TOC Image: Social Protection
Social Protection
Problem Statement
Worldwide, millions of workers have never had or are losing access to their rights to social benefits through work – benefits such as retirement funds, maternity benefits and reproductive health services, compensation for work-related accidents and diseases. Millions more will never gain the kind of jobs that carry such benefits.
In the industrialized North, states have been withdrawing from welfare provision, while employers and owners of capital are offloading responsibility for social coverage to workers themselves. In poorer developing countries, conditions of work are hazardous and precarious, with little regulation of the working environment, and very little social protection. Across the globe, workers are denied what used to be entitlements through work; poor conditions of work are associated with poor health and lowered incomes; and there is cross-generational transmission of poverty from the present generation of working people to the next.
Also, a large and growing number of working people are doing informal types of work in informal places of work that are associated with specific risks not commonly found in formal types and formal places of work. The regulation of conditions of work, in order to secure decent and safe conditions, is restricted to formal places of work such as shops, offices and factories. However, the majority of the world’s workers now work elsewhere – whether on street corners, informal markets, or public parks (street and market vendors), on waste dumps (waste pickers), in their own homes (industrial outworkers), or the private homes of others (domestic workers). But the conventional institutions covering occupational health and safety do not cover informal places of work, nor do they include some of the occupational hazards associated with informal work.
Further, systemic country-level or global risks – such as the global financial crisis/economic recession – have specific, often severe, impacts on those engaged in informal work. Yet there is a widespread assumption that the informal economy fares relatively well during crises and provides a “cushion” to those who lose formal jobs or need to supplement formal incomes during crises.
WIEGO sees the lack of access to social protection as a long term structural problem that will have especially harsh consequences for the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy. What is needed is a system-wide approach to social protection that is designed to handle a wide range of contingencies or shocks for all strata of the population and workforce, through a range of financing mechanisms. The approach should be based on the fact that the informal workforce contributes to the overall economy, that social protection for the informal workforce is an investment, not just a cost, and that the risks of the informal workforce cannot be addressed solely through short-term safety nets or targeted social assistance. Policymakers should recognize that, as one important plank of formalization, the informal workforce needs to be integrated into social insurance, in addition to social assistance, schemes.
Goals & Objectives
The Social Protection Programme of WIEGO aims to investigate and highlight the risks faced by the working poor in the informal economy, and particularly the risks faced by women workers: by investigating how common contingencies affect informal workers in particular, how systemic shocks affect informal workers in particular, and how the nature of informal work creates shocks and risks specific to informal workers. In the short and medium term, it aims to identify, document, and promote innovative approaches to providing social protection to informal workers, extending the coverage of existing schemes or developing new schemes. For the long term, it seeks to promote a new approach to social protection that provides protection for systemic shocks and common contingencies for both formal and informal workers, and that integrates informal workers into social insurance schemes as well as social assistance.
More specifically, WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme aims to:
- act as a bridge between, on the one hand, organizations of informal workers and their allies, and on the other, those in government and in the private sector who influence economic and social policies that impact on the working conditions of informal workers
- help improve national statistics on the social protection coverage of all workers, formal and informal
- undertake analyses of economic and social policies that include informal workers and identify the features that make for successful inclusion of informal workers
- promote social protection programmes that can go to scale, are sustainable, and include informal workers themselves in the design and implementation of the programme
- influence a change in orthodox thinking about the informal economy, and about social protection, so that there is greater recognition that most of the working poor are engaged in the informal economy; that one reason they remain poor is that they do not have access to affordable social insurance or adequate social assistance; that economic growth and social protection are indivisible; and that much more can be done to integrate informal workers into mainstream social protection schemes
While being in support of the global move towards cash transfers and universal health schemes, WIEGO also seeks to identify ways in which employers and owners of capital can be persuaded to contribute to the social protection needs of those they employ and those who otherwise produce for them.
Current & Planned Activities
Projects
Occupational Health and Safety
The places of work of the majority of the world’s workers are not covered by the discipline and practice of mainstream Occupational Health and Safety (OHS). WIEGO has embarked on a research and advocacy programme which seeks to answer the question: what would a new, more inclusive OHS look like that is inclusive and protective of informal workers, and especially poorer women amongst them? The programme is working in Brazil, Ghana, India, Peru and Tanzania. We use a variety of research methods, including participatory research, institutional mapping, and policy dialogues, and will be exploring ways of influencing OSH training, and improved OHS modules in labour force surveys. Visit WIEGO’s microsite on Occupational Health and Safety.
Inclusive Social Policies for Informal Workers and for Atypical Formal Workers: Concepts, Data, Innovations and Dialogues
This collaboration between WIEGO and UNRISD takes advantage of the new space for broader social policy that opened prior to, and was reinforced by, the global financial crisis. It investigates the links between economic and social policies, looking at labour as a produced factor of production, and will spell out implications of this for social policy, using a gender lens and informal worker lens. Two conceptual papers are being developed in Phase I, one each by WIEGO and by UNRISD. These will develop new theoretical work on integrating informal work, new types of vulnerable formal work, and the process of informalization into the analysis of welfare regimes, and will draw out the implications of this for the scope of social policy. In Phase 2, we hope to do statistical work with new analysis of existing data on social protection collected through household surveys and labour force surveys for informal workers in five countries, using in particular the variable of employment status, disaggregated by sex. The project will then identify innovative policy approaches that may be replicable, that involve significant stakeholders, and that identify the potential role and responsibilities of owners of capital. Finally, we will then aim to insert the theoretical, statistical and policy insights into international social and economic policy platforms through a conference, dissemination of case studies, and policy dialogues.
Increasing the Voice of Informal Workers in Social Policy Development
This three year project is a partnership between Peru’s CIES (Peru’s premier social and economic research consortium) and WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme. It brings together membership-based organizations (MBOs) and city level and national level officials and policy influencers in Peru, Mexico and Colombia. It seeks to build enduring forums where informal workers can participate in policy development and negotiation. It draws on methods developed in the Exposure Dialogue Programme and on the Informal Economy Budget Analysis methodology EDP and IEBA methods, and policy dialogues.
Universal Health Systems and the Working Poor: Barriers to Access - Case Studies and Policy Dialogue
Ghana, India, and Thailand have recently introduced inclusive health/health insurance schemes as a means by which to increase access to healthcare. For a relevant publication, read WIEGO Social Protection Case Study: The Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme. Institutional Members of WIEGO, all MBOs of informal workers, have been involved in the design and/or implementation process of these schemes in each country. WIEGO and its members want to understand how these schemes include or exclude poorer informal workers (especially women), at both the design and implementation phases. We plan to commission – and, in one case, have already commissioned – case studies of the national health schemes in the three countries from this perspective. We then plan to convene a two-day policy dialogue at which the MBOs, government officials, and health system experts will discuss the three case studies to extract lessons for the design and implementation of universal health schemes. The aim is to create greater conceptual clarity around the specific barriers these workers face in trying to access health schemes, and thereby how to develop an effective policy response to increase access.
Involvement in International Networks, Alliances and Campaigns
The Social Protection Programme participates in networks, alliances and campaigns as a way of influencing policy. In the past, these have included:
- the Global Labour Forum in Delhi, a group of economists with an Asia focus, developing new conceptual thinking on labour markets and employment
- the Livingstone Call for Action for the Extension of Social Protection in Africa
Current alliance and networks include:
- the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute for Development Studies, Brighton
- the International Alliance for the Extension of Social Protection: an International Labour Organization (ILO) based initiative to extend social security in developing countries
