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WIEGO Fact Sheet - Home-Based Producers
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Burchielli, Rosaria, Donna Buttigieg and Annie Delaney. 2008. Organizing homeworkers: the use of mapping as an organizing tool, from Work, Employment and Society. BSA Publications, Ltd. Vol. 22(1): 167-180, Sage Publications.

 

 

Occupational Groups

Home-Based Producers

Featured Resources

Homebased Workers - a Report "Do Economic Reforms InfluenceHome-Based Work? Evidence from India." Uma Rani and Jeemol Unni. Feminist Economics, Volume 15, Number 3 July 2009, pages 191 - 225.

Abstract
This paper analyzes the factors that influence the conditions under which a woman in India participates as a home-based worker using secondary level data at the micro level. At the macro level, the paper analyzes whether trade and industrial liberalization in India led to an increase in subcontracted work, of the home-based variety.

The results show a historically high share of women in home-based work, which implies that female participation in such work was more likely to be determined by their cultural milieu than by the recent liberalization process. Further, while the micro model of social determinants appears to fit the female home-based work equation, the macro model is found to be insignificant. The lower but increasing share of male home-based work and the statistical significance of the macro model as a determinant of such work lead us to conclude that the economic reforms in India had a statistically significant impact on this form of production organization among men.

Purchase article at Informaworld website.
Pia Markkanen Shoes, Glues and Homework: Dangerous Work in the Global Footwear Industry

Shoes, Glues and Homework: Dangerous Work in the Global Footwear Industry. Pia Markkanen, 2009. Baywood Publishing Company.

This book is a must read for anyone concerned about decent work and economic justice in today's global economy.

September 2009 - Bulgaria ratifies the ILO Home Work Convention

Bulgaria has ratified the International Labour Organization (ILO) Home Work Convention (C. 177).  The convention was adopted by the ILO in 1996 and was designed to protect the rights of home-based workers.

By ratifying the convention, the government of Bulgaria recognizes the contribution of home-based workers and commits to adopting, implementing and periodically reviewing a national policy on home-based work aimed at improving the situation of home-based workers, in consultation with organizations concerned with home-based workers. 

 The ILO convention also calls for equal of treatment of home-based workers as compared to other wage earners who do similar work in an enterprise. Equality includes the right to organize, protection against discrimination, and access to social protection.

 Up to now, the Bulgarian Labour Code has not contained any provision covering home-based workers or other forms of informal labour. Following this ratification, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria (KNSB ,the main trade union federation) is working on a revision to the Labour Code to bring it in line with the ILO Convention. The KNSB is also proposing that working conditions for home workers be regulated by a national agreement between representative unions and employers, which would eventually be integrated in the Labour Code and receive force of law.

Bulgaria joins Ireland (1999), the Netherlands (2002), Argentina (2006), Albania (2002) and Finland (1998) which had previously ratified the Home Work Convention.

ILO. 2002. "Illustrative Case Studies: Home-based Workers." In Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture. Geneva: ILO.

Chen, Martha Alter, Jennefer Sebstad and Lesley O'Connell. 1999. "Counting the Invisible Workforce: The Case of Homebased Workers." World Development¸ Vol. 27, No. 3.

Jhabvala, Renana and Jane Tate. 1996. "Out of the Shadows: Homebased Workers Organize for International Recognition." SEEDS, No. 18.