Organizing informal workers: trade union subregional meeting in Tbilisi
A subregional meeting of leaders of unions of workers engaged into informal labour relations was organized by the Pan-European Regional Council of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-PERC), the ILO-ACTRAV and the StreetNet in Tbilisi on July 11-13. The meeting goal was to exchange unions’ experiences in dealing with these workers, to analyse challenges of organising them and to debate issues of sustainability of the workers’ organisations.
13 July 2011
Some 30 participants took part in the meeting, from different economic sectors – street and market vendoring, taxi and minibus driving, textile and sewing industry, commerce and services. According to some preliminary estimation, only 200000 workers engaged into informal labour relations are unified in the NIS region, however, the overall participation in these occupations might equal half of the entire workforce in certain countries.
The meeting was opened by Irakliy Petriashvili, President of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation. Pat Horn, StreetNet coordinator, presented the mission and the history of her organisation, which was set up in 2002 and now unifies some 38 organisations of unions and associations of street vendors and market workers around the world. By building capacities of leaders of these organisations the StreetNet empowers their capacities to collectively bargain with employers or municipalities and landlords.
Anton Leppik summarised the experience the PERC accumulated in the work on informal employment. He emphasized two main areas that are equally important for the PERC approach - law enforcement and extension of self-employment schemes to diverse segments of labour market.
Sergeus Glovackas of the ACTRAV informed about different organising practices existing in the region. He also introduced the ILO conventions, which particularly can be used by the unions in protecting interests of these workers. He also referred to the newly adopted ILO Convention on Domestic Workers and introduced the Decent Work country programmes implemented in the region (all countries have it, apart from Russia which has special arrangements with the ILO, similar to DWCP, and Georgia). Many of the programmes emphasize the need to reduce informal employment and to protect interests of those engaged in it.
Svetlana Boincean, regional representative of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), presented successes and challenges of organizing workers of agricultural sector in Central Asia, particularly in South Kazakhstan, where many migrants are working in mostly informal environment. Bettina Musiolek informed the participants about targeted campaigning the Clean Cloth Campaign is running to get workers rights respected in textile sector, directed on giants of sports and retail industry to make them concern and act on the abuses that exist in their subcontracting and supplying chains.
In discussion participants exchanged examples of organizing and brainstormed a set of recommendation that include, inter alia: organization of tripartite seminars in the countries on informal employment; inclusion of informal economy challenges into ILO Decent Work country programmes by the union initiative; campaigning to get the related ILO Convention ratified by the countries, particularly the Convention No 189 on Domestic Workers; publishing and dissemination training and practical informational materials in the Russian language, organising specific collective bargaining trainings for the leaders of the organisations of workers engaged in informal relations.