THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK: CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES Trade Union Organizing in the Informal Economy: A Review of the Literature on Organizing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Western, Central and Eastern Europe The Transformation of Work research series is produced by the Solidarity Center to expand scholarship on and understanding of issues facing workers in an increasingly globalized world. The series is a product of the Solidarity Center’s USAID-funded Global Labor Program, which supports the efforts of the Solidarity Center and its consortium partners—the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)—to document challenges to decent work and the strategies workers and their organizations engage to overcome those challenges. This report was made possible through support provided by the Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, U.S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of Award No. AID-OAA-L-11-00001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Any errors found in the research are the author’s own. © 2013 Solidarity Center Trade Union Organizing in the Informal Economy: A Review of the Literature on Organizing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Western, Central and Eastern Europe Report to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity Principal Investigators: Susan J.Schurman and Adrienne E. Eaton, Contributing Authors: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, Richard Hyman, Camille DiLeo, Gilma Madrid Berroterán, Sahra Ryklief, Mihai Varga, Verna Viajar Rutgers University January 2012 Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Leah Vosko for helping to orient us in the Canadian literature, Faiza Abbas for her research assistance, Czar Joseph Castillo for help with data on the informal sector in Asia, Fidelia Pokuah for assistance with document preparation, and the staff of the ACILS for providing access to the informal economy practitioner community around the world. Any errors in the report, however, are our entirely own. Contributors Gilma Madrid Berroterán, PhD, University of Warwick, is an independent researcher on the social, economic and cultural aspects of trade and globalizations and their impact on Human Rights in Latin America. She has published articles on gender, ethical trade, economy and culture Camille DiLeo is a student in the Masters in Labor and Employment Relations Program at Rutgers. Adrienne E. Eaton is chair of the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on labor-management partnerships, union organizing under neutrality and card check and the impact of unionization on particular occupational groups including managerial workers and graduate student employees. She’s the co-author along with Tom Kochan, Paul Adler and Robert McKersie of the book, Healing Together: The Kaiser Permanente Labor-Management Partnership, editor with Jeff Keefe of Employment Dispute Resolution in the Changing Workplace, and author of numerous articles published in journals like Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Labor Studies Journal, and Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations. Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick is a Lecturer in Management at Birkbeck, University of London. She was awarded a doctorate in sociology at the University of Warwick in 2001 and specializes in international and comparative industrial relations, international trade unionism and equal opportunities. She is a former Information Officer of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and Coordinating Editor of the Social and Labour Bulletin of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), both in Geneva. She is currently vice-president of Birkbeck University and College Union and is a staff governor of Birkbeck College. Rebecca is currently working with Richard Hyman on a book on European trade unions, based on a three-year research project on challenges facing trade unions in ten EU countries. Richard Hyman is Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics. He has written extensively on comparative history, political economy, trade unions and EU regulation. Recent publications include “European trade unions and the long march through the institutions: from integration to contention?” In: Fairbrother, Peter and Hennebert, Marc-Antonin and Lévesque, Christian, (eds.) Transnational trade unionism: new capabilities and prospects. Routledge. 2012. Sahra Ryklief is General Secretary of the International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations and past director of the Labor Research Service in South Africa. She has authored many reports and articles on trade unions and informal economy workers. Susan J. Schurman is Professor and Acting Dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey. She is the current President of the International Federation of Workers Education Associations and President Emeritus of the National Labor College. Her research focuses on trade union effectiveness, workplace safety and health and worker’ education and training. Recent publications include: Labor Deserves Credit: "The Popular Education Foundations of the National Labor College." In P. Finn and M. Finn (Eds.). Teacher Education with an Attitude: Preparing Teachers to Educate Working Class Students in Their Collective SelfInterest. SUNY Press. 2007. Verna Dinah Q. Viajar is a Senior Researcher at the Labour Education and Research Network (LEARN). Ms. Viajar has extensive research experience in labor studies including issues on changing employment patterns, impacts of economic globalization on labor organizing, and the trade union movements in Asia and the Philippines. She has an MA in Labour Policies and Globalization from the University of Kassel and Berlin School of Economics in Germany and a BA degree in Political Science from the University of the Philippines. She formerly worked as Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines from 2008-2011. 1 Mihai Varga is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute where he studies the way states contain or facilitate with collective action – particularly in post-communist Europe. His 2011 doctoral dissertation is titled Striking with tied hands: Strategies of labour interest representation in post-communist Romania and Ukraine. Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND MAJOR FINDINGS........................................................... 3 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 5 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................... 6 DEFINING THE “INFORMAL ECONOMY” ........................................................................ 7 WHO WORKS IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY? ............................................................... 8 FORMS OF INFORMAL ECONOMY ORGANIZATION .................................................. 10 THE INFORMAL ECONOMY IN AFRICA ......................................................................... 11 Summary of key trade union strategies ....................................................................... 20 Conclusions: Implications for trade union policy formulation. .................................. 22 TRADE UNIONS AND INFORMAL ECONOMY WORKERS IN ASIA .......................... 23 Overview of Industrial Relations in Asia.................................................................... 24 Conclusions: comparisons and policy implications .................................................... 31 TRADE UNION ORGANIZING THE INFORMAL ECONOMY WORKERS IN LATIN AMERICA .............................................................................................................................. 34 The Informal Economy in Latin America ................................................................... 37 Conclusions and Policy Implications .......................................................................... 43 NORTH AMERICA: UNITED STATES AND CANADA ................................................... 43 Unions and Informal/Non-standard Work ................................................................. 46 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 57 EUROPEAN TRADE UNIONS AND ‘ATYPICAL’ WORKERS ....................................... 58 ‘Atypical’ and ‘Informal’ Employment in Western Europe ....................................... 59 SUMMARY AND OVERALL CONCLUSIONS.................................................................. 70 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND MAJOR FINDINGS The purpose of this report is to review the existing literature on efforts throughout the globe by workers who labor outside the formal labor and employment relations policy framework of their country to form or join trade unions as well as unions’ efforts to organize and represent them. Globalization - the expansion and integration of market-based economic policies - has driven a worldwide decline in the number of workers in the primary labor market with “standard” employment – stable, long term employment with a single