AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

122 ISABELLE TURCOTTE
ity enhancement. The success of these services suggests a transition into
formal jobs, or the ability to independently produce goods and services
by means of their own formal enterprises. This has in turn incited other
macro-policies on behalf of central government, notably the National
Plan for the Development of Micro-enterprises which regroups three
micro-enterprise typologies including ‘growth,’ ‘survivalist’ and ‘associative’
micro-enterprises.
With the legacy and continued presence of the gremios (business associations),
micro-enterprises are encouraged to join panels and participate
in forums related to their trade. Workers and business owners are
encouraged to integrate in these organizations that “offer collective solutions
to common problems” such as employment protection and stability,
and representativeness in the face of government of private institutions
(Alves et al. 1998: 32). These gremios are practical platforms of
negotiation resembling unions, yet breaking the traditional employer/
employee relationship, replacing it with a sectoral focus and a diversity of
legal statuses, allowing smaller informal micro-enterprises to formalize
relationships. These networks expand the bargaining power of individual
micro-enterprises and include them within an intricate system of relationships
that reduces, at least in theory, the structures of disadvantage
inherent to the atomized state of unorganized informal work.
CONCLUSIONS ON EVOLVING DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE
The Statistics Bureau of Colombia known as the DANE holds updated
data regarding the informal sector based on the current ILO definition as
a basis of measuring informality, yet it includes all enterprises in which
ten or less employees actively work. While this may simplify measurement,
it demonstrates that micro-enterprises in themselves are the specific
area of focus, as there are many small enterprises that can have perfectly
formal labor relationship and status, and larger enterprises that do
not ensure proper coverage to their employees or avoid taxation. This
goes to confirm that the political focus has shifted to productive capacity
rather than intrinsic rights, obligations and status.
The DANE indicators for informality state that between 2007 and
2008, informal employment still accounts for 55 to 58 percent of total
employment with its value of GDP just above 30 percent (DANE, Boletin
de Prensa: Informalidad 2008). What we learn from such statistics is
that the proportion of small producers has virtually been left unaltered in