Programme Areas: Global Trade*
*Esta página disponible en Español.Problem Statement and Programme Objectives:
Over the past three decades, many governments have undertaken a set of market-oriented reforms designed to restructure their economies and to integrate them globally. At the same time technological change, especially the spread of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) has accelerated the pace of reform and associated changes, including the reorganization of production. The poverty and other social outcomes of these economic forces have been, and still are being, hotly debated. But there is growing recognition that they are two-edged forces, bringing both opportunities and constraints and creating both winners and losers. They can offer many opportunities for poverty reduction provided that steps are taken to enable the poor to gain rather than lose from the changes involved. Otherwise, they can leave poorer countries of the world – and the poorer sections of the population within them – worse off than before.
The consequences for the working poor depend on who they are, what they do and where they work. Most countries around the world have experienced profound changes in the nature of work, the employment arrangements of working women and men and the structure of the labour market. The net result has been that the majority of workers in today’s world do not work in what are still widely considered to be ‘standard’ jobs: those with secure contracts, mandated benefits and social protection.
Available evidence from both the global North and the global South suggests an ever-increasing informalization of labour. As companies seek to lower costs, workers along the supply chain are the ones to suffer the squeeze on wages. Those at the very bottom of the supply chain, especially the industrial outworkers who work from their home (called homeworkers) are often invisible and do not have legal or social protection. However, there are examples of organizing among informal workers which demonstrates that collective efforts can lead to positive change.
The economic crisis of 2008 is still unfolding with as yet unknown consequences for informal workers. However, we can envisage that the pressures on those in the most precarious forms of employment can only increase. The imperative to engage with informal workers in their struggle for recognition and rights to decent work is stronger than ever.
Programme Objectives
The Global Trade programme of WIEGO aims to investigate and highlight the impacts- both positive and negative - of global trade and investment policies on the livelihoods of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy; and to help organizations of informal workers, especially those with women members and leaders, seize the opportunities and address the constraints posed by trade liberalization.
The specific goals of the Global Trade programme are:
- to understand how the informal workforce is affected by and/or inserted into the global economy, and with what consequences;
- to help organizations of informal workers better understand and interpret the effects of globalization on the lives and work of their members in order to be able to talk in policy terms about these effects;
- to help organizations of informal producers seize new opportunities associated with globalization through building an understanding of the key requirements of export marketing and the availability of marketing services of various kinds.
- to help organizations of informal wage workers, especially homeworkers, engaged in global value chain production understand where and how their members are situated within specific value chains so that they can negotiate increased wages, benefits, and protection for their members
- to provide training and information to informal wage workers, including homeworkers, to raise their awareness of their labour rights in relation to production for national and export production
- to provide training to activists and researchers on sector-specific global value chain analysis, using tools developed by WIEGO;
- to document and disseminate good practices and policies that help to secure the rights and protection of informal workers in the global economy
Under all of these goals, WIEGO focuses on the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy. To do this, we promote three sets of activities:
- Increased Voice of Informal Workers: promotion of the representative voice of organizations of informal wage workers (including homeworkers) and informal producer groups, with a special focus on women, in international ethical and fair trade campaigns and networks, the design and implementation of corporate codes of conduct, and the formulation of related trade policies
- Increased Visibility of Informal Workers: promotion of sector-specific research on how informal workers are inserted into the global economy, and with what consequences; and of data collection and analysis on the export-linked informal economy
- Improved Policies and Practices for Informal Workers: case study documentation of promising examples of ethical and fair trade policies and practices in support of informal wage workers (especially homeworkers) and informal producer groups; and policy dialogues to disseminate these and other improved policies and practices for informal workers
Past Activities
The work of the Programme began with the preparation of a framework for assessing the effect of trade liberalization on informal workers in consultation with activists, researchers, and organizations of informal workers in several countries. This laid the basis for future research work. From the start, the research under the Programme focused on global value chain analysis.
1. Global Value Chain Analysis
The term “value chain” refers to the full range of activities that firms and workers perform to bring a product or commodity from its conception to its end use or final consumer. When the activities of a given chain are divided among multiple firms and spread across different countries it is called a “global value chain”. From the beginning, WIEGO recognized the importance of value chain analysis to our work on global trade. But we were surprised to find that many analyses of global value chains focus on the chain as a whole or specific firms within it – but not on the workers in the chain. We also learned that few of the analyses that focused on workers in the chain included a focus on the industrial outworkers at the very bottom of the chain.
Manual on Global Value Chain Analysis in the Garment Sector
To address this gap, WIEGO commissioned Hubert Schmitz of IDS, Sussex and Dorothy McCormick of IDS, Nairobi to prepare a research methodology manual on how to trace global value chains in the garment sector down to the homeworkers: view the manual.
In preparing the manual, Hubert Schmitz and Dorothy McCormick consulted with a number of grassroots organizations working with home-based workers. After preparing the manual, Schmitz and McCormick led several training workshop on global value chain analysis using the manual; and, in the following years, the manual was used by research teams composed of local researchers and activities in several countries. Lizbeth Navas-Aleman from IDS, Sussex, who assisted in the preparation of the manual, has used elements of the manual in subsequent research: in India with SEWA supported by WIEGO (2001), in Nicaragua with the ILO (2004; in Tanzania with Dorothy McCormick researching footwear value chains (2004); in Brazil analysing the footwear cluster Nova Serrana (2005) and with the Institute Euvoldo Lodi (2006), and in Turkey with the State Planning Organization in Ankara (2008).
Please consult the following links to get the names of publications by Navas-Aleman:
Institute of Development Studies website:
Research project on branding in China
Lizbeth Navas-Aleman's Profile
Sector-Specific Global Value Chain Analysis
WIEGO also commissioned comparative studies in different countries of informal workers in selected global value chains. These studies were designed to analyze global value chains from the perspective of workers/producers at the lowest ends of these chains (many of whom are women) within the context of key features of globalization: notably, the rapid mobility (and associated power) of capital relative to labor and of big companies relative to small and micro units; and the restructuring of employment and production relations through global sub-contracting chains. Multi-country studies of informal workers in global value chains in two sectors were undertaken: garments and non-timber forest products.
The main research questions asked in the various sets of global value chain analyses have been:
- How are informal workers/producers integrated into global value chains?
- What are the consequences for them?
- How can they be integrated on more favourable terms?
Non-Timber Forest Products
In Latin America, a study was conducted that looked at the effects of trade liberalization on gender relations throughout the stages of the Brazil nut and babassu nut value chains; and at the different models of social organization and mobilization, focusing on the women-workers organizations in each country. The project explored opportunities for exchange of experiences and knowledge among the grassroots groups of women in the three countries. In addition, an exchange program was included in the project to allow women who peel Brazil nuts to learn from a successful soap-manufacturing unit operated by women who break babassu-nuts.
Garment Sector
The global value chain analysis in the garment sector was carried out in three stages:
- Research Design Workshop
In April 2002, at a research design workshop co-organized by the North-South Institute and WIEGO, a common conceptual framework for a comparative set of garment studies was developed that includes the following key features:- worker focus: broadening of sub-sector and GVC analysis to focus on workers – not just entrepreneurs, firms, or industry as a whole – and, more importantly, to look at workers in the lowest links of the chains
- homeworker focus: analysis of the ambiguous employment status of homeworkers (i.e. industrial outworkers who work from their homes), including features of both dependence and independence (typically they own the means of production and have to absorb many non-wage costs such as maintaining equipment and paying for utilities)
- own account worker focus: analysis of the peculiar features of own account work – often in ambiguous employment status mid-way between dependent workers and self-employed: notably, they are often dependent on single employer, contractor, or supplier
- global value chain dynamics: attention to the inter-relationship within specific global value chains of a) workers at different points along the chain and b) immigrant workers in countries in the North and informal workers in the countries from which they migrated.
- Research Studies
The research methodology workshop enabled WIEGO to share experiences and expanded the network of researchers and activists engaged in garment sector. It established research collaboration with IDS, Sussex, in particular with its Globalization team. As a result of the workshop research teams from India, Morocco, Turkey, Argentina, South Africa and Canada/Mexico submitted proposals to WIEGO for a multi-country research project.
- Research Findings Workshop
In March 2004, the IDS, Sussex and WIEGO organized an international research workshop on the garment sector studies. It was attended by 35 participants from 14 countries. Fourteen country case studies were presented: to enable these to be covered in a short amount of time, two page summaries were prepared in advance and circulated to all participants. This enabled presenters to concentrate on the two cross-cutting themes of the workshop: phasing out of the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA); and labor standards. View a short report on the workshop and a summary of the country studies.
Read more details on informal workers in the garment sector.
Analysing the Social Protection of Informal Workers using Value Chain Analysis
An unanticipated but welcome outcome of these early research activities was the establishment of a research collaboration with IDS, Sussex, in particular with its Globalization Team, that included the work on the global value chain manual (see above) as well as subsequent application of the manual to analyze the social protection of workers in both the garment and horticulture sectors.
In 2002 the Global Trade programme worked together with WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme, the ILO and the World Bank, in an innovative research project that used value chain analysis to look at the potential for social protection for informal workers. Stephanie Barrientos (formerly of IDS, Sussex now University of Manchester) and Armando Barrientos (with the University of Manchester) prepared a case study on workers in the horticulture sector in Chile and South Africa; Donna Doane (independent consultant), Rosalinda Ofreneo (University of the Philippines and Patamaba), and Daonoi Srikajon (HomeNet Thailand) carried out the value chain analysis of workers in the garment sector in the Philippines and Thailand. The case studies were used to ground the technical dialogue between the ILO, WIEGO, and the World Bank on social protection in everyday reality and were then featured in a joint publication on social protection: Chains of Production, Ladders of Protection, edited by Francie Lund and Jillian Nicholson.
2. Export Marketing Strategies for Groups of Informal Producers
Early Assistance to SEWA's Trade Facilitation Centre
WIEGO played a technical advisory role in the development of SEWA’s Trade Facilitation Centre (TFC) set up to link rural producers in SEWA’s membership to global markets: Marilyn Carr (then Director of the Global Trade programme) wrote the original funding proposal for the International Finance Corporation (IFC); and two consultants identified by WIEGO (Jacqui MacDonald and Mo Tomaney) provided design and marketing services.
Documentation of Best Practices
Marilyn Carr edited a book of case studies on best practices in linking women producers and workers with global markets called Chains of Fortune commissioned and published by the Commonwealth Secretariat. This book was launched at the September 2004 meeting of Finance Ministers from Commonwealth countries (along with the other book prepared by WIEGO for the Commonwealth Secretariat, Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction). Both books were also featured in a book launch organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat at the March 2005 meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.
What is distinctive about WIEGO’s approach to its research and policy dialogues on globalization is that we seek to:
- bring a worker focus into the analysis, including a focus on those on the bottom rungs of global value chains (notably, homeworkers)
- bring the voices of workers in the global South into the process
- promote collaboration between researchers and activists organizing informal workers in all of its activities
3. Labour Rights for Informal Wage Workers and Homeworkers
In 2007, WIEGO joined the Ethical Trading Initiative, a multistakeholder membership organization made up of companies, trades unions and NGOs. The mission of the ETI is to improve the lives of workers in global supply chains by promoting voluntary codes of conduct for retailers and manufacturers at the top end of the value chain. The ETI engages in tri-partite experimental pilot projects to look at ways of improving labour standards for workers in global supply chains as defined by its Code of Conduct.
WIEGO and ETI share common goals, as follows:
- highlight the presence and contribution of informal workers in global supply chains
- advocate for the labour rights of informal workers
- participate in tri-partite projects that test best practice approaches to improving the conditions for informal workers
- ensure that the voice of informal workers is heard by global retailers.
Soon after WIEGO became a member of ETI, the Director of WIEGO’s Global Trade programme, Elaine Jones, was asked to provide technical advice to the documentation of a homeworkers’ project in India.
Current and Planned Activities
The current and planned activities of the Programme are grouped under its broad goals:
- Increased Voice of Informal Workers
WIEGO continues to actively engage in ETI pilot projects through two key working groups: the Homeworkers’ Group which has been developing innovative ways of ensuring that companies apply labour standards to homeworkers in India, and the Purchasing Practices group which looks at how the way that businesses engage with suppliers affects the labour standards of workers, including informal workers.
WIEGO is partnered with one High St. retailer to examine its purchasing practices in a factory in Turkey and design ways of improving conditions for workers. In the UK WIEGO is working in collaboration with other organizations whose focus is on women and work: Homeworkers Worldwide, Women Working Worldwide, National Group on Homeworking, and Central American Women’s Network to raise the volume on the labour issues faced by women workers including informal workers. We worked together to host a joint panel on Decent Work on the International Day of Decent Work at the Trade Union Congress on 7th October, 2008. A roundtable convened by One World Action, SEWA and WIEGO in October 2008 provided a forum for a rich discussion on strategies for improved policy and advocacy on homeworkers (read report)
- Increased Visibility of Informal Workers
WIEGO is commissioning a “popular” manual on global value chain analysis which will be for those working as organisers with informal workers to inform their understanding of the place they occupy in the chain and to increase their visibility.
- Improved Policies and Practices for Informal Workers
The Programme plans to undertake case studies in 8 countries across three continents: (Africa, Asia and Latin America) to demonstrate how informal workers have organised collective forms of enterprise to engage with local and global markets. These case studies will be collected through a process of action research which enables informal workers to tell their story in their own words. The objective is to use the case studies to share the learning with other informal workers as an incentive to organise themselves. Each case study will be couched in an analysis of the context of trade liberalization in that country or sector.
Through this process WIEGO will open up a space for analyzing the impact of trade liberalization on informal wage workers and informal producers, including how to help informal wage workers and informal producers to cope with constraints posed by trade liberalization and to seize opportunities associated with trade liberalization; At the same time the process of engagement with informal workers will allow for further testing and refinement of strategies for developing linkages to training and support mechanisms to increase the access of and competitiveness in global markets of informal workers and producers, This work will be carried out in collaboration with two other programmes of WIEGO: Organization and Representation and Social Protection.
The Programme plans to broaden and deepen WIEGO’s involvement in international networks such as the Ethical Trading Initiative with a view to improving the working conditions of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy linked with global value chains.