TOC Image: Global Trade
Global Trade
Problem Statement
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 – has accelerated the pace of reform and associated changes, including the reorganization of production. The poverty and other social outcomes resulting from these forces have been hotly debated. But there is a growing recognition that these forces are two-edged swords, 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 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 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.
The global economic recession has highlighted not only the interconnectedness of the global economy but also the vulnerability of workers linked to global production and export markets. Research by WIEGO and its partners has shown that homeworkers producing for export markets were more badly affected than homeworkers producing for domestic markets. For more information, read the Global Economic Crisis studies written by Zoe Horn: No Cushion to Fall Back On (2010) and Coping with Crises (2011).
Goals & 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 overall objectives of the Global Trade Programme are to:
- increase understanding of how different groups of informal workers are affected by and inserted into the global economy, and with what consequences
- promote policies and practices in support of informal wage workers and informal producers/producer groups by documenting and disseminating promising examples from the ethical and fair trade movements
- 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
- 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
- provide information to informal wage workers, including homeworkers, to raise their awareness of their labour rights in relation to production for national and export production
- document and disseminate good practices and policies that help to secure the rights and protection of informal workers in the global economy
More specifically, the Global Trade Programme seeks to:
- increase the VOICE of informal workers: 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
- increase the VISIBILITY of informal workers: through sector-specific research on how informal workers are inserted into the global economy, and with what consequences
- improve Policies and Practices for Informal Workers: by documenting promising examples of ethical and fair trade policies and practices in support of informal wage workers (especially homeworkers) and informal producer groups; and organizing policy dialogues to disseminate these and other improved policies and practices for informal workers (for an example, see Global Trade Case Study: Women Cocoa Farmers in Ghana)
What is distinctive about WIEGO’s approach to our 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 our activities
Current & Planned Activities
The current and planned activities of the Programme are grouped under specific goals:
Ethical Trade and Informal Workers
In 2007, WIEGO joined the Ethical Trading Initiative, a multi-stakeholder 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. With over 70 company members,including several major global brands, they have an estimated 35,000 suppliers with some 9.4 million workers, many of whom are waged informal workers and industrial outworkers. The ETI engages in tri-partite experimental pilot projects to look at ways of improving labour standards for workers in global supply chains as detailed in its Base Code and other Membership Resources.
WIEGO and ETI share common goals:
- to highlight the presence and contribution of informal workers in global supply chains
- to advocate for the labour rights of informal workers
- to participate in tri-partite projects that test best practice approaches to improving the conditions for informal workers
- to ensure that the voice of informal workers is heard by global retailers
For more in-depth information, read Fair and Ethical Trade: An Explanation.
WIEGO has been actively engaged in ETI programme work related to homeworkers in global supply chains. The focus of this work has been to develop a set of Homeworker Guidelines to ensure companies apply labour standards to homeworkers, and to examine core business practices with corporate members to look at how the way businesses engage with suppliers affects the labour standards of workers, including informal workers. A roundtable convened in October 2008 by One World Action, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and WIEGO provided a forum for an engaged discussion on strategies to improve policy and advocacy on homework. (Read the report.)
In consultation with organizations of homeworkers, and together with a labour rights consultant Celia Mather, WIEGO prepared a “popular” manual for organizers of homeworkers to inform their understanding of the place they occupy in the chain and to increase their visibility. See “We Are Workers, Too!” Organizing Home-based Workers in the Global Economy.
WIEGO now plans to engage with the national and regional HomeNet organizations of home-based workers to map the value chains in which their members are inserted. This information will be an important resource for increasing the visibility of home-based workers, particularly those who work as industrial outworkers, and will be used as background material for a Training of Trainers with organizers of home-based workers.
Read the Step-by-Step Guide To Reviewing And Improving Purchasing Practices (PDF).
Fair Trade and Women Informal Workers
Between 2009 - 2011, Global Trade undertook an action research project to gather case studies in seven countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America within the scope of a wider WIEGO project for Women’s Economic Empowerment (funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The case studies demonstrate how informal workers, especially women, when organized in collective enterprises such as cooperatives and producer associations, have found both economic and social gains by engaging with local and global fair trade markets.
The case studies examine different organizational forms of producer groups and fair trade associations. In doing so, they highlight key success factors in the strategies adopted to engage with fair trade markets, and consider what support producer organizations receive from their affiliation with associations and country networks. The case studies, were collected through a process of action research that enables informal workers to tell their stories through photo journals, murals, film, songs, embroidery and words. Each case study is couched in an analysis of the context of the trading environment in that country or region. The objective is to use the case studies to share the learning with other informal workers as an incentive to organizing.
In March and April of 2011, sharing, learning and dissemination workshops were held in communities in Mexico and Nicaragua. The final dissemination and learning event of the project took place in Mombasa in May 2011 with representatives from partners in India, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda. There, sharing of information was particularly important in helping women see similarities across countries and share fair trade strategies.
The Mombasa workshop was held on the eve of the biennial global conference of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO). At the conference, WIEGO organizers presented on the project and ran two workshops. Documentaries made as part of the project in India were shown (these had previously been shown in India and Central America). The films stimulated much discussion about the project and questions about the lives of poor women workers and the role of fair trade. Significantly, this was the first time gender had been on the WFTO agenda. Visit our project blog to view the videos and read more.
The findings of the project are detailed in the publication Trading Our Way Up: Women Organizing for Fair Trade.
On April 12, 2002 the Women’s Collective Action webinar series will feature Elaine Jones and Carol Wills, two Trading Our Way Up authors. They will present findings from the project. They will present findings from the study. Learn more and register to attend.
View the flyer for this event.
Elaine Jones is also presenting on Trading Our Way Up at:
- Fair Trade International Symposium (FTIS) 2-3 April
- AWID Forum, Istanbul, 19-22 April
