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Law Programme

Intro to the ProgrammeA complex mix of legislation regulates the activities of workers in informal employment. Often, it is punitive, compromising livelihoods and violating human rights. At the same time, these workers are excluded from regulatory frameworks recognizing their labour rights. But laws are not static; changing them is a key way workers build institutional power.

Since its establishment in 2015, the Law Programme has supported workers in informal employment and their organizations to know, use and shape the law, to claim their rights and secure their livelihoods.

It grew out of a nine-year global project on Law and the Informal Economy, which WIEGO instituted in 2006. The project deepened our understanding of how legislation – or its absence – affects workers in informal employment, as well as how women worker leaders engage in legal advocacy. After pilots in India and Colombia, the project involved organizations of women workers in Ghana, Peru, Thailand, India and South Africa.

Recognizing that law reform and political struggle are inseparable, our approach to legal advocacy is grounded in the principles of solidarity, legal empowerment and responsiveness to the political economy of the different contexts we work in. We carry out our work alongside international networks of workers in informal employment and their affiliates.

Programme Activities Strengthening the Institutional Power of Workers in Informal Employment

By definition, workers in informal employment are not afforded sufficient legal protection. We work to build the legal infrastructure that organizations of workers in informal employment need to change this.

Key elements include strong worker organizations that deploy legal tactics creatively to build collective power; robust legal frameworks that strengthen protections and entitlements for workers in informal employment; and effective mechanisms for the interpretation, implementation and enforcement of laws.

Spanning the local to global, the activities we undertake to advance these objectives seek to put law in the hands of workers, as both a shield and a sword for advancing their demands; support lawyers to deepen their collaboration with informally employed workers and their organizations; and persuade those who make and influence laws and policies to promote progressive reforms.

  • Labour law recognizes the unequal bargaining power between capital and labour. Accordingly, it extends specific protections to workers to counter capital’s power. This includes rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, which enable workers to negotiate better working conditions, higher wages, and social protection.

    Many workers in informal employment fall outside labour law’s protections because its scope is confined to an employment relationship. Numerous international laws recognize the need to extend labour rights to workers in informal employment. But many countries fail to translate these rights into domestic legislation.

    WIEGO’s Law Programme supports workers to use international instruments in legal advocacy for strengthened protection of their labour rights. Projects include Making Convention 189 Real for Domestic Workers and Domestic Workers Legal Empowerment Training. Also, we engage labour law scholars and practitioners – in trade unions, the ILO and other institutions – on the need for strengthened protections and entitlements for workers in informal employment.

  • Human rights – which include rights to work and rights at work – are compelling moral claims that governments have made binding commitments to guarantee. For workers who rely on public spaces and resources, the focus on the state as the primary bearer of human rights duties can help strengthen their demands vis-a-vis local authorities controlling their terms and conditions of work.

    For this reason, advocacy with regional and international human rights institutions is a key part of the Law Programme’s strategy. For example, since 2017, our Protection of Human Rights of Waste Pickers in Latin America project has sought improvements for this occupational group through legal advocacy with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Documenting systemic rights violations against waste pickers – such as their rights to work and to life – led the Commission’s rapporteurs on economic, social, cultural and environmental rights to champion the labour rights of workers in informal employment in the region.

    Waste Pickers and Human Rights

  • The livelihoods of many workers in informal employment are defined by regulations, by-laws and city ordinances that give local authorities powers to govern access to the public space and resources they rely on.

    Challenges workers face often result from how those powers are designated, interpreted and exercised. The principles of administrative justice regulate the actions of government officials – they must be lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair. This makes administrative justice a tool workers can leverage to contest actions that impede their work, and push for inclusive decision-making that, ultimately, changes laws.

    The Law Programme seeks to understand law’s impact on livelihoods in urban space in order to reconfigure urban governance relationships to better advance the human rights and labour rights of workers in informal employment. Projects include Organizing through Administrative Justice and R204 and the edited book Mapping Legalities: Urbanisation, Law and Informal Work.

  • Homeworkers produce goods and services that are essential to global and domestic garment production. But long and complex supply chains make outsourcing to them a challenge to regulate. These arrangements don’t fit labour law’s traditional assumptions of how and where work is undertaken. To ensure decent terms and conditions for homeworkers, sector-specific legal protections are needed.

    The Law Programme supports HomeNet International and its members with research, technical support and capacity building on different models to protect homeworkers in both national legislation and international instruments. This contributes to campaigning for the ratification and implementation of ILO Convention 177. We also deepen alliances with global networks in the garment sector to build solidarity among all workers in the supply chain. Projects include collective advocacy on the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and support to the Bulgarian Homeworkers Association to report to the ILO.

How We Work

  • Research

    Our research uncovers gaps in the way laws are designed, interpreted, implemented and enforced, and highlights the impact this has on workers’ rights and livelihoods. Our aim is to influence communities of practice – across Labour Law, Human Rights Law and Urban Law –to think beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries that exclude workers in informal employment.

  • Policy Advocacy

    To challenge mainstream assumptions about workers in informal employment – for example, that they operate outside the law or that their work is criminal – we engage in national, regional and international agenda-setting processes. We provide evidence, analysis and recommendations on reforms to address these workers’ economic exclusion.

  • Supporting Worker Organizations

    We undertake a range of activities with workers’ organizations to identify and respond to their members’ legal needs. This includes worker education on the law, training workers to provide paralegal services, building relationships with public interest and pro bono lawyers who can assist when workers face legal threats, and providing technical support for legal advocacy towards long-term change.

Projects

We design and implement our projects in collaboration with networks of workers in informal employment and their affiliates. Our projects incorporate research, advocacy, technical support, training and alliance building to engage workers, lawyers and policymakers in efforts to build the legal infrastructure that worker organizations need to achieve long-term change.

  • Organizing through Administrative Justice and R204

    This cross-programme project explores how street vendors and waste pickers can leverage principles of administrative justice and ILO Recommendation 204 to build worker power in negotiations with local authorities. We are currently accompanying worker organizations in Brazil, Zimbabwe and Senegal to establish partnerships with lawyers and promote dialogue with local authorities.

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  • Domestic Workers’ Legal Empowerment Training

    Since 2021, we have been co-designing a legal empowerment approach with the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) to address barriers to accessing justice for domestic workers in Africa. This includes a pilot to train domestic workers in Zimbabwe, Togo, Tanzania and Kenya to provide paralegal services through their unions.

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  • Making Convention 189 Real for Domestic Workers

    Since the ILO adopted Convention No. 189 concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers (C189), the International Domestic Workers’ Federation (IDWF) has been promoting its ratification and implementation. We provide capacity-building and technical support to IDWF affiliates to strengthen their national and regional efforts to realize C189.

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  • Protecting Human Rights in Informal Employment

    This cross-programme project involves research with waste pickers and street vendors. Our aim is to build evidence of the rights violations they face and present this to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to strengthen normative standards on the state action needed to protect the rights of these occupational groups.

    Read More

  • Including Homeworkers in Human Rights Due Diligence

    Alongside HomeNet International, HomeNet South-East Asia and HomeNet South Asia, we engaged in advocacy on the legislative process that resulted in the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The Directive makes it mandatory for member states to introduce statutes that make businesses assume responsibility for rights violations, including in their supply chains.

    Read More

Featured Resource
From the Palace to the Kitchens: Making C189 Real for Domestic Workers in Africa – WIEGO Law & Informality Insights No. 9

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More WIEGO Programmes

  • Statistics Programme

    The Statistics Programme works with statisticians and data users (including workers in informal employment) to improve statistical methods that will make visible the size and significance of the informal economy and the situation of those working in it, and shares the data in accessible formats.

    Statistics Programme

  • Urban Policies Programme

    The Urban Policies Programme works to improve workers’ incomes and the security of their workplaces and homes, and supports workers in negotiating gains in urban policies and practices.

    Urban Policies Programme

  • Organization & Representation Programme

    The Organization and Representation Programme helps organizations of workers in informal employment build organizational and leadership capacity, and connect to each other and with allies as they fight to improve the working conditions of their members.

    Organization & Representation Programme

  • Social Protection Programme

    The Social Protection Programme supports workers in informal employment to access social protections throughout their life cycle, helping them to mitigate risks to their incomes and cope after shocks.

    Social Protection Programme

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