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Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes

By , on January 01, 2015

Abstract: The informal workforce represents more than half of all workers in most developing countries and a significant share of workers in developed countries. This paper summarizes the history and forms of organizing informal workers, providing a timeline of organizing, typologies of organization forms and strategies, and data on numbers of organizations by type, sectors and countries. It discusses what different groups of informal workers bargain or negotiate for, and with whom; and analyses the strategic goals, benefits and challenges of organizing. It presents some recent legal and policy victories by organizations of informal workers. The concluding section extracts some lessons learned and makes a few recommendations, especially for governments and policy makers.

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Citation Information

Bonner, Chris, and Carré, Françoise. Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes. , , . , 2015. Bonner, C., and Carré, F. (2015). Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes. , , . Bonner, Chris, and Carré, Françoise. "Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes." 2015, .Bonner Chris, and Carré Françoise. "Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes." (2015). Bonner, C, and Carré, F 2015, 'Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes', , , . Chris Bonner, and Françoise Carré, 'Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes' (2015). Bonner C., and Carré F. Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes. . 2015. Bonner, Chris, and Carré, Françoise. Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges, and Successes. . 2015. , .

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WIEGO is at the forefront of developing statistics and research to help audiences understand the informal economy. Our library includes over two decades-worth of informal economy research, policy analysis, statistics and documentation of organizing efforts.