Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty. Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In ...
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In the second episode of the governance building block we continue to discuss the issues surrounding digitization and social protection. This time, we take a political economy perspective to understand the interests, ideas, actors and policy implications of digitization. To help us understand this complex issue, we invited again Ruth Castel-Branco,…
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In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first episode on the topic of governance. We have invited two guests to lay the groundwork for this block, to help us understand social protection governance, as well as the new concerns and potentials brought by digitization. We start with Tony Roberts. T…
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In the third episode of the registration block we travel to Latin America to take a regional overview of this issue regarding domestic workers. To learn the challenges these workers face to be registered, the positive experiences, as well as the opportunities and limitations digital technology tools offer in this task, among other issues revolving …
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In episode five of the systems’ mapping, building blocks approach, we continue to explore the topic of registration. This time, we look closely at the Cambodian IDPoor programme, to understand to what extent a government-led effort to improve how beneficiaries of social assistance and social protection schemes are effectively accounted for – and wh…
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And we start the year with the first episode of the second building block of our new season, in which we will discuss the issue of registration. How is digital technology helping to include informal workers into social protection schemes or how is it creating new barriers for these people to access protection? What are the risks and opportunities? …
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This is the third and last episode of the financing building block. Previously, we discussed alternative ways to finance social protection extension for waste pickers in India and Argentina, and the struggle to finance gig workers in Rajasthan. Now we explore the challenges of financing social protection in a changing world of work. What are the po…
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The current episode is the second of this new season. We will continue to look at the issue of financing, which was the topic of the first episode of the system’s mapping series.We will talk about a very important theme: how to finance the inclusion of gig workers from digital platforms of service provisions in social protection system.We turn our …
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WIEGO inaugura una nueva etapa de su podcast. A partir de este episodio, vamos a comprender mejor las piezas del sistema de protección social, para poder mejor comprender los retos, oportunidades y dificultades que enfrentan los trabajadores informales. Todo eso ofreciendo la perspectiva de los trabajadores, desde una aproximación ascendente.En est…
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WIEGO starts a new phase of its podcast. From this episode onwards, we will gain a better understanding of the pieces of the social protection system, in order to better understand the challenges, opportunities and difficulties faced by informal workers. All this by offering the workers' perspective, from a bottom-up approach.At this stage, we will…
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In 2021, WIEGO has launched the project “Challenging the global orthodoxies which undermine Universal Social Protection”. In a nutshell, the project aimed to examine some of the dominant ideas in the field of social protection that were hindering the concrete inclusion of informal workers in these schemes.Exactly one year ago, I invited the coordin…
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The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the world in many ways. People all around the globe had to adapt to this new reality, and it was no different for informal workers leaders that struggle to improve their organizational strength.Capacity building, one of the key aspects to increase the voice and visibility of workers, also had to be done differentl…
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In India, the government has set a huge undertaking: to register 380 million informal workers on a new database, so that it could allow the delivery of social security payments. This database, called e-Shram, was launched in August 2021.But, of course, this initiative was followed by a range of doubts, problems and barriers that has been hindering …
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Social and Solidarity Economy has got into a very high place in the international agenda. This year, SSE, as it is called, was the theme of the International Labour Conference, in which workers representatives, government officials and employers representatives have gathered to discuss this alternative form of organizing production, distribution an…
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In the episode 20 of our podcast, we discussed the first round of the WIEGO longitudinal survey, conducted in 2020. In this special episode, we will discuss the report of the second round of this global survey.In this stage, 11 cities around the globe were part of the research that explored how the fallout of the pandemic affected informal workers’…
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For decades, domestic workers have struggled to be recognized and to enjoy the same rights as other workers – including social protection rights. There has been significant progress over the past few years, as the workers’ movement pressured in national and international forums to have labour and social protection rights enshrined in their legal sy…
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Over the last few years, universal social protection and the government responses to the Covid-19 crisis has generated important debates in the field of social protection.The Universal Social Protection 2030 framework, for instance, has gained support from a variety of key social protection stakeholders, including national governments, the ILO, IMF…
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The last two years have brought a huge challenge to social protection systems around the world as the pandemic hit and shed light to the need of strengthening social insurance policies to protect workers against shocks that affected their livelihoods.We look at the case of South Africa’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (or UIF) and Temporary Employer/E…
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For the past two years, the world has been facing one of the biggest challenges of our lifetime, with the Covid-19 crisis. In this last episode of the year, we invited again Laura Alfers, the Social Protection programme coordinator at WIEGO, and Rachel Moussié, deputy coordinator of the Social Protection programme and head of the Child Care initiat…
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La pandemia ha puesto de manifiesto la importancia crucial de la prestación de servicios de cuidado infantil. En este episodio, nos fijamos en cómo la Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (UTEP), una central sindical de trabajadores informales de Argentina, ha apoyado a las cooperativas de cuidado infantil para que presten estos servicios a…
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The pandemic has highlighted the crucial importance of child care provision. In this episode, we look at how the Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (UTEP), an informal workers central union in Argentina, has supported child care cooperatives to provide these services for informal workers’ children.To understand how these community child c…
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After two weeks of intense debates that took place from June 3rd to June 19th, the first segment of the 109th session of the International Labour Conference – ILC – is now over. In this episode, we talked to worker leaders who attended the ILC to share their impressions and learnings from the event that had Social Protection on the forefront of the…
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In this episode, we dive into the social aspects of Covid-19 vaccination, and try to understand its impact on informal workers. How are they affected by the policy choices? What are the barriers to access? And what does it have to do with the issue of economic justice? These and other questions were discussed in this talk with with Christy Braham.C…
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In this episode, we explore how Covid-19 crisis affected informal workers care responsibilities and to which extent the government responses addressed informal workers’ needs in terms of income and food security, throughout 2020.WIEGO conducted a longitudinal survey with informal workers in 12 cities around the world, during the second and third qu…
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In the second episode of the mini-series, the Informal Economy Podcast: social protection joins the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence against women”. We bring a series in two parts to talk about how gender-based violence impacts informal women workers and what they have been doing to face this important challenge, especially in a y…
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In this episode, the Informal Economy Podcast: social protection joins the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence against women”. In this special episode, we will bring a series in two parts to talk about how gender-based violence impacts informal women workers and what they have been doing to face this important challenge, especially i…
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In this episode, we explore the issue of the social protection needs for older informal workers. In the context of a growing aging population also in the developing world, the debates around schemes to guarantee access to these informal workers to healthcare and to income security has become increasingly important. To help us understand more about …
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In this month, we will dive into the topic of universal basic income, or UBI. In South Africa, the government has recently announced the intention of implementing this policy in the country, which was regarded as a very important step. To help us understand more about universal basic income, its debates and how it is taking in the South African con…
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In this month, we go back to the ground to understand how the livelihoods of informal workers are being affected in two of the countries in Latin America most hit in the region by the Covid-19 crisis: Mexico and Peru.We invited two guests who are working closely with informal workers. From Mexico, Tania Espinoza, Mexico City Focal City Coordinator …
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En este mes, volvemos al terreno para comprender cómo se están afectando los medios de vida de los trabajadores del sector informal en dos de los países de América Latina más afectados en la región por la crisis de Covid-19: México y Perú.Invitamos a dos especialistas que están trabajando estrechamente con los trabajadores informales. De México, Ta…
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And in this episode, we bring you the third and last part of the especial mini-series on social protection for informal workers in the context of the Covid-19 global pandemic. We will look more closely on how governments around the world are responding to the global crisis in order to address to the urgent social protection needs of vulnerable peop…
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In this second episode of the mini-series, we will hear the concrete impact on the lives of informal workers in cities around the world, with brief updates from the ground from WIEGO team members who work closely with informal workers. We also bring the account from two workers leaders themselves, on how the lockdown is affecting their lives and th…
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In this month, we start a especial mini-series on social protection for informal workers in the context of the Covid-19 global pandemic. This global health crisis has brought many countries, cities and states to a halt, as authorities try to slow down the spread and “flatten the curve”.This unprecedented lockdown has also deep social and economic c…
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In this International Women’s Day episode we will discuss a very important topic for women informal workers: child care. As women are most often the primary responsible for looking after their children, without quality child care services, they either have to forgo paid work or are less productive because they have watch their children while trying…
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In the first episode of the year we will discuss numbers! Statistics are a powerful tool to shed light on the informal economy, and to make informal workers visible in policy arenas. In order to help us understand better the linkages between social protection and statistics, the challenges, limitations and the most recent research on the field we i…
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In this episode, we invited Christina Behrendt. Christina, head of the Social Policy Unit at the ILO, to talk about the relations between the Future of Work and the challenges to extend social protection to the so-called “missing middle”, the informal economy workers. We discussed how policies to provide social protection to informal workers can he…
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Dans cet épisode, nous vous apportons un entretien avec Komi Kessouagni. Komi est le Coordinateur du Point Focal Régional StreetNet pour l'Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre.On a parlé sur les défis des travailleurs informels au Togo pour avoir l’accès à la protection social, aussi bien comme les initiatives des travailleurs eux-mêmes, pour offrir des…
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In this episode, we bring you an interview with Liliane Napoe, of the Danish Trade Union Development Agency. Liliane is the International Adviser and Head of the West African sub-regional office, based in Lomé, where she has been supporting informal workers in their effort to expand social protection and in their attempt to form a coalition to push…
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In this month, WIEGO’s Social Protection programme director, Laura Alfers, was in Thailand for the Association of South East Asian Nations People’s Forum, or ASEAN People’s Forum for short, where civil society organizations representatives have gathered, in Bangkok, to prepare for the ASEAN Summit that will happen from 31st of October to November 4…
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In 2015, the ILO’s International Labour Conference adopted the Recommendation about the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy, the R204.To help us understand what is the R204, what is the importance of it, what has been done until now and the challenges ahead, we will talk to Jane BarrettJane is WIEGO’s Organization and Representation …
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Who should bear the main burden of social service: is it the state, the private sector, NGOs, communities or individuals? This is a very complex discussion, so central to questions of rising inequality. In order to contribute to this debate, Laura Alfers has published a paper for the UNRISD Conference “Overcoming Inequalities in a Fractured World: …
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La violencia y el acoso en el lugar de trabajo afectan a muchos trabajadores en todo el mundo, especialmente a las mujeres. Es un fenómeno tan generalizado que se incluyó en el orden del día de la próxima conferencia internacional del trabajo, que tendrá lugar en los próximos días en ginebra, donde la cuestión será objeto de una segunda ronda de de…
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Violence and harassment at the workplace affect many workers all over the world, especially women. It is such a pervasive phenomenon that it was included in the agenda of the next International Labour Conference, which will take place the coming days in Geneva, where the issue will be up for a second round of discussions, with a view to the adoptio…
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Child care is often regarded as part of the education policy, centred around early childhood care and development. But child care is also the provision of a service that has a close relation to social protection and women economic empowerment.Informal women workers' low earnings mean they work long hours to secure their family livelihood, often tim…
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Em abril é comemorado o Dia Mundial Da Saúde e o Dia Mundial da Saúde do Trabalhador. Para marcar essas datas, este episódio irá discutir uma questão muito importante: saúde e segurança no trabalho. As medidas de saúde e segurança no trabalho desempenham um papel importante na qualidade de vida dos trabalhadores e na sua capacidade de garantir meio…
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On April 7th is celebrated the World Health Day. In order to mark this date, this episode will discuss a very important issue: occupational, health and safety. Health and safety measures at work play an important role on workers quality of life, and their capacity of having a steady and sustainable livelihood. And this is even more crucial for info…
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March is the month when the international women’s day is celebrated across the world. And it is also when the United Nations commission on the status of women, CSW, holds its annual session, in New York. And this year, the chosen priority theme is: “Social Protection Systems, Access to Public Services and Sustainable Infrastructure for Gender Equal…
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And in this opening episode, we will discuss some of the more fundamental and general issues about social protection and informal employment. Having access to social protection is crucial to shelter workers against risks to their incomes and help them cope after an event or shock. Informal workers are one of the most vulnerable working group, but a…
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Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty. Public policies and social p…
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continue reading