Workers’ Health

Access to health care is an issue of economic justice – it is crucial for workers in informal employment because their income relies on their ability to work. However, health services often do not account for workers' needs. Long waiting times at health facilities, complex registration procedures, and opening hours unsuited to working people are just some of the barriers faced.

Occupational health provisions – which often fall under the mandate of labour ministries rather than health ministries – do not cover many informal workplaces, and rely on the presence of an employer-employee relationship for enforcement purposes. This poses a particular problem as climate change causes ever more dangerous working conditions around the world.

WIEGO’s Workers’ Health pillar aims to provide a central point for information, research, policy advocacy activities and movement-building relating to the promotion of optimal health and improved access to health care for workers in informal employment. Our work builds on our foundational Occupational Health & Safety for Informal Workers project, which ran from 2009 to 2014.

ActivitiesLatest Research

The Workers’ Health pillar engages in mixed-methods participatory research. We provide support to all WIEGO programmes, integrating a public health perspective where required.

We are embarking on a new research and advocacy project which aims to better integrate the health and safety needs of workers in informal employment into occupational and public health systems. The project will take place in Brazil and India, and will start with research to both understand workers’ health needs (including under conditions of climate change), and to determine possibilities for change within health systems to better address these needs.

ActivitiesPolicy Analysis and Engagements

Our network aims to advance the right to health care of workers in informal employment, through active engagement in global policy and advocacy spaces such as the World Health Organization Health in the World of Work Network, the Global Coalition on Informal Worker Health, Safety and Wellbeing, and People’s Health Movement.

By increasing the visibility of the informal economy and supporting the participation of workers in these important spaces, we seek to bridge the gap between worker leaders and multilateral institutions, health specialists and academia – with the aim of shaping narratives and practices around health and informality that centre on workers’ economic and social realities.

ActivitiesMobilizing for Health

Supporting grass-roots organizations of workers in informal employment to mobilize towards securing the right to health care is also a key element of our work. By documenting workers’ local and national-level actions to demand improved working conditions, health services and urban infrastructure to protect their health and safety, and by supporting the participation of workers in negotiations at the International Labour Conference, WIEGO contributes to movement-building around health and informality.

In addition, WIEGO will strengthen the organizing skills and technical capacities of worker leaders through building the WIEGO School workers’ education programme and the Workers’ Health Champions platform.