"Promoting Decent Work: The Role of Civil Society"
 Questions & Answers
 Questions
1. Ms. Jhabvala mentioned the dual missions of the SEWA - it's cooperative function and its trade union function. I can
quite understand the significance of the cooperative function, where there is a creation of infrastructure which certainly
leads to improved living standards for the workers concerned. But I am not quite sure if I understood your point about the
trade union function of the SEWA, particularly in an environment where employment relations have not been specified.
With a a clientèle predominantly consisting of home-based women workers, organizing or unionizing raises some
fundamental questions. Who do you organize against?, What do you organize them for? What is the bargaining function?
How do you enhance the terms and conditions of employment? Have there been clear instances of success in this
function? This is not to underrate the importance of the work, but I am trying to understand the significance of the
collective bargaining function of this organization, which I know is doing a wonderful job.
My second question is addressed to Professor Zamagni, from Bologna. The significance of the civil economy, based on
non-profit, and the reciprocity principle, as I understand it, was essentially part of a pre-capitalist economy. It now
characterizes many developing countries, and it used to exist in Europe. Social relations were traditionally based on
reciprocity and trust, but then modern economic growth in the capitalist world during the last two or three centuries
essentially implied the break-down of these institutions, and they've been replaced by the market and the state. Now you
said that these pre-capitalist economic formations need to be resuscitated and reinstated, and the rightful place question
arises: does it really work? Has there been a case where it really worked?
2. I would like to address my next question to Mrs. Jhabvala and Mr. Dahou. What sort of relationships do the NGOs you
represent have with their government and with the traditional social partners, namely the organizations of workers and
employers?
Answers
Ms. Jhabvala
First Mr. Jose's question. Its interesting that you raised this point here at the ILO, because I think the relevant question is
what kind of trade unions can be formed in the informal sector where there is no employer-employee relationship.
SEWA first faced this question in 1972, when we went to register as a trade union. The labour commissioner said: "you
have no employer, who are you going to fight against?". And the answer we gave at the time was that a trade union is not
necessarily against somebody: it is for the workers. Since then we have had a lot of experience with being a trade union
in the informal sector. There are a couple of issues there. First is that every sector has its own constraints and its own
people you have to fight against. I will give you just one or two examples. I mentioned the forest workers earlier. There,
the major constraint is the forest department. If you need to increase your bargaining power, get a better price for your
forest products, you really need to negotiate with and agitate against the forest department.
Another example is street vendors, whose major problem is that they are not given urban space by the municipalities.
Another problem is criminilization and police attitudes. So we bargain to get better treatment from the municipality and
the police.
I think the functions of a trade union, whether the formal or informal sector, is to organize, to identify where policies need
to be changed and what needs to be changed and then to increase the bargaining power of members. I think we have been
able to do that. The cooperatives also help to increase bargaining power.
The second question was the relationship with the traditional social partners. The interesting thing is that in India, (but it
is very similar in many countries), the trade unions are mainly concentrated in the formal sector. Most trade unions now
belong to national federations. So, you have a sort of structure of national federations and formal sector unions. When
SEWA first started we faced a lot of opposition from the trade unions because they thought that the informal sector was
undermining the formal sector, and that informal sector workers were undermining the organizations of the formal sector,
that is the trade unions. However, it has become very obvious with globalization, that the informal sector is not going to
go away, and that the formal sector unions are not performing. We now find much more tolerance from the trade unions.
But I would just like to make the point that unions in the formal sector are not the only ones that exist. There is a sort of
myth that only national federations represent the trade union movement or the workers, but it is not true. There are lots
and lots of unions and workers' organizations all over the world that are not part of the national federation. Or they who
may be part of the national federation but they are not represented at national level. So, we need to recognize the large
number of membership-based trade unions in the informal sector and bring them into the mainstream.
You had another question about governments, and it is a very complex question so I won't even try to answer it now,
except to say that one has a variety of interactions, ranging from very positive collaboration to the type of situation that I
mentioned with the forest department. We've had a lot of fighting with the forest department, but on the other hand we
have cooperated with them on rural development, so I can't really answer that. Since I have the floor, I just wanted to say
how much I liked Mr. Zamagni's presentation. In many ways we have come to the same conclusions and we have both
been talking about the public sector, the private sector and the people sector. We think that the informal sector and the
people sector can converge a lot, and we've been looking at the policies required to develop the people sector.
Mr. Dahou
I am going to answer the same questions by talking about the approach that we favour in our relationships with the public
administration, trade unions and employers' organizations. Trade unions in the informal sector are not always highly
structured. There are very few salaried workers in South Africa, only 80,000 out of maybe 3 or 4 million in the active
population. This doesn't mean that workers do not have representatives or that there are no unions in the informal sector.
We can take the example of fishing, which is a very important sector of the informal economy. With a very large trade
union. Industrial fishing accounts for only about 20 per cent of all the fish that is sold and 80 per cent is caught by
informal sector operators. One has to look at the planned activities. When one is in the field, one does not generally work
together with the unions because they represent employees. We work with the very poor people, people who are
marginalized. We try to identify the groups that are in greatest difficulty, women or young people in some sectors. Now
this is a very complicated matter, for example when we speak of working with the community, the World Bank also tries
to work in a more intense way with the community. There are all kinds of groups, weak ones and stronger ones and the
situation can change. We work with people involved in informal transport. For example, in Senegal and West Africa
people who run coaches, mini buses and so on actually provide much of the transport. In the cities there are people called
coxers who try to find customers for mini buses or coaches. We supported the coxers because they were at the lowest
level of the transport sector. Some of them decided to start saving and over a month or two, several million francs CFA
were collected. We work with trade unions, as we work with NGOs and the public administration, but there is no
discrimination whatsoever. We try to involve as many groups and bodies as possible, so that all those concerned can take
some action. Of course it is quite clear that we have to work with the state, not against it. As an NGO we wanted to go
rather too fast in some directions, notably in the definition of development policies. I mentioned the structural plans of
the World Bank and some of these amounted to a type of shock therepy which might destroy the official state structures.
We have to look at accountability and we have to look at other bodies and other groups, not just the state. We have to get
other grassroots groups involved as well. In some cases as an NGO we had tended to go rather too far in the direction of
working with grassroots groups and working against the state. But this is not profitable. You don't gain anything either
for the state or for civil society. I speak of low access to global aspects such as prices. Of course you have to look at
information needs and this is basically a task for the state. Information is something which the governenmt disseminates.
When we were planning sustainable management for fisheries in the framework of trade liberalization in Senegal, we
were very careful to work with the state and not against it.
Mr. Zamagni
First of all, the market economy was created before the emergence of capitalism. That is a point that we have not learned
from history. The market economy was created in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and if you go back to the literature
you will find that it was built on the twin foundations of the private economy and the civil economy. They were already
there. What happened with the first industrial revolution, which means the emergence of industrial capitalism, was that
the civil economy disappeared. That is true. But if we go back to the origins of the market economy in its proper sense,
right from the beginning it had these two sides, civil and private.
My second remark is that reciprocity is not to be confused with gift. They are two different things. Reciprocity is a
principle which has rules based on supply and demand. And you have equilibria: reciprocity equilibria. In other words,
it's not true that the only way to bargain and do business is based on the exchange of equivalence, which is the operating
principle in the private sector. Reciprocity has its own rules in the economic game. Finally you ask me, does it work in
practice? Consider for instance the cooperative movement. In countries like Italy, France, Germany, Spain, the United
States, and the so-called developing countries, how would you consider the cooperative firm? Would you consider that a
cooperative has a motive? Of course not, because a cooperative is not a capitalist firm. So where do you put it? Its not a
non-profit organization. The role of a cooperative is within the civil economy. In other words, the principal of mutuality
is a particular name for the reciprocity principle. Bologna, in Italy, is one of the richest regions in Europe. More than 50
per cent of the activities are based on cooperatives. They are working very well and are producing very good results. It is
no wonder that in countries like Italy, the most advanced regions are those where this type of economy, which I called the
civil economy, was established 100 or 150 years ago. I think it is important to stress that if we believe in freedom, liberty,
we should allow people to choose freely, which is not the case nowadays. Because, the civil economy is constrained:
there are many legal impediments. So my point is that you have to allow civil society to express itself freely on the
economic front. It is not enough to claim a cultural or educational role for civil society. People should be free to choose
their economic role as well. We should be steering for this new horizon.
Mr. Tapiola
I think we should thank the three panellists for their contribution. This part of the discussion was devoted to reviewing
the activities of major civic associations in promoting opportunities for decent work, examining problems and the factors
behind success. I think it has provided food for thought and has given us some observations which we might find
provocative, positively provocative because that is what always is needed.
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