INFORMAL ECONOMY BY ACTIVITY SECTOR>> Services

Huws, H.; Podro, S. Employment of homeworkers: Examples of good practice. Geneva: ILO, 1995. (CONDI/ WP, 5)

The employment and working conditions of homeworkers, including home-based teleworkers, tend to be inferior to those enjoyed by other workers doing similar work in the enterprise setting. This is often due to the lack of adequate labour legislation and collective agreements which take into account the special circumstances under which home work is carried out.

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This working paper provides an overview of the most important aspects of employment and working conditions of homeworkers, including home-based teleworkers, and of the legal provisions that exist in different countries.
It also gives concrete examples of how such provisions can be best applied in practice or, in the absence of specific regulations, of what would constitute good practice. Good practice is referred to safety and health, training, appropriate use of technology, unemployment pay, hours of work, pay and pensions, among others. They all tend to even up this group of workers' working conditions with those of workers in an enterprise setting.

Montero, C. La formación de capital humano en empleos atípicos: el caso del trabajo a domicilio. (Training human resources for non-typical jobs: the case of home work). Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, 2000.

The increase in the number of people with non-typical jobs and the State's withdrawal from training for work have raised the question of how the manpower on such job posts get training.
On the basis of the available statistics, a typology was elaborated with the cases corresponding to the types of job observed in Chile. In-depth interviews were conducted in each case.
The material gathered allows to put forward the hypothesis of human resources training mechanisms. It also allows to identify the lacks regarding the role of enterprises and the State in terms of training financing and competency acquisition.

ILO. "Homeworkers in the Global Economy" Project

The following documents are part of a project developed by ILO and its regional offices in Latin America. These projects have been implemented in several Latin American countries with the aim of exploring the institutional aspects and the labour situation of homeworkers in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Peru.
From the basis that home work is a form of work that has emerged from a context of fragmentation and re-localisation of productive processes, a growing flexibility of the labour market and an individualisation in labour relations, the documents intend to describe these group of workers, their working conditions and the efficiency of legal instruments to regulate their situation.

Jelin, E.; Mercado, M.; Wyczykier, G. Home work in Argentina. Geneva: ILO, 2001. (SEED Working Paper, 6)

This paper explores the institutional aspects and situation of workers (particularly in the area of the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires).

Heikel, M.V. Homeworkers in Paraguay. Geneva: ILO, 2000. (SEED Working Paper, 2)

Along the same lines of the previous document and within the framework of the "Homeworkers in the Global Economy" project, this paper studies homeworkers in Paraguay.
A review on the literature and the Paraguayan legislation and analysis on the perception of governments and employers' and employees' organisations are included.
The research seeks to describe this work modality based on a selection of enterprises that hire homeworkers. The idea is to find out how production is organised, how many workers are hired, their pay, services and benefits.

Henríquez, H.; Riquelme, V.; Gálvez, T.; Selamé, T. Home work in Chile: Past and Present Results of a National Survey. Geneva: ILO, 2001. (SEED Working Paper, 8)

In Chile, home work has been made progressively more vulnerable to successive legislative changes. This research takes up former studies that describe the working conditions of these people in the different activity sectors where we can find this work modality. The report is rich on the management of statistics about the main characteristics of these workers.

Lavinas, L.; Sorj, B.; Linhares, L.; Jorge, A. Home work in Brazil: New Contractual Arrangements. Geneva: ILO, 2001. (SEED Working Paper, 7)

One of the main objectives of this document is to describe home work in Brazil by trying to understand it, see its trends and outline possible policies.
In addition to the description of these workers, the perceptions and attitudes of governments and of employers' and employees' organisations are examined to provide a better understanding on this issue.

Verdera, F. Homeworkers in Peru. Geneva: ILO, 2000. (SEED Working Paper, 3)

This document carries out a case study to describe homeworkers in Peru. It also takes up case studies that examine the characteristics of these workers and their ateliers, many of which are organised in micro or small enterprises, and their links with the activity sector for which they work.

Pérez Ruiz, A. El comercio informal: una respuesta ante la crisis. (Informal trade: a response to the crisis). Trabajadores en línea. v. 6, n. 29, Mar-Apr. 2002.

This article describes informal trade in Mexico City, its characteristics and the possible explanations on its origins and growth in the Mexican economy.

Veleda da Silva, S. M. Trabajo informal, género y cultura: el comercio callejero e informal en el sur de Brasil. (Informal work, gender and culture: street and informal trade in the South of Brazil). Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, octubre de 2003.

This paper intends to examine the situation of street vendors in Brazil from the starting point of the analysis of their work and family situation.
Street vendors are described according to sex, age, place of birth, schooling, profession, marital status, number of children, type of family, spouse's profession and individual and family income.
This description will allow to study the relationship 'precarious job - place - family' from a cultural and gender perspective, focusing on the possibility that this relationship may lead to the production and reproduction of new identities based on the occupation of public spaces.

Weller, J. Tertiary sector employment in Latin America: between modernity and survival. CEPAL Review N. 84, Santiago, Chile, Dec. 2004. p. 157-174.

In the 1990s, around 90% of all new jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean arose in the tertiary sector. This article reviews the main theories about the expansion of this kind of employment, compares the recent evolution of the Latin American tertiary sector with global trends, and analyses the characteristics of the employment offered in the various branches making up the sector, as well as its underlying dynamics. The growth of employment in the Latin American tertiary sector is based on simultaneous processes of labour inclusion and exclusion. The firstnamed process reflects the growing role of some tertiary sector activities in systemic competitiveness and social reproduction, and is expressed in the generation of jobs of comparatively high productivity and quality. The second, however, is due to the pressures of the labour supply and gives rise to jobs that are usually of low productivity and quality.