Applying International Labour Standards to the Informal Economy – Chapter 1: Convention 87 – Freedom of Association

By WIEGO, International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network on March 01, 2024

To provide workers and workers’ organizations, including unions, the tools to use existing ILO conventions and recommendations creatively to elicit new interpretations from the ILO supervisory system which broaden their scope to the obstacles confronting workers in the informal economy, the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) are producing a series of guidelines on a convention-by-convention basis. These guidelines identify the specific issues that workers in the informal economy face that are relevant to that convention and provide recommendations as to how workers and organizations should frame their comments or complaints to obtain a favourable outcome from the supervisory system. We hope that workers and organizations, through consistent use of these guides, will help to develop a robust set of jurisprudence, which can be used to advocate for legal and institutional reforms at the national and regional levels.

This chapter thoroughly discusses the applicability of Convention 87 to all workers, emphasizing that workers in the informal economy are entitled to form and join organizations without prior authorization. It addresses the substantial gap in practical enforcement and application of these rights for workers in the informal economy, highlighting the absence of robust observations or recommendations from ILO’s supervisory bodies that would guide national governments in adapting their legal frameworks.

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