the activities”. Here
too women discussed gender equality with their husbands and family members and experienced
positive changes. Some women reported how their husbands started to share their household duties
such as cleaning, washing, and watching children.
In Thailand, women’s group members, provincial leaders as well as second line (new generation of)
women leaders also cited difculties with their family members and spouses to participate in training
and other events to improve their leadership capacity. Unless women can effectively communicate
with their family and make them understand the benets of participating in the HBWs movement,
female leadership in the HNTA would be limited to those without family burdens.
However, as in the Philippines, women leaders informally consult their elder peers on how to manage
both their duty as a group leader and as a mother and wife. Here too, men are invited to activities of the
group to understand what the group is doing and see for themselves how the group can benet their
family. One of the female group leaders from Bangkok said: “When my son knew that my participation
in the homeworker group in Bangkok involved youth activities, he was interested and he formed his
own youth group in the neighbourhood. I can see his improvement because of better peers and he
can have an opportunity to be accepted in his youth group and among adults. My husband tended to
see a benet also. Still I have to prepare food in advance if I want to join a meeting so that my family
members can have meals.”
Turning to gender equality issues in institutions and the wider society, all case studies emphasize
that policy advocacy by HBWs and their organizations will only be successful if they educate all
relevant parties with a say in HBWs working and living conditions on gender equality and the value of
women’s home-based work. Public institutions and private companies tend to be dominated by men,
especially at the higher levels and both male and female policy makers and implementers have often
not been sensitized on gender equality, let alone HBWs’ issues. The majority of government ofcials,
the judiciary, service providers e.g. those working in banks, and private sector representatives do not
understand the issues that women HBWs face. Many consider that women do not work, that HBW is
not work and that these are women doing some work in their ‘leisure’ time for spare pocket money.
Policy advocacy messages, therefore, need to continuously raise the prole of women HBWs to
ensure that women’s work is recognized and valued. The development of strategies to increase the
wages and income from HBW also has an impact on the value attached to it by service providers in
the community and in the wider society.
4.6 Policyadvocacyandrepresentation
There are many examples of the struggles, successes and sometimes failures of policy advocacy
by HBWs’ organizations and support NGOs in the case studies. These are highlighted throughout
this report. This section lists the main stakeholders that need to be targeted in policy advocacy, and
gives guidance on how to engage with government. It gives examples of policy advocacy for legal
reform and highlights how HBWs’ representation in governance mechanisms increases their voice in
decision-making and resource allocation.
49
Policyadvocacy
The best advocates for advancing HBWs’ interests are HBWs themselves. They need to engage in
policy advocacy with a wide variety of actors including:
l Employers, (sub)contractors, agents, other middlepersons, their associations and other
support agencies, buyers, traders, raw material suppliers.
l Buyers and consumers of HBWs products and services, at the local, national or international
levels.
l Local governance structures, such as village committees, local authorities at village, district,
neighbourhood or municipal levels.
l Provincial, regional, state or national level governments, semi-government and tripartite
structures or mechanisms, including the judiciary, public administrations, political parties
and politicians.
l CBOs, MBOs, NGOs and people’s or workers’ organizations and networks at the local,
national and international levels.
l Public or private sector service organizations like banks, training institutions, insurance
companies, infrastructural service providers, healthcare organizations, OSH or social
security agencies.
l Regional and international actors, organizations and development banks.
HBWs, their organizations and support NGOs need the cooperation of government in all sectors
and at all levels. This may require policy advocacy with a range of different actors. However, public
administrations’ stand towards HBWs can range from supportive and positive to neutral or negative.
Different government agencies may have competing interests resulting in contradictory messages and
services. For example, government agencies in charge of pro-poor or other development policies and
programmes may act in favour of women workers, but government agencies in charge of industrial,
trade or other economic development may act against them.
HBW organizations have to develop a good understanding of government administrative systems,
the legal and regulatory frameworks and mechanisms, and the programmes and projects of relevant
ministries in charge of trade and industry, labour, social security and welfare, interior or social
affairs. It is advisable to organize HBWs, where feasible, in alignment with the various government
policies and statutory frameworks, both at the local and district levels, and at the provincial, regional,
state and national levels. Local authorities may decide on policies and measures that can facilitate
better infrastructure for work, such as water and electricity supply, or primary health care and
education. State and central governments have to be sensitized to work towards legal and policy
reform. Sensitizing government ofcials and obtaining their support also requires their involvement
in seminars, exposure visits, negotiations and written representations.
50 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Example 4.6.1: Policy advocacy for legal reform to protect informal economy workers
Key actors. In late 2005, an alliance of organizations started to campaign for the passage of
a Magna Carta for workers in the informal economy (MACWIE) bill to enshrine their rights at
work, access to resources and social protection, and representation in decision-making.
20
A
year later, PATAMABA and other HBWs constituencies decided to launch HomeNet Philippines
to represent the specic rights of women HBWs in the campaign. HomeNet Philippines is
composed of 25 MBOs, one NGO, one cooperative and 15 experts, and PATAMABA acts as its
main secretariat. It registered as an NGO in 2011 and became a member of HomeNet South-
East Asia in 2012. HomeNet Philippines became the main organizer and coordinator in the
lobby for the MACWIE bill.
Main campaign strategies and steps. Policy advocacy work on the MACWIE bill consists
of formulating, ling and promoting the draft bill. The rst priority was to popularize the
legislative and executive agenda of the informal workers at the policy level, and increasing the
capabilities of informal worker-leaders in launching and sustaining campaign initiatives. Main
activities include formulating the agenda, crafting a campaign plan, enhancing the skills of
the advocates, mobilizing the members of home-based and other informal groups, and nding
support among politicians, and public and private sector formal and informal leaders.
Main advocacy strategies are as follows:
l Drafting, enhancing and nding sponsors for the bill by HomeNet Philippines,
local leaders, the larger alliance of informal economy workers and MAGCAISA with
interested political representatives.
l Capacity building, knowledge sharing and regular review with the informal workers
and their leaders going through the various versions of the bill chapter by chapter at
regular intervals.
l Information dissemination and popularizing the bill to gather widespread support in
society.
Key steps are as follows:
1. Formulation of a national agenda, translating it into a local agenda and enriching
the informal workers’ national agenda. It is important to obtain inputs of informal
workers throughout the country and present the voice of the informal workers in a
unied manner towards policy makers and the general public.
2. Promotion of an election-related advocacy agenda, by including MACWIE and social
protection for informal workers in electoral campaigns of political party candidates
and for the general public, which can also serve as platforms for post-election
follow up. Campaigns to disseminate the agenda also takes place on, for example,
homeworkers’ and informal workers’ days in May every year.
3. Legislative advocacy in both Houses of Congress for the passage of the MACWIE
bill. This includes drafting the bill based on the realities of informal workers,
identication of possible authors from among the legislators and continuously
monitoring progress once the bill is led. It also includes advocacy campaigns among
the general public to popularize the bill.
51
4. Building advocacy capacities of leaders of home-based and informal workers’
groups in launching MACWIE promotion and social protection campaigns.
5. Working with different government agencies. Advocacy initiatives are necessary
at the national and local levels to raise awareness of planners, policy makers and
government authorities. Engagements with various government agencies present
opportunities to challenge the authorities to take a closer look at the different
aspects of the concerns of informal workers.
6. Building networks and including the MACWIE draft bill in government development
agenda. Cooperation with broad-based alliances (the academic community, other
workers’ organizations, faith-based organizations, government agencies, political,
religious and women’s leaders supportive to the issues of informal workers, and
international organizations) is a must for including the MACWIE in the country’s
development plans. In 2010, it became part of the 17 point Medium Term Philippine
Development Plan. It was included as one of the legislative priorities in the Philippine
Development Plan for 2011-2016 and in the Philippine Labor and Employment Plan
for 2011-2016. Informal workers’ priorities were also included in the country’s
decent work agenda due to shared leadership by the trade unions and NGOs in the
Tripartite Industrial Peace Council.
7. Gender empowerment. The advocacy concerns all informal workers, including
HBWs, the majority of whom are women. The leadership potentials of women HBWs
are honed through their participation in advocacy campaigns because the various
activities which form part of the campaign provide venues where they can exercise
leadership, create awareness about their rights and advance campaigns important
to them as workers and as women.
Current status. The MACWIE billed was re-led in the House of Representatives by the
Congress Representative who worked closely with HomeNet Philippines and MAGCAISA and
a counterpart bill was led at the Senate by a Senator. The review of the bill at the Senate is
ongoing. Particular provisions of the bill are reviewed in relation to existing laws and policies
on the tax code, business development and social security.
Achievements. To date HomeNet Philippines and the MAGCAISA have made signicant
progress in making the concerns and priorities of informal sector workers visible. The formation
of HomeNet Philippines was crucial in the formulation, ling and promotion of a MACWIE Bill
that is rights-based and gender-responsive. The rst bill was led in the 12
th
Congress (2001-
2003) followed by similar bills led by different proponents in the 13
th
, 14
th
and 15
th
Congress.
It is hoped that this bill will nally be passed in the current 16th Congress (2013-2016).
52 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Example 4.6.2: Policy advocacy for a national policy and regulations on homeworkers in
Indonesia
At the start of the ILO MAMPU project there was a lack of understanding on homeworkers’
issues among the key stakeholders. There is no reliable data on the incidence of home work
in Indonesia and homeworkers are also not explicitly mentioned in the Manpower Act. Local
and national ofcials and the employers’ association stated that the lack of data and legal
protection were main reasons for preventing them to take action on improving their working
conditions.
Key actors. The ILO/MAMPU project facilitated policy advocacy at the national and decentralized
levels to improve the situation of homeworkers by engaging the key stakeholders including the
Ministry of Manpower, the Ministry of National Development Planning, the National Statistics
Ofce (BPS), APINDO, trade unions, NGOs and homeworkers’ groups.
Main strategies and steps.
In 2013 the ILO/MAMPU project carried out a review of the regulatory framework on home
work in Indonesia to identify the key gaps and barriers to the protection of homeworkers both
in law and in practice.
21
The review explained that homeworkers can be considered regular
workers engaged in an industrial employment relationship under the denition stipulated by
the Manpower Act No. 13 (2003), even if the Act does not cover home work or homeworkers
explicitly. This report became the basis to raise awareness on homeworkers’ issues.
The Project organized eld visits for government ofcials and representatives of the employers’
association to visit homeworkers and have a direct dialogue to deepen their understanding
on the working relations and conditions of homeworkers. Several smaller-scale studies were
also carried out to map the nature and incidence of home work in several provinces and the
ILO/MAMPU project worked with the National Statistics Ofce (BPS) to include questions in
the regular labour force survey to generate information on home-based workers (e.g. question
on place of work).
APINDO, the Indonesia Employers Association, and the ILO jointly published ‘Good practice
guidelines for the employment of homeworkers’ in 2014 and a joint ‘position paper on home
work’ was developed by TURC, the unions and NGOS for use in policy dialogues at the national
and decentralized levels. The media were also sensitized on the situation of homeworkers.
Under the decentralization system, local and provincial governments have the authority to
develop regulations and policies to respond to the problems and needs in the areas under
their jurisdiction, and for this reason extensive policy advocacy took place in the provinces
covered by the ILO/MAMPU project and its partners. Homeworkers gained condence and
also actively lobbied for the protection of homeworkers.
The way forward. Progress has been made in terms of reaching a consensus on the need to
address the decent work decits faced by homeworkers at both national and local levels, but
further work is needed to develop and adopt regulations and/or policies on home work. At the
provincial level, the Departments of Manpower in North Sumatra and East Java have indicated
that homeworkers’ issues will be included in the local labour regulation planned to be adopted
in 2018.
53
Representation
As mentioned in section 4.4 all case studies refer to the importance of policy advocacy by HBWs’
organizations and their support NGOs to enable HBWs’ groups to participate in local or national
development programmes, and, thereby, gain access funds and services. Recognition of HBWs
groups and organizations by the local, (regional, state) and national authorities needs to translate
into representation of HBWs in local and national decision-making committees and structures so they
can voice their concerns and table their priorities.
Due to the short timespan of HBW organizing activities in Chile, it was not possible for CECAM to
engage in successful policy advocacy at the national level, even if local lobbying effects resulted
in increased services and infrastructure for HBWs in several locations. As mentioned, in India,
SEWA is represented on several labour monitoring and welfare boards. In Thailand, two of the HNTA
committee members have been elected in 2014 as two out of the three HBW representatives in the
National Home Workers Protection Board established under the Homeworkers Protection Act. A HNT
committee member has also been elected in the National Health Security Ofce Board (NHSO) to
facilitate access of HNTA members to health services.
In the Philippines, PATAMABA engages in policy dialogue by actively participating in many different
consultation mechanisms in the labour, NGO, cooperative and women and gender equality elds,
and local PATAMABA chapters are accredited as people’s organizations in local government units to
participate in development programmes and access resources.
”We are in the process of developing a local regulation to protect the workers in East Java
which includes those in the putting-out system. The data and stories from the homeworkers
are very crucial as they are invisible. We will not succeed unless homeworkers themselves are
proactive to voice their rights,” said Ms. Agatha, a parliamentarian from East Java.
54 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
As illustration, PATAMABAs Region VI chapter, described in section 4.4, partners with various
governmental and non-governmental agencies at the local, regional and national levels as
follows:
l The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority Regional Ofce VI
provided training and production assistance through the Community-Based Training
for Enterprise Development (CBTED) to PATAMABA members in Iloilo and Antique
provinces amounting to PHP 670,000 with a seed capital of PHP 120,000.
l The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Regional Ofce VI provided PHP
45,000 for skills training on handicraft for working youth members.
l The SSS, PhilHealth and Red Cross are partners in the campaign for social security
and insurance for informal workers.
l The Department of Science and Technology Regional Ofce VI provided PHP 40,000
worth of tools and equipment for a sh processing project in Carles, Iloilo.
l The Department of Trade and Industry Regional Ofce VI build capacity of members
on quality control in product development.
l PATAMABA Region VI is a member of the Social Development Committee member
of the Regional Development Council and a member of the Workers in the Informal
Sector Council of the National Anti-Poverty Commission.
l PATAMABA Region VI is a member in the Municipal Development Council, in Local
Special Bodies and the Advisory Committee of the Local Government Unit (LGU),
and collaborated with other sectors in organizing the Sta. Barbara Informal Sector
Cooperative (25 members) and the Provincial Governor of Iloilo province released a
grant amount of PHP 50,000 as seed capital for its re-lending programme.
l The Foundation for Sustainable Society Inc. (FSSI) provided PHP 500,000 as a
recoverable grant: PHP 50,000 for capacity building on enterprise development
(accounting for non-accountants and bookkeeping) and PHP 450,000 as fund for the
micro-nance relending programme to 480 beneciary members for their livelihood
projects.
4.7 Involvingemployers,workers,theirorganizationsand
companies
Homeworkers, while invisible to the public eye, contribute signicantly to the local, national and
international economy. In making efforts to enable homeworkers to improve their living and working
conditions (working upwards from the lowest segment of the value chains), it is important to engage
employers, workers, their organizations and companies to raise awareness on the issues and
work together to make improvements (working downwards from the higher segments of the value
chains) which contribute to the formation of working mechanisms with improved labour standard
practices. Experiences from the ILO/MAMPU project in Indonesia show how employers, workers, their
organizations and companies can be involved in efforts to promote decent work for homeworkers.
Example 4.6.3: PATAMABAS Region VI chapter partnership
55
GoodPractice4.7.1:Workingwithinternationalcompanies/buyerstopromotebetter
compliancewithlabourstandards
Goodpractice4.7.2:PromotingdecentworkforhomeworkersamongmembersoftheIndonesia
EmployersAssociation(APINDO)andthetradeunions
Recognizing that workers contributing to IKEA’s rattan products are often homeworkers in
Indonesia and that it is important to ensure labour standards’ compliance in home work in
the rattan industry, IKEA and the ILO/MAMPU project formed a partnership to conduct a study
on the barriers to decent work faced by homeworkers in IKEA’s rattan industry, with a view to
start addressing some of these barriers as identied by the research. The study reviewed how
IKEA promotes labour standards’ compliance, and analyzed the working relations between
homeworkers and subcontractors engaged in the IKEA’s rattan production, and the working
conditions of homeworkers through questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and focus group
discussions with the key stakeholders in each tier of the supply chain.
The research
22
found good performance in preventing forced, bonded or child labour and
promoting basic safety at work. Increased health insurance coverage was also observed
among workers at weaving centers. The areas requiring improvements included the use of a
written contract, payment of minimum wages, strengthening occupational safety and health,
and increasing awareness on labour standards – especially among women workers. The
project also identied some specic challenges facing the rattan supply chain: supply issues
(including irregular orders and rising production costs) and the shortage of skilled weavers due
to the trend for young people to look for jobs elsewhere. Based on these ndings, discussions
have started between the ILO/MAMPU project and IKEA to address the barriers to decent work.
Since the members of the APINDO come from formal enterprises, they do not employ
homeworkers directly in most cases, but they work with suppliers who may engage homeworkers.
In rst instance, the general understanding on homeworkers’ issues was very limited and home
work was considered less relevant within APINDO. However, awareness raising events, policy
dialogues and direct contacts with homeworkers changed this situation. As mentioned earlier
APINDO and the ILO/MAMPU project developed guidelines for employers on their roles and
responsibilities to homeworkers in Indonesia and to explain the relevance and application of
the Manpower Act No. 13 (2003) and other national laws to home work.
APINDO and the ILO/MAMPU project also developed materials on the prevention and treatment
of tuberculosis (TB), a disease that is still prevalent, and many workers in factories and home-
based work need accurate information to stay healthy at work. These materials have been
disseminated among APINDO members and APINDO is identifying enterprises which engage
homeworkers to pilot practical measures to improve the working conditions of homeworkers
and improving the productivity of enterprises.
Trade unions’ understanding on homeworkers was also limited initially since they mainly
organize formal sector workers and have many priorities to address. Union leaders raised
awareness on homeworkers’ issues among the leaders and members of their organizations,
and they started to investigate the situation of homeworkers engaged in the same work as
the formal sector workers covered by the unions. Once they identied homeworkers, they
investigated the working relations and conditions of homeworkers engaged in their sector and
56 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
initiated discussions with their employers to bring the home work to their attention. The trade
union members also explained the benets of being a member of a trade union with a view
to recruiting them to their organization. In North Sumatra, 46 women homeworkers involved
in food, drinks, tourism and hotel industries were organized by FSB (Federasi Serikat Buruh
Makanan, Minuman, Pariwisata dan Perhotelan) KAMIPARHO.
At the policy level, trade unions also utilized the tripartite industrial relations mechanisms at
the national and provincial levels where government, employers and trade unions meet to
discuss key labour issues, and introduced homeworkers’ issues as one of the issues requiring
attention on the agenda. This support was very useful for homeworkers, their groups and
support NGOs as they are usually not included in these tripartite mechanism to access the key
decision-makers to bring up the issue.
Goodpractice4.8.1:Occupationalsafetyandhealthasentrypointfororganizing
Since the early 2000s up to the present, the FLEP and the HNTA in Thailand have been
organizing HBW, especially homeworkers by meeting their demands to address their health
concerns, increase the safety of the workers and their family members, and increase their
productivity.
Work started with the development of a ‘Work improvement for safe home’ (WISH) manual
in cooperation with ILO and Mahidol university to educate homeworkers on how to analyze
their health risks and improve their working environment in a hands-on manner. Through the
network of HBWs, HNT provided occupational safety and health (OSH) knowledge and educated
members and non-members on how to access the Local Health Fund and other local funds to
manage OSH risks. Local training was provided in pilot communities with trainers using OSH
risk analysis tools such as body mapping, hazard analysis and health checks.
From 2004-2007 the HNT raised OSH awareness in 17 provinces with support from the Thai
Health Promotion Foundation. As the public health authorities were not aware of the OSH
risks among HBWs, the HBW organizations also sensitized and encouraged primary health
care services to implement OSH promotion activities. Homeworkers’ leaders were advised to
identify and work with local health voluntary services such as the village health volunteers.
Homeworkers groups and OSH trainers would draft their groups’ safety rules during an OSH
4.8 Safework
As HBWs’ home is their workplace, they and their household members face higher risks of occupational
diseases and unsafe working and living environments. Long working hours, bad postures, dust, noise,
lack of light and/or ventilation and/or protective equipment, a humid atmosphere and exposure to
hazardous chemicals and other substances can cause health problems for themselves and their
household members. Awareness on occupational safety and health (OSH) among HBWs is generally
rather low. When they get sick or have an accident, they have to stop working and seek treatment,
which they oftentimes cannot afford.
57
training session, and together they would monitor the OSH situation in members’ workplaces
and homes after the workshop to maintain compliance.
To ensure sustainability, the HNT regional network worked with local HBWs’ groups to identify
‘Model OSH houses’ in a community. ‘Model hospitals and primary care units’ were also
selected. HNT also met with sub-district health and administrative authority, to establish ‘OSH
Committees’ by local HBWs’ groups and HNT with public assistance. Such networks enable
public health personnel and administrative staff to hear from and to recognize HBWs in their
community.
Work continued from 2008 onwards, with support of UNIFEM, the Thai Health Promotion
Foundation and the Federation of Dutch Labour (FNV), using occupational health and hazard
prevention and social protection as entry points to promote awareness and motivate HBWs
to organize. In 2009-2010 WIEGO supported the drawing of lessons on how to promote OSH
awareness.
In 2012-14 FLEP and the HNTA advocated for the provision of OSH knowledge by primary
health care services to HBWs under the Universal Health Coverage scheme and to support
the access of informal workers to local health funds. A HNT committee member has been
elected in the National Health Security Ofce Board (NHSO) and has facilitated access of HNTA
members to health services. HNT also received NHSO support for an OSH promotion pilot.
Achievements were as follows:
l When HBWs learned that OSH awareness and safe work practices reduced injuries
and healthcare costs, and increased their productivity, they were keen to adapt their
working environment and work habits. Those with OSH problems knew where to
access healthcare and funding for health check-ups.
l The OSH workshops with local public health personnel and administrative personnel
in each community also made homeworkers understand why they need to organize to
have more visibility, and contribute to and benet from their community’s resources.
l HNT also noted that after the pilot workshops, more homeworkers apply to become
HNT members and organize in groups. HNT assisted local HBWs’ groups to register
as occupational groups under the local administrative structures to ensure that the
recognized community-based HBWs’ groups will receive ongoing support from the
local administrative agencies and budgets.
l Health and OSH awareness also made HBWs realize that they must engage at the
policy level as a membership-based HNTA to lobby for both local and national policy
changes.
l Through the building of partnerships between local HBWs’ groups, health care
providers and other community, provincial and national level organizations, HBWs
learned that such partnerships with other organizations substantially increased their
visibility and voice and ensured that legal and policy reform initiatives respond to
their needs.
In sum, OSH risk prevention has reduced HBWs’ need to access health care services and
their fear of loss of income and nancial burdens. OSH is a strategic entry point for organizing
58 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
4.9 Social security and assistance
The country case studies from India, the Philippines and Thailand describe the utmost importance
that HBWs attach to social security and assistance, in case of (occupational) diseases and accidents,
disability, pregnancy and maternity, support during old age and upon death.
The social security systems in the three countries are in development. In the 80s and 90s there was
hardly any social security system available to HBWs and other informal economy workers. For this
reason SEWA started VimoSEWA, an insurance programme with private companies in 1992 (see
further information later in this section). In Thailand, HNT also started a micro-insurance programme
for its members, but it was not possible to leverage the numbers required to set up a viable scheme.
Since then, there have been many developments with countries slowly developing social assistance
schemes, and growing international consensus on the need for countries to develop their social
security systems. The ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation No. 202 was almost unanimously
adopted at the International Labour Conference in 2012. Social protection oors are nationally dened
sets of basic social security guarantees aimed at extending essential health care and basic income
security to people as an essential part of national social security systems. The basic social security
guarantees include: essential health care, including maternity care; and basic income security for
children, for persons who are unable to earn sufcient income due to sickness, unemployment,
maternity and disability, and for older persons.
However, much remains to be done. Firstly, it seems HBWs are not adequately protected against the
risks of occupational injuries and diseases with the possible exception – in theory – of subcontracted
homeworkers in Thailand. The 2012 country’s Homeworkers Protection Act states: “An employer is
responsible for a medical treatment and funeral expenses of the homeworkers who are injured or die
because of the homework, on occupation hazards or injuries are not resulted from the homeworkers’
intention or gross negligence.” However, employers are individually liable to pay for these expenses and
they cannot insure themselves against this liability by contributing to the Workmen’s Compensation
Scheme (covering work-related injury, rehabilitation, disability and death). This makes it easy for
employers not to apply this article in practice. In addition, it is not possible for informal workers to
enroll themselves in this scheme.
In Thailand, the HBWs’ organizations made social security and social assistance coverage a priority
in policy advocacy, together with other informal workers’ organizations in agriculture, street vending,
domestic work and the entertainment industry. As a result, HBWs can access health care under
the Universal Health Coverage Scheme for all Thai nationals funded by the State, and can access
a limited number of welfare programmes for impoverished families and persons. Policy advocacy
as it meets direct initial needs, increases productivity and well-being and motivates HBWs to
organize. Using OSH as an entry point, HNT leaders also learned about the structural income
and social security concerns of HBWs and other informal sector workers who are unable to
work because of sicknesses and accidents and this enabled them to respond by advocating
for better social security for informal sector workers.
59
by HBWs’ organizations has resulted in the set up of nine Health Coordination Centres for informal
workers under this scheme to raise awareness on the health rights of these workers and to accept
complaints nationwide.
Since 1994, the self-employed can become a member of the social security scheme on a voluntary
basis but they need to pay both the employer and the employee contributions. Thus, even with
government subsidies, HBWs consider that the contributions are generally considered too high to
afford. Research from 2013 indicates that less than 5 per cent of informal workers avail of this social
security option for the self-employed.
23
In the Philippines, HBWs also have access mainly to the publicly funded health (PhilHealth) and other
welfare programmes for indigent population groups, many of which are means-tested. As mentioned
in section 3.4, PATAMABA Region VI chapter set up the indigenous Damayan scheme to help the
bereaved. PATAMABA and its chapters have also been lobbying for the amendment of the Social
Security System (SSS) Law to allow for informal sector representation in the SSS Commission and
have helped to explore mechanisms to enroll and maintain membership of informal workers in the
SSS:
l PATAMABA helped persuade the SSS to allow self-employed HBWs to avail of social insurance
through the Automatic Debit Account arrangement. This scheme was tested in PAMATABA
Balingasa Chapter in cooperation with a Bank, the DOLE and the SSS: Informal workers
could open an account with the bank from which their SSS monthly contribution would be
deducted.
l Some PATAMABA chapters support another SSS programme called AlkanSSSya for informal
workers that allow members to save for their SSS contribution. Informal workers save a small
daily minimum amount to meet the required regular monthly membership contribution at
their informal workers’ organization. A depository box for the members’ daily contributions
is located and kept safe at the organization.
With regard to social security and assistance for HBWs in India, SEWA conrms the learnings from
many countries that the approach to implementation is very important: decentralized services close
to women and managed by local organizations are most effective. SEWA has set up its own social
insurance programme, represents workers on several tripartite welfare boards, and lobbies for the
expansion of coverage and benets of welfare boards for HBWs and other informal economy workers
as follows:
l SEWA’s insurance programme, VimoSEWA, was established in 1992 to protect women and
their families from catastrophic expenditure. Over 10 million women, men and children
are insured by VimoSEWA. The woman is the primary insured member, and she has the
option of insuring her family for an additional premium. The current insurance package is
an integrated product, with life (natural and accidental), asset and mediclaim coverage.
Implemented in partnership with insurance companies, the product has evolved over time
to consistently meet the needs of women in the informal sector.
l SEWA represents workers in tripartite welfare boards for specic industries. Funds are
raised by levying a tax on the production of specied goods, and/or through contributions
from various sources including employers, employees, as well as the government. The funds
are used for meeting expenditures for the welfare of workers, as prescribed in the laws or
schemes concerned, for example, for bidi and garment workers. SEWA facilitates linkages
60 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
of its members to the schemes by providing them information about the law. It also works
with the implementing government agencies to identify workers, and provides individual
guidance to the workers during their documentation for registration and issuance of identity
cards.
l SEWA also advocates for the formation of other welfare boards, and inclusion of its
members. For example, in 2007 SEWA was instrumental in lobbying for the creation of the
Urban Informal Economy Workers Welfare Board in Gujarat, and ensured that HBWs such
as the incense stick rollers, ready-made garment stitchers and kite-makers were included.
Again, SEWA worked with the State’s Labour Department to ensure workers knew about
the new board and its benets, and that they were issued identity cards to gain access to
the benets. SEWA also advocates that welfare boards expand the usual benets, such as
scholarships and medical benets, to also cover skill training and provision of equipment
kits.
61
A main challenge to overcome, for both homeworkers and own-account workers is the extreme
precariousness of their work which makes it difcult to establish and maintain sustainable
organizations. The majority of HBWs are engaged in survival strategies, and it takes strong and
committed leaders to address these immediate economic challenges, organize themselves and
others to reach the longer term strategic goals by setting up an organization that is owned by the
members and nding the time, and the human and nancial resources to make this possible.
5.1 HowtodevelopandgrowHBWs’organizations
Role of founders and leaders
The HBWs’ organizations described in the case studies were founded by strong women leaders,
many from the trade union and/or women’s movement who became committed to improving the
working and living conditions of HBWs. These founders sought out, nurtured and build capacities of
women HBWs who had the potential and interest to become leaders of HBWs in their communities
and beyond. The case studies show that many strong and talented women leaders emerge from
HBWs’ groups and organizations, and are today managing HBWs groups at the local, national and
international levels.
Of course challenges exist. For example, in many local organizations in Chile, there was a steady
core of three or four workers with other women joining on a more irregular basis. Working as they
did, at a survival level, many women had multiple demands on their time and energy, and spending
time on fact nding or organizing was not always possible, especially when they could see no quick,
immediate gains. Such challenges can be overcome by intensive, long term capacity development,
through training, learning-by-doing, coaching and mentoring, not overburdening HBWs (potential)
leaders beyond their capacity, keeping voluntary tasks within reasonable limits, remunerating people
for work where possible, and inspiring and training large talent pools of young HBWs’ leaders.
CreatingHBWs’organizations
As mentioned in the case study from India, like-minded women founders decide to set up an
organization, answering questions like: ‘What do we want to achieve and how do we make it work?
Why organize HBWs? What outcomes and impact do we expect from organizing? How to go about
organizing? What will be the guiding philosophy and values that will govern the organizing process?’
5. Building sustainable HBWs’
organizations
62 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Answering these questions means shaping the organization, or in other words, developing the
strategic management framework of the organization. In summary, the key components in setting
up an organization are usually as follows:
l Organizers, leaders and founders of institutions work with a vision about the organization in
their minds and hearts.
l This vision indicates the direction in which they will keep moving as a life-long mission.
l They provide the basic ideology and value system that govern the decisions and actions of
the members, leaders, staff and volunteers of the organization.
l They set the goals of the organization, the specic objectives to be achieved within certain
time periods, and the strategies, that is, the ways and means for taking the organization
forward towards achieving its goals and objectives.
l They usually are also good managers, directing and managing people within and outside the
organization and ensuring that work gets done in a timely manner.
l They design and agree upon the decision-making and management structure and systems
of the organization: Strategies need to be given hands and feet through the development
of programmes and projects and in order to implement these successfully, an organization
needs a decision-making and implementing hierarchical framework.
l When organizations grow, people specialize and become responsible for certain tasks for
efciency purposes. If the organization grows further, separate units are set up each with
their specic roles, functions, responsibilities and decision-making authority.
l The growth of an organization also means that the organization needs a management
control system to ensure effective and efcient delivery of activities and use of funds. This
includes setting up administrative and nancial procedures, documenting operations, and
the monitoring and evaluation of operations, holding people and units responsible and
accountable within the organization.
Goodpractice5.1.1:SpecifythegoalsofthedifferentHBWs’organizationsatlocal,national
and international levels
The SEWA case study from India indicates that it is useful to differentiate between the objectives
of primary HBW member organizations at the community level, the umbrella federation and
different support organizations run by HBW members or support NGOs. SEWA is a trade union
of self-employed women from the unorganized sector. SEWA founders and members have
initiated a number of organizations with specic objectives, roles, programmes and activities:
l The HBWs in the communities who are the primary members of SEWA have formed
their own organizations with a variety of objectives, such as increasing access to
decent jobs and incomes, improving working and living conditions through self-
development and self-organization. For example, HBWs who are engaged in stitching
of garments have formed their cooperatives, associations or self-help groups in their
respective towns and villages and each of these groups have their own decision-
making structure, administrative set-up and systems. Strategic decisions are taken
by the management committee or executive council after formal discussions with
members and inputs from a knowledgeable expert as external resource person. These
63
Theinstitutionalanddecision-makingstructureofHBWs’organizations
Every HBWs organization is, of course, different, depending on the societal context, culture and
the origins of the organization, and the HBWs’ organizations in the country case studies are also
at different stages of organizational development, but some general trends can be discerned. For
example, small, new organizations start with a horizontal management structure usually based on
consensus or the ‘one member, one vote’ principle. However, as soon as the organization takes on
more and different types of work, it becomes important to specialize and allocate specic duties
to each leader, and a hierarchical system is usually adopted when organizations employ staff to
undertake specic duties.
In a membership-based organization, the important, strategic decisions are taken by the members.
Leaders, staff and volunteers are accountable to their members, but the management structure of
the organization is hierarchical with a clear allocation of duties and decision-making power at each
level.
The institutional and decision-making structure of SEWA in India, PATAMABA in the Philippines and
the HBWs organizations in Thailand are explained below.
community-based HBWs organizations are members of the HBWs’ organizations at
the state, national and international levels.
l SEWA, as the umbrella union federation has the same overall goal as its primary
members: improving the status and situation of HBWs and addressing their needs
and priorities. But its organizational objectives are different, such as, developing
member capacities and improving legal or social protection for its members through
effective policy advocacy and knowledge sharing and development. SEWA has its
own organizational structure and management systems to achieve these objectives.
SEWA members have set up different sister organizations with specic aims and
support functions such as SEWA Bank for nancial services and IASEW for research
and capacity building. These, in turn, have their own structure and systems. However,
all these organizations work within the strategic framework of SEWA as well as their
own.
Example 5.1.1: The institutional and decision-making structure of SEWA.
The structure of the union is based on trade groups. The 125 trade groups represent diverse
communities of women who choose group leaders from among themselves. The group leaders
for each trade meet every month as the Trade Committee, to discuss the ongoing problems
and strategies of action. They are the main catalyst for action in each trade group. They in turn
choose leaders to send to the Trade Council, which includes all the trade groups of SEWA. For
every 200 members in a trade, one representative is sent to the annual Trade Council meeting
to learn about the work of the other trades. From this 5,000-member Council, the Executive
Committee of the union is elected.
The Executive Committee of 25 trade leaders and four staff organizers meets once a month
to take the major political decisions of the organization such as whether a trade group will
64 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
strike, or what resolutions they will put forward to the government or the public. Resolutions
cover both work issues, for example, demands for a Commission on self-employed women or
minimum wage notication, and social issues, including prohibition of alcohol and sati – widow
burning, an Indian custom where a widow is expected to put herself on re and commit suicide
upon her husband’s death. The Executive Committee assigns work to the paid organizers of
the union, who carry out their mandates. The Executive Committee members are the inspired
leaders of SEWA. They are unanimously dedicated, articulate, and empowered women. The
majority of the Executive members are in their 40s and 50s, due to their experience and
because they have more time to devote to the unpaid work of the union, once relieved of the
burden of child rearing.
In SEWA, core values are reected in its organizational structure and the day-to-day practices
followed at every level in the organization. Key aspects of the strategic management framework
of SEWA are:
l From the start, SEWA has developed complete clarity about her values and ideology,
and the Gandhian philosophy is a signicant aspect. This clarity is reected in all the
institutions and levels of SEWA and her sister institutions.
l A core group consisting of founders of SEWA and its sister organizations has been
formed for periodical planning, review and strategic decision-making. Members
of this group ensure that SEWA’s strategic framework – its ideology values, goals,
objectives and policies – is retained and strengthened by all the institutions and
their units. This group also provides strategic inputs to specic issues as and when
required.
l The Annual General Meeting of SEWA provides a unique platform for scanning the
business environment and sharing progress of the respective institutions. Every
institution and unit of SEWA gives a presentation on its progress and activities during
the year. Moreover, every institution develops a strategic plan of its operations on the
basis of the environmental assessment.
l There are certain organizational or business practices which are carefully inculcated
in the working of the various institutions. These practices ensure (i) adherence to
SEWA core values and goals; (ii) implementation of SEWA’s strategy of women’s
empowerment through capacity building, and (iii) consistency in SEWA messages
and operations internally and externally. Key features of these practices are as
follows:
w Every institution enjoys full autonomy in its operations. However, all institutions
must follow SEWA policies with respect to government programmes, international
funding, accounting policies and external reporting within SEWA’s strategic
framework.
w There is a heavy emphasis on capacity building through training and exposure
visits. SEWA has developed a large cadre of master trainers and trainers who
deliver training for grassroots level members as well as for international target
groups.
w To encourage learning from each other, team members of one district visit
another district and evaluate their work. In the process they develop managerial
qualities and skills in conceptualizing, analyzing and implementing.
65
w Strategically SEWA focuses on collective leadership. Learning opportunities are
provided to all and decisions are taken in meetings, not by one person but
collectively. This has contributed to developing a sense of ownership and to
efcient implementation of decisions.
w SEWA has a culture of continuous and open communication within SEWA and her
sister organizations. This has played a great role in creating an understanding
of SEWA’s strategic framework among SEWA employees and volunteers.
The institutional structure of SEWA is attached as Annex 2.
Example 5.1.2: The institutional and decision-making structure of PATAMABA.
PATAMABA is a people’s organization, thus, its leaders are elected at every level – from the
barangay or village, to the municipal, provincial, regional, and national structures. PATAMABA
members are organized in craft groups at the community, village or barangay level which
form the backbone of the organization. A minimum of 17 members can constitute a barangay
chapter, and they will elect a barangay council of nine members. The local structures from the
barangay to the regional levels coordinate the activities in their locality and discuss PATAMABA
policies and decisions. This information is transmitted to the national structure which
discusses and decides on PATAMABA’s directions. This ensures that the members even at the
smallest unit are participating in the decision-making processes of the organization. The local
structures are responsible for membership recruitment, expansion and consolidation. They
must submit written reports to the immediate higher structure. To date, the majority of the
local chapters are either at the provincial or municipal levels, and there are only four regional
structures, namely in Region III, VI, IV-A and the National Capital Region.
Figure 2. PATAMABA chapters from the local to the regional levels
66 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
At the national level, PATAMABA’s structure consists of the Congress, the National Council and
the Executive Committee as follows:
Figure 3. National PATAMABA structure
The Congress is the highest decision-making body of the organization. It has the power to
amend the Constitution and by-laws, approves strategic programmes and projects and elects
the members of the National Council. It is composed of representatives coming from the local
chapters and incumbent National Council members who meet every three years. Decisions
are based on at least three-quarters of the votes of the representatives in attendance during
the Congress.
Prior to convening of the Congress, pre-congresses are held in all local chapters (either regional
provincial or municipal chapters) to discuss the proposed agenda of the Congress and input
their ideas, suggestions and recommendations. In the pre-congresses, the representatives of
the local chapters to the National Congress are elected.
The National Council is composed of 17 members and serves as the highest governing body
of the organization until such time that the Congress is convened. It approves policies, plans,
projects and activities based on the decisions of the Congress. It meets twice a year and
elects the members of the Executive Committee.
The Executive Committee is composed of nine members, namely, the National President,
the National Vice-President who is also the Chairperson for Organizing, and chairpersons
respectively for education and training; projects and fund raising; networking, advocacy and
paralegal work; marketing; health and social protection; and the Secretary; and the Treasurer.
The Committee is responsible for the day-to-day operations of PATAMABA and the Chairperson
for organizing monitors the activities of the local chapters on a quarterly basis. It meets once
a month or as the need arises.
PATAMABA leadership is made up of HBWs and informal workers. The majority of them
have high school and grade school education. Out of the nine members of the Executive
67
Committee, only three were able to nish college or a university education but are all engaged
in home-based work. Two of them nished a degree in commerce; one is currently producing
fashion accessories and the other produces footwear and homecare products. Another one is
a graduate of Education and was a former sawali weaver.
In terms of representation and voting rights during Congress, the number of voting
representatives is 10 per cent of the total membership of the highest local structure. The
regional structures can eld four candidates for an elective position in the national ofce;
the provincial structures have three candidates while the municipal structures have two
candidates. The candidates must be elected ofcers of the respective local structures.
Afliates, on the other hand, are clustered into six sub-sectoral groups and are allowed to eld
one candidate per sub-sectoral group.
Example 5.1.3: The institutional and decision-making structure of HomeNet Thailand,
HNTA and FLEP
HomeNet Thailand or the HNT has functioned as a network of occupational HBWs’ groups and
support NGOs since the early 90s and the HNTA, the association of HBWs was registered only
in 2013. The members of the HNTA are mostly women working in the garment subcontracting
industry. In communities members form into occupational groups with group leaders in four
regions and Bangkok. In each region these group leaders elect regional representatives, who
nominate and elect the candidates for the HNTA National Committee which is then presented
to the General Assembly for approval. The current Committee members have been selected
from the initiators of the HNTA, all of which are homeworkers, own account workers or informal
workers who are regional or national HNT representatives. They meet four times a year to
discuss the running of the Association and will serve as an interim committee for a year. In the
future it is planned to elect the National Committee every three years.
Figure 4. HomeNet Thailand Association’s structure and election mechanism
68 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
In the past, HNT decisions were made by the HBWs’ leaders who were committee leaders
but both HBWs’ leaders and FLEP staff were represented in the Committee. Both had voting
rights, thus the decision-making power belonged to the HBWs leaders and the FLEP even if
FLEP decided to act as guiding partner and facilitator during Committee meetings. FLEP was
responsible for book keeping and nance, administrative and secretariat functions because
of its status as registered NGO.
The FLEP has been gradually transforming decision-making responsibility to HBWs’ leaders in
the HNTA network to prepare them to run the HNTA and take decisions based on the members’
needs. In the future, FLEP and other experts will no longer participate in the voting and decision-
making processes of the HNTA. FLEP has been responsible for supplying evidence-based
research, developing policy papers and recommendations for HNTA’s campaigns and policy
advocacy because of its well established expertise, its connections with the academic network,
and its capacity to attract international donors and to manage domestic and international
research projects, which have complicated nancial and administration requirements. As
FLEP Director, Poonsap Suanmuang Tulaphan says:
“It will be a demanding task for a newly registered association to run the nancial and research
management on its own, but HNTA gradually manages its own fund and FLEP involves them
in participatory research so they can learn how to do this. I have witnessed many groups fall
apart because of nance-related problems. When they receive funding from external funding
agencies, they want to focus only on pursuing one’s own interests and position in society
rather than solving members’ problems.”
HNTA as a membership-based organization for and by HBWs seems to enjoy more legitimacy
at the national and international levels. However, HNTA and FLEP face several strategic
challenges. Firstly, HNTA wants to increase the membership and thus receive more membership
contributions. However, the annual contributions of members are very low amounting to THB
20 (around USD 0.80) per year. With the current membership of 5,000 HBWs this comes
to an annual budget of THB 100,000 (around USD 3,200). The membership fee is used to
cover transportation costs for the monthly meetings of the Committee members. All other
activities such as printing a newsletter and holding meetings require external funding and the
HNTA relies on FLEP and other internal or external donors to assist with resource mobilization,
management and reporting.
Secondly, with such a small resource base it will be difcult to provide intensive leadership
training to create a healthy number of young leaders, and to build members’ capacities for their
social and economic empowerment. With WIEGO support under the Inclusive Cities project, the
HNTA and the FLEP organized intensive training and organizing. This has encouraged leaders
to come forward. Several trained group leaders interviewed said that the best motivation for
joining HNTA is the advancement of HNTA members at community level. For example, a female
group leader, who was assisted by HNTA to form a Bangkok registered sewing group said:
“When other homeworkers realize that joining a group is better than working alone and be
exploited because of the race to the bottom among homeworkers, they express their interest
to join. Subcontractors and brokers often claim they have been offered a lower price from
other people in the community to keep the piece rate low. When we have a group and we have
been trained to negotiate with brokers, we can agree and decide collectively. We have more
bargaining power and eventually brokers give us a better rate than individual homeworkers.
69
KeystrategiesforbuildingsustainableHBWsorganizations
Experience from SEWA, PATAMABA and the HBWs’ organizations in Thailand show that HBWs
organizations need to develop strategies to develop their organizations successfully in the elds of:
l Human resource management and development.
l Resource mobilization, nancial resource planning, accounting, nancial and administrative
management, and auditing.
l Marketing.
l Technology management.
l Alignment with government policies and frameworks.
l Implementation.
Some of these issues are the results of increasing professionalism in the management of
organizations; the changing prole of leaders, staff and volunteers in HBWs’ organizations; and the
impact of globalization and technological advancements.
Humanresourcemanagementanddevelopment.
The founders of the HBWs organizations in the four case studies were women, who were local and/
or national leaders and organizers coming from the trade union and/or women’s movement. They
sought out and built capacities of HBWs who became leaders, rst of community level occupational
or trade groups, and later of provincial, regional, national and international HBWs’ organizations.
During the initial stages, the HBWs’ organizations and their support agencies have a relatively small,
manageable team of leaders and implementers, consisting of HBWs and their supporters who share
the same perceptions, commitment and approaches towards advancing the cause of HBWs. Many of
them are volunteers and the HBW’s leaders often have little formal education.
Over time, however, human resource management demands increasing attention particularly among
HBWs’ organizations with a large membership in a vast geographical area. Expansion calls for formal
appointments and engagement of salaried staff who are relatively more educated. Slowly, managerial
When neighbours see that our group is doing well, they express their interest to learn about
the group and I can introduce them to HomeNet.”
Finally, it will be challenging for the Association to help their members to address their
economic needs. HNTA members indicate that material and nancial gains are the main
reasons for people to join the association. In the past, FLEP has utilized labour law reform,
occupational safety and health, and social security as entry points for organizing. Economic
empowerment is, therefore, a relatively new goal for the HNTA. To date, HNTA has followed
FLEP’s strategy to act as a facilitator between HBWs groups and local, provincial or national
public or private sector agencies to secure technical and nancial support for the groups, for
example, by helping a group to access a ‘green market’ outlet in the North-East.
70 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
and technical professionals also enter the organization. Ideally, larger HBWs’ organizations have
leaders and staff who are spirited, dependable, hard working and committed professionals. However,
a major interest of salaried staff is generally their career development which may or may not be
aligned with the vision, mission and goals of the HBWs’ organization. Salaried staff also require
job descriptions with clearly dened roles, functions and a performance appraisal system linked to
compensation and rewards. The development of suitable human resource management policies and
procedures is a challenge for large growing HBWs’ organizations.
A human resource challenge faced by community-based HBWs organizations is that some HBWs’
leaders are rent-seeking individuals who want to benet economically or politically from the
community-based group.
Finally, the case studies show that that the composition of the leadership, many of whom are founders
of the HBWs organizations, remains largely the same over the years, even if regular elections are held
and the HBWs’ organizations invest in training new generations of leaders. Planning of successor
arrangements, therefore, is needed.
Building managerial capabilities. Through training, guidance, mentoring and learning-by-doing,
strong and talented women became very effective in organizing, policy advocacy and resource
mobilization. This is because the HBW organizations and their support organizations emphasized
capacity development of HBWs to manage their primary organizations at the community level and set
up MBOs. For example, the rst four PATAMABA leaders faced the problem of upgrading their skills
to be able to run a national organization effectively and efciently. Most of them had grade school
education and none had formal training in management and administration. Through seminar and
workshops on planning, project development, business and nancial management, as well as on-
the-job training conducted with the help of supportive professionals, they have shown that they are
capable of applying the acquired skills to run their own organization.
GoodPractice5.1.2:BuildingmanagerialcapacitiesofHBWs
SEWA believes that women’s empowerment is not possible without capacity building. An
external agency or institution can help or guide HBWs in their struggles in specic points in
time. But in the long run, HBWs and their organizations have to develop their own technical,
human and managerial capacities. Therefore, capacity building on organizing and organization
building has to be planned as a continuous programme through training and exposure visits.
Secondly, in the process of women’s empowerment, SEWA realized that for managing their
organizations better, HBWs must develop their ‘business mind’ and managerial capabilities.
When SEWA started to focus on women’s enterprise development, it felt the need for capacity
building on economic empowerment to survive in global competition. As a strategic response,
SEWA established the SEWA Academy, now known as the Indian Academy of Self-Employed
Women (IASEW) for training and capacity building of HBWs and other members. This Academy
conducts SEWA related trainings, membership trainings, life skill trainings and literacy training.
It also conducts research which provides a base for new SEWA initiatives for her members.
Later on in 2005, SEWA established SEWA Manager Ni School (SMS) which organizes training
programmes and other capacity building initiatives on managerial, human and technical
aspects of micro enterprise development.
71
Resourcemobilization,andnancialandadministrativemanagement.
Mobilization of nancial resources to run a HBWs’ support organization is crucial to enable operations.
Founders, leaders, Committee members and advisers will usually provide voluntary guidance to the
organization. Leaders and members will generally also commit volunteer time and resources to lead
and contribute to the organization, especially at the start and regularly thereafter, for example, for
membership drives or policy advocacy rallies. However, there is a need to mobilize nancial resources
to carry out substantive activities to reach organizational aims, such as providing services to members,
developing capacities, expanding membership, and engaging in action research, public relations,
policy advocacy and networking. In addition, staff of, for example, cooperatives, HBWs’ marketing
organizations, and support NGOs, federations must be remunerated, as they do this work for a living.
HBWs who take on full-time outreach and organizing work also need to be remunerated.
Resource mobilization is, therefore, part and parcel of the regular work of HBWs’ organizations and
their support agencies. The PATAMABA and the HNTA-FLEP case studies explain resource mobilization
strategies with regard to sustaining the local chapters and running the national and regional/provincial
structures. The HWW reports that it was not possible to sustain CECAM’s work after external funding
dried up, while the MWPRI in Indonesia also reports that its activities depend on whether external
resources could be secured. The IASEW case study does not address this issue.
As mentioned earlier, the main strategy of PATAMABA and the HNTA-FLEP for meeting the development
needs of their members are to attract external donor nancing from within or outside the country for
activities and staff undertaking research, policy advocacy and pilot projects, and to meet economic
needs of HBWs community groups by linking them to programmes and resources from local, national
or international government and other agencies’ programmes and budgets. The PATAMABA case study
also emphasizes the importance of self-reliance, of women leaders budgeting and saving resources
to run the organization at local and national levels. In recent years, the HNTA-FLEP case study has
also started to set fees for the start of and annual membership but the amounts are so small that
they only allow for meeting the transportation costs of Committee members for meetings.
In terms of nancial planning, management, reporting and auditing systems, HBWs organizations
need to develop nancial and administrative systems in line with reporting and auditing requirements
of the organization and its donors. Accounting is not just record-keeping, but is also a tool in decision-
making. For example, if a primary organization of HBWs is considering a revision of membership
subscription, past data on such subscriptions can be helpful in decision-making. Similarly, basic
accounting can also help in generating information on costs and fund ows. Such information can
help in managerial decision-making on cost and fund management.
HBWs’ organizations should also develop a strategy with regard to the administrative records that will
be maintained to generate reports for planning, oversight and supervision. Administrative records
go beyond the nancial system and also cover non-nancial operations like membership records,
minutes of meetings, records of training days and eld visits, employee records, etc.
Marketing and public relations strategies. The design of successful marketing and public relations
strategies is important for HBWs in many aspects. At the level of primary organizations, HBWs groups
need to market their products or services to consumers, or other actors in local, national or global value
chains. Homeworkers need to obtain adequate work from contractors and other middlepersons, and
negotiations need to take place with suppliers of material or equipment. This requires a business and
marketing mindset with attention for product or service aspects like quality, punctuality, consistency
and negotiating payment terms and conditions.
72 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
In policy advocacy, campaigning and organizing, HBWs and their organizations also need to market
their ideas and agenda’s in calls for negotiations, representations and communication with several
agencies, such as government and various service providers like banks, insurance companies, and
training institutions.
Technology management. Technologies change fast and this has a, sometimes, profound impact
on the viability of HBWs’ economic activities and the effectiveness of their organizations. Technology
strategies for HBWs’ organizations may cover issues like use of new technologies in campaigning, the
application of information technology, new skill development, nancial assistance, record generation,
maintenance and upkeep. It is important for HBWs and their organizations to remain up-to-date
with technological advancements, because such changes have implications for skill development,
employment, incomes, investments and material infrastructures. On the whole, technology strategies
should, where feasible, ensure that new technologies do not result in reduction of employment and
income of HBWs.
Regularmonitoringtoensureeffectiveimplementation
The IASEW case study emphasizes that the design of a strategy or measure does not guarantee
success in organizing HBWs, meeting their needs and achieving their goals. Much also depends on
how strategies are implemented. For example, training requires follow-up, and new or revised laws
need to be implemented and enforced. This requires persistent and sometimes long-drawn struggles,
and continuous follow-up and monitoring.
SEWA observes that many HBWs’ organizations, particularly those at the primary level do not have
a clear and integrated perspective on how to manage and organize their plans and reach their
objectives. Such HBWs’ organizations do not have efcient accounting and record-keeping systems
or do not keep them in order. They nd it difcult to prepare management and output-oriented
reports and information. They do not have efcient marketing strategies and cost-effective technology
applications in place and they are often not able to engage in quick decision-making in a general way.
5.2 HBWs’alliancesandnetworkingatthenationaland
international levels
Successful policy advocacy requires intensive networking and cooperation between like-minded
organizations and beyond. In the early 90s, national and international HBWs’ organizations,
supported by the international trade union and women’s movements, rallied around home work. They
successfully lobbied for the preparation and adoption of international standards for the protection
and development of subcontracted homeworkers at two successive International Labour Conferences
in the mid 90s, resulting in the adoption of Home Work Convention No. 177 and Recommendation
No. 184 in 1996.
73
Nationallevelcooperationandnetworking
In many countries, HBWs organizations have joined other organizations of informal economy workers,
including street workers, cyclo and (motor) taxi drivers, domestic workers and entertainment workers
to lobby for legal reform, better policies, programmes and projects in the labour and social protection,
and economic development arenas at the national and international levels. For example, in Thailand,
HNTA and FLEP have worked intensively with other informal workers organizations and networks to
extend informal workers’ access to social security.
Goodpractice5.2.1:Strengtheningthenetworkthroughcriticalself-assessment
As mentioned in section 4.6, PATAMABA and other HBW constituencies set up HomeNet
Philippines in 2006 as a network of 25 HBWs organizations, an NGO, a cooperative and experts
to come up for the rights of HBWs and HomeNet Philippines became the main organizer in the
campaign for the passage of the MACWIE bill with human and nancial resources contributed
by the network members.
An internal review in 2010 concluded:
l Identied strengths of HomeNet Philippines’ were: skills and competence of leaders
in each member-organization; IT skills of some; sense of volunteerism; capacity to
produce policy, information, education and communication materials; skills in policy
formulation; and the capacity to organize and engage members in advocacy work.
l Identied weaknesses included a lack of funds to sustain efforts both at the level of
member-organizations and the coalition; the lack of registration as a legal entity of
some member-organizations; problems of coordinating and synchronizing advocacy
activities between the coalition and the local chapters of the member-organizations;
and inability to maximize communication facilities for coordination purposes. All these
weaknesses were basically related to a lack of funding and an adequate number of
people to complete the various tasks within the network.
HomeNet Philippines made an effort to build on its existing strengths and overcome
organizational weaknesses. Its 2014 report to its Congress showed the progress made by
the coalition in terms of sustainability, unity, funds and development of second line leaders.
The network has shown that an advocacy programme can be maintained through small
contributions made by the different member-organizations, volunteerism of its leaders and
sharing other resources to ensure that the different components of the advocacy work are
implemented. Each organization also takes specic tasks and roles (aside from the formal
leadership roles) through volunteer work at the Secretariat.
The PATAMABA case study concludes that HomeNet Philippines needs to further build on its
strengths and that the current annual dues are very minimal to nance the advocacy agenda
of the coalition. Other means to raise funds to sustain advocacy strategies and disseminate
the advocacy agenda should be explored. Another important aspect is renewing the leadership
prole. The majority of the current leaders of member-organizations are people above 40
years old. Therefore, the coalition involves young leaders in the implementation of activities at
various levels in order to hone their skills in lobbying and advocacy work
74 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
RegionalcooperationinAsia
There are two networks of HBWs’ organizations in Asia. In the South Asia region, SEWA, UNIFEM,
WIEGO and other support organizations, like FNV have been supporting HomeNet South Asia (HNSA),
a network of 600 HBWs organizations from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
24
SEWA
also supports SEWA Afghanistan.
HomeNet South-East Asia (HomeNet SEA) was formalized as a network of HBWs’ organizations and
NGOs in 1997. Its founding members from Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand were joined rst
by NGOs from Cambodia and Lao PDR and later from Viet Nam and Malaysia to empower HBWs
and other informal workers and table their concerns and priorities on national and regional policy
agenda’s in the subregion.
International action
Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing. WIEGO is a global action-research-
policy network dedicated to increasing the voice, visibility and validity of informal workers. It was
established in 1997 by 10 informal economy specialists (from the French Institute for Development
Cooperation, Harvard University, HWW, ILO, SEWA, UNIFEM, the United Nations Statistical Division
and the World Bank). It now consists of 176 individual and institutional members from 40 countries.
WIEGO has been set up as a membership network with members from three constituencies:
organizations of informal workers; researchers and statisticians; and development practitioners.
WIEGO’s main strategies are to:
l Strengthen organizations and networks of informal workers.
l Improving statistics and research on informal workers.
l Promoting fair policies, regulations and practices in support of informal workers.
Example 5.2.1: Outcome of Global Conference of HBWs in early 2015
The conference was organized by HNSA and WIEGO in New Delhi and brought together 60
networks, associations and trade unions of HBWs, together with NGOs and researchers from
24 countries. The Conference issued the Delhi Declaration of HBWs and called for:
l Recognition of the contribution of women HBWs to family income security and to
local and national economies, and prioritization of the protection and development of
HBWs in poverty reduction and women’s empowerment initiatives and programmes.
l Design and implementation of laws and practical measures on social and labour
protection, based on decent work principles and workers’ rights so HBWs can live in
dignity, free from discrimination, poverty and deprivation through:
w Recognition of HBWs as workers.
w Extending and enforcing labour laws and protection: the right to fair prices in
markets for the self-employed and fair piece rates for subcontracted workers;
the right to secure, transparent contracts: work contracts for subcontracted
75
workers and commercial transactions for the self-employed; protection from
exploitation: provision of poor quality raw materials, arbitrary cancellation of
work orders or rejection of goods, or delayed payments; and the right to labour
inspection and complaint resolution mechanisms.
w Support to HBWs’ organizations and networks to achieve legal and formal status
to enhance access to public and private services and benets.
l Systematic data collection on HBWs and their contribution to national economies.
l Recognition of the rights to freedom of association and the right to collective
bargaining in line with ILO Conventions No. 87 and No. 98.
l Building better and inclusive markets.
l Formulation of effective local and national policies for HBWs.
l Extending social protection to HBWs.
l Providing essential urban infrastructure services to HBWs.
l Ratication of ILO Home Work Convention No. 177.
Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). HBWs’ organizations and their support NGOs have also sought ways
to work directly with the larger retail companies, that are often the most powerful economic actors in
many subcontracting chains. International networks of HBWs’ organizations link local organizations of
homeworkers to campaigning and advocacy in the countries where the transnational companies have
their customer-base. Thus, in 1998 an alliance of companies, trade unions and NGOs established the
ETI with the aim of improving the lives of workers in global supply chains by promoting responsible
corporate practice that supports this goal. ETI specializes in developing new approaches and tools for
implementing codes of practice that address supply chain labour conditions, and is widely recognized
as a global leader in this area. ETI is funded by member contributions and a grant from the UK
Department for International Development (DFID). The ETI Base code is founded on ILO conventions
and has become a model on which other codes are based. The ETI Base code contains the following
principles which must be respected in any economic activity:
l Employment is freely chosen.
l Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected.
l Working conditions are safe and hygienic.
l Child labour shall not be used.
l Living wages are paid.
l Working hours are not excessive.
l No discrimination is practiced.
l Regular employment is provided.
l No harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed.
76 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Goodpractice5.2.2:HomeworkerguidelinesoftheEthicalTradeInitiative
25
In 2002 an ETI Homeworkers Group was set up by ETI members. They conducted research
among homeworkers in the Christmas cracker industry in the UK and in the embellishment
industry in India. The group developed the ETI ‘Homeworker guidelines: Recommendations for
working with homeworkers’ which were eld tested, and published in 2006 in close cooperation
with HBWs’ organizations. The guidelines aim to increase the understanding on how to interpret,
monitor and implement the ETI Base code with homeworkers. The ETI homeworker guidelines
seek to provide practical guidance to ETI members, retailers, suppliers and others on:
l Identifying the presence of homeworking in supply chains.
l Applying, implementing and monitoring the ETI Base code with homeworkers.
l Meeting the standards of the ETI Base code with homeworkers.
The guidelines present denitions of homeworking, the extent and characteristics of home work
in international chains. It summarizes different initiatives tried out by commercial actors as well
as trade unions and NGOs around the world to improve labour conditions with homeworkers.
It explains the essential principles and the two different approaches to implementing these
guidelines: individual activity and collaborative work, including through multi-stakeholder
groups. It sets out what retailers, suppliers (agents, cooperatives, exporters, contractors and
subcontractors) can do to improve labour standards among homeworkers.
A comprehensive toolkit helps to implement the guidelines’ recommendations in practice.
These include:
l Model policy on homeworking for retailers and suppliers.
l Sample mapping tools for gaining information about the presence of homeworking in
supply chains, including a sample supply chain map.
l Application framework to interpret each ETI Base code clause in the homeworking
context, plus actions and indicators which can be used to implement and verify Base
code provisions with homeworkers.
l Questions to obtain information from homeworkers and a logbook for homeworkers’
use.
l Guidance on how to conduct time and motion studies to establish fair piece rates and
a list of companies which can help.
l Details of SEWA’s insurance fund and further information about purchasing practices
and how these can undermine the principles of the Base code.
SEWA, an ETI member, used the homeworker guidelines to establish RUAAB, a producer
company of home-based women artisans eliminating layers of middlepersons by facilitating
direct links with buyers in the global embellishment industry and ensuring fair incomes and
work security for the workers.
26
The case study by HWW points out that there have been both positive and negative results
from the ETI’s work on homeworking. On the positive side:
77
l ETI member companies are much more likely to recognize the value of the work done
by homeworkers than those who are not members. Homeworkers have been made
visible in the chains and became recognized by retailers. There is some acceptance
that homeworkers are producing for global supply chains and should be treated like
other workers and ways found to include them in accessing some legal rights.
l As a result of this acceptance, retailers and brands have encouraged their suppliers
to be transparent about subcontracting and particularly about homeworking. Earlier,
many companies would simply prohibit homeworking and see it as an unauthorized
form of subcontracting. As a result of more transparency, there is more recognition
and value given to homeworking and more openness about the problems.
l It has been demonstrated that it is possible to trace subcontracting chains and
identify where homeworkers are found in the chains.
l In India, some companies have adopted specic homeworking policies, employed
staff to deal with homeworking and committed to ensure minimum standards of pay
and conditions. Some homeworkers have been able to access government welfare
schemes and a minority has received an increase in pay.
However, there is still a long way to go before companies commit to fully implement the ETI
code and apply the core standards in the Base code to the employment of homeworkers.
Low pay and lack of access to order and work continue to be problematic. Few homeworkers
receive minimum wages, let alone living wages, particularly if the regularity of work is taken into
account. However, there are no compliance methods except the risk of damage to a company’s
reputation because adherence to the Base code is voluntary. Most companies have made
no commitment to paying minimum wages to homeworkers. The main barriers appear to be
company pricing and ordering practices that have had an inuence on their lack of willingness
to make this commitment throughout their supply chain. It appears that in most cases, ETI
company representatives failed to have sufcient inuence to have an impact on company
pricing practices, often driven by buyers looking for the lowest prices.
Recognition and visibility for homeworkers are an important rst step and can be used as a
starting point for those organizing homeworkers at the end of the supply chain. There is less of
a danger of homeworkers losing their work if local HBWs’ organizers can make alliances with
the HomeNet alliances, HWW, WIEGO, ETI the international trade union, women’s, cooperative
and fair trade movements and use this as a channel to the end user of their products. With
local HBWs’ organizers at one end of the chain with links with campaigners and NGOs and
trade unions at the other end, there is the possibility of working from both sides to bring about
decent work for homeworkers.
However, without a rm commitment from transnational retailers as well as local enterprises
engaging HBWs to the implementation of core labour standards, and a willingness to bear their
share of the costs, both in terms of time and changed business practices, as well as nancial
support, voluntary approaches still leave the burden of campaigning for basic labour standards
to the HBWs’ organizations and their support agencies.
78 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
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This report draws conclusions from the expertise, provided by the HBWs’ organizations which
contributed to this synthesis report. It summarizes the main achievements, good practices and
lessons learned. It highlights important organizing principles, approaches and strategies, and
provides suggestions for future action by home-based workers’ and their organizations working at the
local, organizational and policy levels to (i) develop, empower and organize HBWs, (ii) improve their
working and living conditions, and (iii) establish sustainable HBWs’ organizations.
6.1 Conclusions
HBWs in many countries started to organize in new ways, because traditional methods of organizing
formal sector workers were not adequate to meet the challenge of the increasing new forms of
informal employment. The case studies show that new forms of organizing have been tried out, tested
and selected by HBWs and their organizations in Chile, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Startingtheorganizingprocess
Horizontalandverticalorganizing
In most cases, action started with women’s unionists and labour rights activists initiating capacity
development with HBWs and helping them set up their own organizations. The economic needs and
concerns of HBWs in the same occupation formed the rallying point for organizing. Some local trade
unions were established by HBWs at the community levels, but the majority of HBWs’ community
group leaders and members decided to set up occupational groups, trade groups, labour groups,
self-help, savings or (pre-)cooperative groups.
Work started with capacity development of the HBWs, learning about human, women’s and workers’
rights, on gender, economic and political relations, on organizing, negotiating and advocacy, building
self-condence and skills to improve their income earning capacities. Such education and training
was most successful if it involved active participation, genuine two-way communication processes,
drawing from experience, learning-by-doing and personal commitment. In the process solidarity and
friendships were built, which could be called upon in times of need.
6. The way forward
79
In community-based organizations HBWs learned how to organize themselves and others, to increase
their social capital and income, and mobilize other HBWs to become active and join a HBWs’ group.
They became adept in formulating their priorities and demands, speaking for themselves in their
families and communities, and working to improve their incomes through cooperation between
themselves and negotiating with employers or their representatives, and/or buyers or traders and
the local authorities.
From the horizontal organizing of HBWs groups in communities, vertical structures were built. HBWs’
groups leaders emerged who were elected to campaign beyond the community level to ght for
institutional, policy and legal reform. As the IASEW case study states: At the grassroots level HBWs
learn how to negotiate with retailers and suppliers (agents, contractors or subcontractors and buyers
or exporters) and the local authorities. At the next level they have to struggle against ineffective
policies and procedures as well as institutional machineries which are bureaucratic and not service-
oriented, and at the third level they have to ght for legal reform and changes in laws, socio-economic
policies and development programmes as well as exploitative trade and labour practices at the
national and global levels.
Vertical organizing through elected leaders at the various levels allows for the identication of common
problems, the sharing of local solutions and the translation thereof into local and national agenda
calling for legal and policy reform and practical measures. National HBWs’ agenda based on the
realities in communities and specic trades or occupations is considered genuine by policymakers.
Widespread, concerted campaigning on the same priorities by representative membership-based
HBWs’ groups and support agencies allows for the build-up of sufcient pressure to result in legal
reform and policy changes, but often only after years of persistent struggle.
Achievementsandchallenges
Over the past 25 to 40 years, SEWA in India, PATAMABA in the Philippines, and HNTA and FLEP in
Thailand managed to develop HBWs’ human resources and social capital, and attract local, national
and international nancial resources to successfully:
l Organize HBWs at the primary level in occupational or trade groups, or as cooperatives or
associations in communities.
l Establish a membership-based organizational structure of HBWs with elected leaders from
the local up to the national levels.
l And in the case of SEWA, set up a range of sister institutions run by members to provide
economic, nancial, research and capacity building support functions to members.
SEWA registered as a trade union from the start and later developed many other types of membership-
directed support organizations, many of them in the economic sphere. PATAMABA registered as an
NGO but later also as a workers’ organization, and also registered with government departments in
charge of cooperatives, women’s development, and trade and industry at the national level and with
Local Government Units at the decentralized levels. In Chile CECAM’s women trade union leaders also
had the explicit vision of establishing an MBO directed by the HBWs themselves, but in the end could
not successfully reach this goal within the limited available timespan of three to four years. HomeNet
80 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Thailand started and operated as a HBWs and NGO network for many years and established the
HomeNet Thailand Association (HNTA) in 2013 with FLEP, the ‘parent’ NGO, carrying out the major
support functions.
In Indonesia, the ILO/MAMPU project worked with existing and new support organizations to organize
HBWs with a focus on homeworkers. The MWPRI which has operated as a network of CSOs supporting
HBWs and HBWs’ leaders for around 20 years remains predominantly active in East Java province
and new CSO partners started work in other provinces since mid 2014. Setting up a vertical structure
of HBW’s organizations with elected HBWs’ leaders representing the community at the district up to
the provincial and the national level remains a priority for future action in Indonesia.
Fundamentalorganizingprinciples
The emphasis of SEWA on the organizing principles of self-reliance and working one’s self out of
poverty to achieve decent work and social protection, and PATAMABAs emphasis on the importance
of HBWs organizing and empowering themselves seem to be essential ingredients for the building of
sustainable membership-based organizations, that are owned by HBWs from the start.
This means that the underlying philosophy behind any organizing should start with capacity
development to help HBWs help themselves. Any economic support services such as helping
homeworkers to negotiate with subcontractors or nding market outlets or credit sources for the
self-employed should be done with HBWs and be done only after HBWs have learned about the
importance of self-development and empowerment, and the values of organizing and collective
action to improve their incomes and working and living conditions, and have built their own skills to
earn income through, for example, negotiating, proposal writing, book keeping, or nancial literacy.
Providing economic support to HBWs only can result in continued dependency on external support,
culturing a hand-out mentality or rent-seeking behaviour within HBWs organizations.
Holistic,phasedapproachandintegratedstrategies
As the economic and social concerns of HBWs in poverty are many, multi-faceted and intertwined,
all HBWs’ organizations have developed an integrated approach to address these needs. Priorities of
HBWs usually include a combination of addressing deciencies in respect for human, women’s and
workers’ rights, and gender equality; in access to decent work, productive resources and assets, and
living wages or incomes; in access to social security, safe work, adequate housing and workplaces, and
in representation and voice in decision-making on issues that affect their life and work. Most HBWs’
organizations use a phased approach to organizing, starting with fact-nding, identifying pressing
concerns of HBWs and the causes hereof, followed by capacity development to address HBWS’
practical and strategic needs. Further actions are determined by the priorities of HBWs and available
entry points in their immediate or the larger policy, institutional and legal business environment.
81
ImprovingHBWs’workingandlivingconditions
Legalreform
Policy advocacy for legal reform on labour and social security protection has been successful in
India, the Philippines and Thailand, although much remains to be done. In India, SEWA successfully
lobbied for the implementation of existing laws on labour and social protection in certain industries,
such as bidi manufacturing and garment stitching, and the extension of legal and social protection
to several other industries, such as incense stick rolling, cotton pod shelling and embroidery. In the
Philippines and Thailand, PATAMABA and the HomeNet Thailand and the FLEP, among others, were
instrumental in the adoption of specic labour legislation to protect and promote the development of
homeworkers.
Legal reform to extend coverage of HBWs under labour, social, trade/industry and civil or commercial
laws is crucial to achieve the protection and development opportunities HBWs should be entitled
to like other workers. It is vital to start lobbying for legal reform at the decentralized and national
levels at an early stage. This requires longer timeframes than the customary two to ve year funding
cycles of development projects, as well as persistence, often over many years. However, legal reform
remains very necessary. Experiences by the HBWs’ support organizations in Chile and Indonesia have
shown that awareness-raising, negotiations and policy advocacy with the local authorities, employers
and their subcontractors, or traders can lead to practical measures to improve the working and living
conditions of HBWs at the local levels. But, political and public commitment must be enshrined in the
law, policies and programmes must be adopted, and budgets allocated to obtain institutional support
and mobilize public resources and services for HBWs in the long run.
While the adoption of appropriate legislation is a necessary condition for overall progress, it is not
sufcient. Where labour laws or regulations for subcontracted homeworkers have been adopted,
effective implementation has generally been seriously awed, as reported in the case studies from
India, the Philippines and Thailand. For this reason HBWs’ organizations emphasize the importance
of representation of HBWs in decision-making bodies, mechanisms and processes. In India, SEWA
participates in labour monitoring and social welfare boards in selected industries where many SEWA
members work. In Thailand, HNTA representatives are represented in the Home Work Committee
established under the Homeworker Protection Act, and in the National Health Security Ofce Board.
In the Philippines, PATAMABA is represented in the Anti-Poverty Commission and many other policy-
making bodies.
Economicempowerment
Basic education and functional and nancial literacy are skills that HBWs with little education need
to learn. Generally, HBWs’ organizations encourage HBWs to move from subcontracted home work
into self-employment and shift from individual micro-entrepreneurship to establish some form of
group enterprise, such as cooperatives or other forms of social enterprises. However, where there is
a strong economic demand for home workers, groups may wish to continue carrying out home work.
In order to meet the economic needs of community level member groups, HBWs’ organizations and
their support NGOs play an important role to enable HBWs’ groups to participate in development
programmes, and access funds and services. For example, in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand,
the HBWs’ organizations and their support agencies may provide some seed money but they do not aim
to secure major funds or economic support services for the HNTA grassroots members. Instead, they
82 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
do help with resource mobilization by connecting these members to local state funding agencies or
other local partners. Matching HBWs initiatives with local administrative bodies and budgets ensures
sustainability and continuation of activities, and this also enables them to access micro-nance loans
or grants from public or private sources. In a similar vein, some buyers, retailers, suppliers or their
subcontractors will call on HBWs organizations to link them to specic HBWs occupational groups, as
these groups are generally more business-minded and quality conscious.
SEWA has set up a range of economic support organizations, such as SEWA cooperative bank,
marketing and trade facilitation support as well as the IASEW academy to support the economic
activities of her members. One of the regional PATAMABA chapters has been operating a micro-
nance scheme for its members which is successful due to the intensive coaching and monitoring of
the borrowers and their repayments by PATAMABA regional leadership over many years.
Social security
There is general consensus among the ILO member States on the importance of providing a social
protection oor to population groups in poverty. The countries’ social security systems described
in the HBW organizations’ case studies are in development. However, for now, both subcontracted
homeworkers and self-employed HBWs are only covered under publicly funded health schemes
for the poor and the indigent in the Philippines and Thailand. Efforts to extend social security for
the self-employed also to HBWs including subcontracted homeworkers have been made, but the
contributions are generally not affordable to both subcontracted and self-employed HBWs. The social
welfare boards in India provide some social assistance for HBWs in certain industries. In SEWAs
home State, Gujarat, an Urban Informal Economy Workers Welfare Board has been created which
provides welfare to HBWs such as incense stick rollers, garment workers and kite-makers.
Protection of HBWs against occupational safety and health risks is not available in any of the
countries. As the home is also the workplace, and populations in poverty generally lack access
to adequate infrastructure, such as electricity, clean water, affordable, sturdy houses and roads,
occupational safety and health problems abound, jeopardizing the health and productivity of HBWs
and their family members. HomeNet Thailand provides an example of successfully using OSH as a
means of organizing homeworkers, and sensitizing rst the local and then the national health and
social security authorities to the need for basic health protection to HBWs.
BuildingsustainableHBWsorganizations
Humanandnancialresourcemobilizationandmanagement
Mobilizing adequate human and nancial resources continues to be a paramount challenge for
membership-based HBWs’ organizations and their support agencies. The case studies show that
there is a large talent pool of HBWs’ leaders at the primary organizational levels whose potential
can and must be harnessed from the start. Young generations of HBWs’ leaders require training
and capacity development to take the place of the older generations. Regular elections and limiting
successive terms of elected leaders are the methods selected to choose the HBWs’ leaders although
various HBWs’ organizations seem to have the same elected leaders for many years.
HBWs’ support NGOs and networks tend to rely on salaried staff for managerial, programming,
nancial, administrative, IT and other specic functions. For example in Thailand HBWs’ leaders have
83
from the start relied on the support NGO FLEP to attract nancial resources, implement development
projects and provide training and other services to members. SEWA and PATAMABA leaders frequently
volunteer their time to carry out leadership functions. Within SEWA and its sister institutions,
HBWs’ leaders have increasingly recruited paid staff to manage and run these institutions. This
can be challenging as larger numbers of paid staff require setting up professional human resource
management, development, supervision and evaluation functions. Attitudes of HBWs’ leaders who
are fully committed to the HBWs’ vision, goals and mission and of paid staff who have a job to earn
income may not always be aligned.
In terms of meeting the primary organizations’ need for nancial resources, the HBWs’ organizations
in the Philippines and Thailand do not provide substantial business development support services,
such as credit, market outlets or work orders, but link their primary organizations’ members to local
government and private sector programmes and funds. SEWA is providing many of these economic
support functions through its sister institutions.
Longer term, relatively modest external resources are needed to build the organizational capacity of
HBWs and their organizations, engage in policy advocacy beyond the community level and provide
services to their members. As the example of CECAM in Chile and the MWPRI in Indonesia seem to
show, the precariousness and informality of much of women’s home-based work and the absence
of protective legislation make it difcult to build stable structures overnight. The good practices and
examples from the other HBWs organizations have shown that HBWs can successfully be brought
together to organize and build sustainable organizations, networks and alliances. However, where
membership fees and dues are collected from members, these are very small. They serve to cover, for
example, transportation and meeting costs of HBWs leaders but can not cover the cost of professional
staff and the management of larger scale programmes and projects over any prolonged periods of
time.
Buildingpartnershipsandalliances
Successful HBWs organizations have built relations with supportive government leaders and politicians
at the various levels. They can also call on expert groups, committees, women’s human rights or lawyer
associations, workers’ organizations, and fair trade or socially and ethically responsible companies
and enterprise networks at the local, national and international levels to obtain professional legal and
business advice and guidance. HBWs’ organizations also form alliances with other groups of informal
workers and form a larger coalition of informal economy workers to pursue major policy reform.
While organizing has to have its roots in local forms of mobilization, education and capacity
development, international alliances and solidarity have an important part to play in ensuring that
HBWs, along with all other women workers, have a voice of their own and organizations through which
they can work to improve their working and living conditions.
84 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
The lessons and good practices of the HBWs and their organizations from the HBWs’ organizations’
case studies provide many specic suggestions for future action as follows:
Thestartofaction:Develop,empowerandorganizeHBWs
l Build in the principle of self-reliance from the start. Avoid doing things for HBWs which they
can learn to do for themselves, by themselves.
l Ensure that both social and economic goals and objectives are set by HBWs for their
organizations at the different levels which are clear and agreed upon among the members
and leaders. Translate objectives into a workplan and agree on who will do what by when.
l Identify the specic needs and concerns of local groups of HWBs and use these as an entry
point to build capacity and alliances to address them through collective action.
l Address the economic needs of HBWs that are often the main driver for HBWs to seek help
and work with others, with an emphasis on capacity development and collective action. Do
not provide nancial services or facilitate orders or marketing only, as it creates dependency.
6.2 Suggestionsforfutureaction
The HBWs’ organizations which prepared the case studies for this report have amply demonstrated
that collective organizing for rights and representation, achieving labour and social protection under
the law and economic empowerment are crucial to enable HBWs to earn adequate income through
decent work and ensure that they and their families can escape poverty and live a decent life. See
Figure 5 which shows the theory of change to reach this goal.
Figure 5: Theory of change
85
l Encourage community level HBWs groups to start a savings groups as it calls for organizing
regular meetings to collect payments.
l Maximize the use of existing community centers or gathering places to support HBWs’
activities and initiatives.
l Invest time, energy and support to enable learning-by-doing and collective decision-making
processes.
l Educate and train people on how to operate viable MBOs with economic, social and gender
equality goals, including fair incomes and workloads, and shared decision-making between
women and men in households, organizations and enterprises.
l Build self-condence, leadership and negotiation skills so that HBWs can inuence
and convince traders, retailers, suppliers (agents, contractors, sub contractors,
exporters), government and support organizations at different levels to support HBWs
demands.
l In capacity development, broaden perspectives of HBWs to understand that individual
problems often relate to larger inequalities and unequal power relations between men and
women, the rich and the poor, peoples of different, ethnicity, colour and other differences,
as applicable in each context.
l Address HBWs’ practical and strategic needs as women and as workers from population
groups in poverty, and invest in equality and non-discrimination training for HBWs, their
families, and their leaders.
Decentworkandsocialprotection:ImproveHBWsworkingandlivingconditions
l Develop and design a holistic and phased approach with integrated strategies to address
the multiple needs of low-income women HBWs and their families. The agenda for the social
and economic empowerment of HBWs depends on each local situation, but strategies
usually include a combination of:
w Social justice and respect for HBWs’ rights as women and workers through collective,
organized strength aimed at the visibility, recognition, voice, representation, and
validity of HBWs’ and their organizations.
w Capacity development of HBWs to enable them to compete in markets and value
chains, and manage and run their own organizations.
w Access to at least minimum piece rate wages for homeworkers and to productive
resources for all HBWs – including adequate housing which are HBWs’ workplaces –
and access to nancial services to build up assets in their own names.
w Access to safe work, social security and assistance.
l Develop an agenda for legal and policy reform, and law enforcement at the decentralized
and national levels.
w Engage in extensive campaigning to raise awareness among HBWs and key stakeholders.
w Have suggested solutions ready for review and consideration by policy makers or
employers when advocating improvements in the working and living conditions of
HBWs.
86 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
w Prepare multiple strategies when advocating, so that there is a back-up strategy to
continue advocacy, in case the initial strategy does not work.
w Help draft new laws and policies.
w Address local level HBWs’ realities and priorities in national agenda.
w Lobby for and ensure HBWs representation in decision-making mechanisms.
l Set priorities and objectives within specic timeframes:
w Identify the needs, concerns and priorities of HBWs.
w Scan their business environment to identify entry points and priorities for action.
w Set goals and objectives that are achievable within specic time frames.
l Identify, take into account and address the intertwined vulnerabilities and disadvantages of
specic groups of HBWs, caused by discrimination due to, for example, their gender, class,
caste, race, colour and ethnicity, health conditions (such as disability and HIV infection),
migrant status or any other characteristics which cause discrimination, and result in unequal
treatment and opportunities.
l Promote work-life balance:
w At the household level this means more equal sharing of paid and unpaid productive
and reproductive duties and responsibilities between female and male household
members.
w At the organizational and workplace levels it means arranging for practical childcare
facilities for workers with children.
w At the policy level, it means encouraging public agencies and companies to invest in
the provision of childcare facilities.
l Carry out extensive awareness raising on gender and HBW among the authorities at all
levels, among employers, actors in subcontracting chains, traders and other important
stakeholders about the value of women’s work, and their contribution to the family,
community, economy and society. Repeat this type of awareness raising at regular intervals
as policy makers, government ofcials and other key actors change, and others take their
place.
l Call for and facilitate evidence-based surveys for quantitative data and/or qualitative in-
depth research related to working relations and working and living conditions of HBWs for
negotiation with policy makers, the government ofcials, enterprises, intermediaries and
subcontractors. Involve HBWs in the design and validation of research ndings.
Buildingsustainablemembership-basedHBWs’organizations
l The development of HBWs’ organizations starts with jointly developing a vision, mission,
goals, objectives and strategies of the HBWs’ organization and doing a scan of the external
business environment to identify opportunities, entry points, and priority action. Then,
develop and design programmes and projects for which human and nancial resources
need to be identied.
l Draw up and implement an organizing strategy and campaign to recruit and retain members.
87
l Build in decision-making processes for the HBWs members to decide on the main directions
of the organization and hold elected leaders and staff accountable.
l Engage external experts and resource persons to allow for informed decision-making.
l Clearly dene and decide on the division of duties and responsibilities of members, leaders,
staff and volunteers within HBWs’ organizations.
l Record, report, document achievements of objectives and expected outcomes, production
of outputs, carrying out activities and use of nancial inputs. Ensure internal and external
accountability processes through regular participatory internal and external evaluations and
auditing.
l Small organizations means that HBWs’ leaders and staff need to be able to switch roles and
carry out multiple functions at the same time. In larger organizations, it is more effective
to have professionals carrying out specic functions along clear hierarchical lines and
supervised by HBWs’ leaders and their selected experts as appropriate.
Networkingandalliances
l Explore, identify and work closely with key persons from the government, enterprises, NGOs
and other institutions who can take up on HBWs’ issues.
l Cultivate relationships and work simultaneously with the government, employers’, workers’
and other relevant organizations to identify areas and measures to contribute to improving
the living and working conditions of HBWs.
l Engage the relevant government ofcials, enterprises and local leaders to create awareness
and promote better understanding on the working conditions and specic challenges faced
by homeworkers, so that they can support the efforts of HBWs.
l Identify available support programmes or schemes by the government or enterprises so that
homeworkers can access and benet from them, such as training programmes or nance
schemes by the government or private service providers like banks, training by enterprises.
l Establish contacts with trade unions and other NGOs to explore areas for collaboration to
improve the living and working conditions of HBWs, build alliances, and plan for collective
policy advocacy.
l Establish and maintain contacts with HBWs’ organizations, other membership-based
organizations of informal workers and their support agencies at the local, national, regional,
and international levels to share knowledge and experience, and develop joint agenda for
action.
l Call on the ILO, UN Women and other relevant UN agencies in charge of developing,
promoting and supervising international labour and human rights standards to ensure that
HBWs are covered by these standards.
l Call on external donors to provide reliable nancial support over longer timeframes.
l Call on multinational, national and local companies, international and other buyers, retailers
and others to subscribe and adhere to the ETI Homeworker guidelines.
l Celebrate the 20
th
anniversary of the Home Work Convention No. 177 and Recommendation
No. 184 in 2016 by calling on:
88 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
w The ILO to develop and implement a plan of action to start a ratication campaign and
provide policy guidance to promote implementation.
w National governments to implement the Convention and develop national plans of
action for the protection and development of HBWs.
89
End Note
1 Convention No. 177 has been ratied by Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Tajikistan, and the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia. More recent landmark international labour standards for informal
women workers are the Domestic Workers’ Convention No 189 and Recommendation No.
201, which were adopted in 2011 and, to date, have been ratied by 22 countries.
2 More information available at: http://www.ilo.org/ilc/ILCSessions/104/texts-adopted/
WCMS_377774/lang--en/index.htm (accessed 5 Sep. 2015).
3 See Convention No. 204 on the transition from the formal to the informal economy, for
denitions, unless otherwise mentioned.
4 ILO; WIEGO: Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture, 2
nd
Edition
(Geneva, 2013).
5 Carr, M.; Chen, M. A.; Tate, J. 2000. “Globalization and home-based workers” in Feminist
economics, 6:3, pp. 127.
6 ILO; WIEGO: Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture, 2
nd
Edition
(Geneva, 2013), p. 39.
7 More information available at: http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/sites/bridge.ids.ac.uk/les/
reports/re40c.pdf (accessed 29 Aug. 2015).
8 UN Women; Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Cambodia: Training local authorities on gender
and migration (Phnom Penh, undated).
9 More information available at: http://web.worldbank.org/
WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/XTEMPOWERMENT/
0,,contentMDK:20272299~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~ theSitePK:486411~
isCURL:Y,00.html (accessed 29 Aug. 2015).
10 Adapted from: UN Women and Interagency Network on Women and Gender Equality:
Good practices in gender equality promotion and gender mainstreaming from the
United Nations system, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/goodpraexamples.htm
(accessed 13 October 2014), and Burt Perrin: Combating child labour: Sample good
practices guidelines (ILO; UNICEF; World Bank, Geneva, 2003).
11 Adapted from http://www.homenetthailand.org/index.php/en/law-and-policy/health-
safety-en-gb-2/204-policy-brief-on-social-protection (accessed 29 Aug. 2015).
12 Yayasan Pengembangan Pedesaan (the Rural Development Foundation), Bina Swadaya
Yogyakarta Foundation, Yayasan Pemerhati Sosial Indonesia, and Lembada Daya Darma.
13 LPM Merdeka University.
14 M. Fajerman: Review of the regulatory framework for homeworkers in Indonesia 2013.
(Jakarta, ILO, 2014).
15 Haryans, also known as Dalits or Untouchables traditionally occupy the lowest place in the
Hindy caste system.
90 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
16 Sources: ILO; WIEGO: Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture, 2
nd
Edition (Geneva, 2013), pp. 46.
17 USD 1.00 amounts to around PHP 44.00.
18 ILO: Report of trade union consultation on home-based workers, 8 May 2015, New Delhi
(unpublished).
19 ILO: Community childcare: Training manual (Jakarta, 2015).
20 The adoption of overarching framework legislation is common in the Philippines. The
passing of such legislation may take one or two decades or more. For example, a Magna
Carta of Women and the Reproductive Health Act were adopted by the Philippine Congress
in 2009 and in 2012 respectively.
21 M. Fajerman: Review of the regulatory framework for homeworkers in Indonesia 2013,
(Jakarta, ILO, 2014).
22 Lim, L.L: Employment Relationships and Working Conditions in an IKEA Rattan Supply
Chain in Indonesia, (Jakarta, ILO, 2015).
23 Chaleamwong; Meepian (2013), “Social Protection in Thailand’s Informal Sector” in
Thailand Development and Research Institute (TDRI) Quarterly Review. (2013, Bangkok),
28 (4), http://tdri.or.th/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/t5d2013-nal.pdf (accessed on 20
Mar. 2015), quoted in case study for this report.
24 More information available at: https://www.google.co.th/search?client=safari&rls=en&q
=HomeNet+South+Asia&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=8UIVVtu1J8mLuATP9J_4Ag
(accessed 5 Oct. 2015).
25 Information on the ETI comes from the CECAM case study for this report by HWW and the
ETI website which also provides a copy of: ETI, Homeworker guidelines: Recommendations
for working with homeworkers, (2006, UK).
26 See: http://sewadelhi.org/ruaab-sewa/ (accessed 5 October 2015).
91
Bibliography
Indonesia Employers’ Association (APINDO); ILO. 2014. Good practice guidelines for the employment
of homeworkers (Jakarta).
Carr, M.; Chen, M. A.; Tate, J. 2000. “Globalization and home-based workers” in Feminist economics,
6:3, pp. 123-142.
Chen, M.A. 2014. Informal economy monitoring study – Sector report: Home-based workers (USA,
Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)).
Delaney, A.; Tate, J. 2014. Organising homebased workers in Chile – A local and global initiative: A
case study of homebased worker organizing (UK, Homeworkers Worldwide), Case study for
this report.
Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI). 2006. Homeworker guidelines: Recommendations for working with
homeworkers (UK).
Fajerman, M. 2014. Review of the regulatory framework for homeworkers in Indonesia 2013. (Jakarta,
ILO).
Hega, M.D.; Gula, L.; Parilla, J. 2014. Organizing home-based workers in the Philippines: The
PATAMABA experience (Manila, PATAMABA), Case study for this report.
International Labour Ofce (ILO). 2015. Community childcare: Training manual (Jakarta, ILO/MAMPU
project).
--. Report of trade union consultation on homebased workers, 8 May 2015, New Delhi (Unpublished).
ILO/MAMPU project, Indonesia. 2015. Documentation of Good Practices for Empowering Homeworkers
and Promoting Decent Work for Homeworkers in Indonesia: Case of TURC in Central Java
(Jakarta, unpublished), Case study for this report.
--. Empowering homeworkers from invisibility to leaders: Experiences, good practices and lessons
from North Sumatra inpromoting decent work for homeworkers (Jakarta, unpublished),
Case study for this report.
--. Organizing the unorganized: Lessons learned about organizing homeworkers in East Java (Jakarta,
unpublished), Case study for this report.
--. Progress Report, October 2015, Indonesia (Unpublished).
ILO; Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). 2013. Women and men in
the informal economy: A statistical picture, 2
nd
Edition (Geneva).
Indian Academy of Self Employed Women (IASEW), 2015. Organizing home-based workers –
Strategies, experiences and learnings: Strategy study report. (India, unpubished), Case
study for this report.
Suksai, Y. (Chutimas). 2015. Documentation of the homeworkers’ movement in Thailand (Bangkok,
unpublished), Case study for this report.
United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women); Ministry
of Women’s Affairs, Cambodia: Training local authorities on gender and migration (Phnom
Penh, undated).
92 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Annex1
PATAMABAstep-by-stepguidefororganizersonhowtostartorganizingwithhome-
based workers in communities
KeystepsfororganizingHBWsincommunities
Step 1. Scan the community environment
Environmental scanning of a community is initially done by a PATAMABA leader, usually the Chairperson
for Organizing with the help of a focal leader, such as an existing member or leader in a particular
community. Scanning serves as entry point for contact building and identication of potential
members and leaders in the area. Data is gathered through informal conversation about HBWs’
own experiences and observations. A focal leader receives meal and transportation reimbursements
charged to the Chairperson for Organizing.
During the rst step, the Chairperson for Organizing seeks to nd out the following information:
l How many home-based workers (HBWs) are there in the community? What is the number of
potential recruits?
l What type of dwelling places do they live in?
l What types of work do they engage in?
l What problems do they encounter as workers?
l Have they been members of any organization?
l What are the existing local laws and regulations affecting HBWs in the community?
l Who are the potential allies and opponents in organizing HBWs?
l What are the resources available in the community?
l How many HBWs are motivated to take action?
If there are at least two HBWs who indicate their willingness to start a chapter in their community,
PATAMABA will proceed to Step 2.
Step 2. Draft a recruitment plan
The Chairperson for Organizing and the focal leader form an Organizing Committee which is responsible
for drafting a plan of action on how to proceed with the recruitment of home-based workers. The
following points need to be included in the plan:
l Contact person (focal leader): Generally, it is best to work with a contact person who is
known in the community as a trusted or a distinguished community leader or worker.
l Meeting place: An appropriate area where everyone feels comfortable to share their
experiences or a workplace where the identied workers stay most of the time (house,
terminal, market, etc.)
93
l Meeting time: HBWs are busy and their time is precious. An organizer must nd out what is
the best time to talk with them, e.g. during work breaks, ‘merienda sena’ (snack time) or at
night.
l Communication tools: Speak with the HBWs in their own language as much as possible,
and use a pamphlet and other simple reading materials to help explain the organization and
its objectives.
l Mobilizing issues: HBWs usually face many serious and pressing concerns that require
immediate attention. Develop and craft strategies together with them from the start to
identify their priorities, how to address them, how to build campaigns to achieve certain
goals and how to sustain the interest of HBWs to pursue these goals.
Step 3. Organize a recruitment meeting and membership campaign
Once there are at least 17 potential recruits, an orientation and consultation meeting will be held.
The orientation starts with an analysis of their problems as HBWs and how these are connected to
larger issues in the community and society. A brainstorming follows on possible solutions to solve
their problems. PATAMABA as an organization will also be introduced during the orientation.
Based on experience, the following questions and concerns will be voiced by participants:
l What assistance can your organization extend to us if we lose our job?
l I’m very busy attending to the needs of my children. I don’t have time to attend meetings
and related activities.
l Will you lend us money for capitalization?
l My husband will not allow me to attend meetings especially if these take place outside the
community.
l How much do I pay as a member?
l What services or benets will I get once I join your organization?
l How can we work together?
l Who is behind your organization? What is your political afliation? You might just want to use
us for your own agenda.
l Organizations like yours always conduct interviews but no positive changes happen in our
lives. You are just wasting our time.
The above concerns needs to be addressed. At the end of the activity, there will be participants who
say:
l I think that your organization will be able to help us.
l I will be joining your organization.
l We will think about joining your organization.
l We learn new things.
l I now understand the meaning of home-based worker and informal worker.
l I realize that we are not the only ones who are in this situation.
94 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
l I realize the importance of being organized and united.
l I am now aware that there are laws or proposed legislation for our sector.
Step 4. Build the organization
As soon as there are 17 members or more in a particular barangay (community or neighbourhood), a
barangay chapter will be formed by electing its set of ofcers. Also, capacity building activities will be
scheduled to help strengthen the new chapter. The new leaders will go through a leadership seminar
and later on will be mentored by the national or provincial leaders. A plan of action will be drafted by
the chapter and this will be monitored and assessed on a regular basis.
Frequently asked questions
Important messages to discuss with HBWs to help them understand their situation, and encourage
them to organize and improve their livelihoods are as follows:
What contributes to the current situation of women doing HBW work?
l Most HBWs are women. They are compelled to seek ways to meet the day-to-day needs
of their families. However, there is a notion that the earnings from women are just to
supplement the household needs, when, in many cases, they are the main breadwinner of
the family.
l Women HBWs often cannot go out due to their household duties and caring responsibilities.
Therefore, they remain invisible and unrecognized by society and the labour movement.
Why is it important to raise awareness and organize home-based workers?
This work is important because:
l Nowadays, the number of home-based workers continues to increase due to the lack of jobs
in workshops, factories and industries, as well as in agriculture.
l HBWs are not fully aware of their rights as workers and women, and do not realize that they
make an important contribution to their family, community and society. Because of these
contributions they have a right to obtain services from the government and other service
providers.
l Since HBWs are isolated and wide-spread, it would be good for them to come together to
form networks or legal organizations.
Why increase the awareness of HBWs?
Despite difcult experiences such as not being assured of adequate work and payment by their
contractors or traders for their products and services, HBWs are still not fully aware of the challenges
of their situation, or deal with this as an individual problem rather than being strong as a group.
95
An empowered person is someone who understands this situation, what brought it about and what
one can do to change and improve these conditions. Part of this is to be fully aware of ways and
means to overcome the challenges and improve their opportunities for better livelihoods.
Is it right that home-based workers income is lower because they work at home and have no
transportation cost?
It is not justied to pay lower wages to HBWs since they have to cover various costs such as workplace
and electricity, which is covered by the employer in factories. They often also do have transportation
costs as they need to buy materials or equipment and deliver goods to subcontractors, traders or
other buyers. Oftentimes, HBWs are also not provided with the usual benets of workers in formal
employment like social security, including health insurance, as well as paid vacation and sick leaves.
Further, it is not reasonable to provide lower wages to home-based workers, when one looks at the
prots that importers are accumulating these days. For example, only PHP 1.00 is paid for making
one baby dress, when in fact, this is being sold at about USD 15 or PHP 375 when exported abroad.
Isn’t it better to have a little income than none at all?
It is better to have some income, than none at all. However, that does not mean that one should be
content with it and not look for a better job options. The products made by the HBW are of similar
quality to the products produced in a factory, and made by legitimate factory workers, who, fortunately,
receive higher wages, with benets, than the HBWs.
96 Experiences, good practices and lessons from home-based workers and their organizations
Home-based workers: Decent work and social protection through organization and empowerment
Annex2
Annex2.
S
EWA ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
SEWA
RURAL & ECONOMIC
D
EVELOPMENT UNION
URBAN
U
NION
SOCIAL
S
ECURITY
SEWA TRADE
F
ACILITATION
C
ENTER
DISTRICT
ASSOCIATIONS
INSURANCE CHILDCARE HEALTH
SEWA GRAM
M
AHILA HAAT
1.Anand/ Kheda
2.Patan/ Banaskantha
3.Kutch
4.Surendranagar
5.Ahmedabad
6.Gandhinagar
7.Sabarkantha
8.Mehsana
9.Vadodara
HEAD
O
FFICE
HEAD
O
FFICE
SUPPORT
UNITS
MISSION UNITS
ADMINISTARTION ACCOUNTS
SISTER ORGANIZATIONS
(
SERVICE PROVIDERS
)
SISTER ORGANIZATIONS
(
SERVICE PROVIDERS
)
SISTER ORGANIZATIONS
(
SERVICE PROVIDERS
)
SISTER ORGANIZATIONS
(
SERVICE PROVIDERS
)
SEWAOrganizationalStructure
97
Annex3
Annex3.
StructureoftheHNTAandFLEPinThailand
Four Regional Representatives from each region
Regional network: Bangkok, North, Central, Northeast and South
StructureoftheHNTAandFLEPinThailand
