March 10, 2011
Bangkok, Thailand
An international seminar, organized by the London-based organization of WIEGO /Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, www.wiego.org/, was held in Bangkok, Thailand this March, 2011.
Mrs. Violeta Zlateva, Chairman of the NGO “Association of Home-Stationed Workers of Bulgaria”, and Prof. Krastyo Petkov, teaching academic courses in “Economic Sociology” at the University of National and World Economy /UNWE/ in Bulgaria were among the invited on this seminar. These two Bulgarians were the only invited representatives from Central and Eastern Europe /CEE/ onto this international forum.
An exclusive interview for the LIVENEWS, www.livenews.bg, was delivered by Prof. Krastyo Petkov, who commented recent trends in the informal economy.
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Employed in the informal economy were considered to be low-qualified, low-skilled labor force for a long time; however, nowadays, these employees happen to appear more often on the official labor stage and involve themselves in trade union causes, and set political demands. This is the main conclusion, which could be drawn from this international forum, organized by WIEGO.
The present centers of informal economy are situated in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, that is in regions, which were taken as peripheral for the world economy. Although the world is in a crisis, countries, such as India, Brazil, China, and Thailand maintain such economic growth and dynamics, that many of the developed EU countries and even the US may envy to them.
Some analysts do think that the main factor of this new type of economic growth is due to the informal economy. For example, in India the share of employed in the informal economy is above 90%. Informal employment has significant share in numerous other countries of the South East Asia and Latin America. Countries with transition economies, such as the ones from the South East Europe happen to have about 50% of their employees, involved in one way or another in the informal economy; in ex-USSR territories this percentage is above 50%.
These new figures and trends contradict to the main forecasts of famous economic experts and political strategists, who expected a few things to occur. They expected that (1) informal economy would shrink to minimal size, due to the implementation of new technologies, modernization of production processes, improvement of educational systems in the developing countries, limitation and regulation of administrative and legal measures of national governments; (2) informal employees would get discouraged, and after a period of qualification they would be directed to the legal sectors of the economy; (3) informal entrepreneurs and enterprises would drop out their shadow practices and start competing in a fair and formal ways in the production and services sectors.
Discussions held on the seminar in Bangkok, as well as the announced conducted researches by the Global Labour Institute /Geneve/, ILO, and International Trade Union Confederation /ITUC/ revealed the global trend that new segmentation on labor markets evolves. In this new labor market segmentation production enterprises and services enterprises, where self-employed, temporary employed and home-based workers are rooted in the economic landshaft of the countries. It now happens that workers from the informal economy intermingle freely with the legitimate market structure and institutions of a country. There are sound proofs that in a period of crisis not only the Asian, but also the European countries do have informal sectors, developed in different extents, which help national economies to grow faster than economies, which nurture regulated existence of rigid labor markets.
It is important to underline the fact that the ILO does not have issued already a recommendation, which bans employment in informal economy. ILO Convention 177 may serve to governments to introduce flexible regulations for this type of employment and to guarantee the rights of home-stationed employees. This Convention 177 is already ratified by 7 countries /including the country of Bulgaria/. There are some symptoms for re-evaluation of the labor policies and regulations of the European Commission – from maintaining strictly banning regulations to introducing stimulating regulations.
++Briefly said, Europe /particularly, “New Europe”/ follows Asia, when it comes to proliferation of activities rooted in the informal economy. All this gives a new impetus to self-organization/trade-unionization of informal workers.
++The network of “Home-Net”, for example, has built powerful structures, dominated primarily by women, in more than 10 states in the South and South East Asia
++Gender-based employment discrimination and income inequalities have been attacked successfully by numerous NGOs and the new trade unions, which apply the model, based on active member recruitment. This active member recruitment of workers to get unionized is opposing the view of maintaining European bureaucratic trade union structures.
Bulgaria happens to lead the countries in the CEE-region in terms of introducing new legislative regulations for home-stationed employment /new amendments in the Labor Code, which correspond to the rules set in the ILO Convention 177, are under debate in the Bulgarian Parliament, already/.
Autonomous organizations of informal workers and trade unions in Bulgaria have now the chance to create a new alliance for social and labor protection and care in a period of crisis. Bulgaria does have the potential to turn into a regional centre for expansion of the global network of informal workers /similar to “Home-Net”/ for the South East corner of the European continent. Implementation of this idea is reasonable to expect to happen in the coming months.
These and other arguments may solidify the future decision of next international seminar of WIEGO, which is to be held in the City of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria on 26th and 27th of March 2011. This will happen thankfully to the imitativeness of the “Association of Home-Stationed Workers of Bulgaria”, in active partnership with the Trade Union of KNSB of Bulgaria.
It is expected that the forthcoming international forum of WIEGO in Sofia to comfort numerous representatives of self-organized informal workers from four continents. The Minister of Labor and Social Policy of Bulgaria – Honorable Mr . Totio Mladenov
by Prof. Krastyo Petkov, www.kpetkov.eu
University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria
Български