Employmentweb_low

employment relations and health inequalities: a conceptual and empirical overvieW
injuries, but also in terms of aid for dependent family members.
Similarly, regarding contributions to social insurance systems, if a
contract does not involve any contributory obligations, there is far
less incentive for voluntary contributions, especially when low-wage
workers are expected to channel some of their current income into
a system from which they may receive benefits in the future.
In middle- and low-income countries there has been an
increasing informalisation of labour markets, indicated by a decline
in the number of employees with formal working agreements.
according to the IlO, out of every 100 workers worldwide, only 6 are
fully employed, and another 16 are unable to earn enough to get
their families over the poverty line of US$1 per day (IlO, 2001). In
latin america, despite the lack of information on indicators that
define the quality of employment, it is still possible to describe some
of the main characteristics of jobs. a small number of countries
show a downward trend in hiring with formal or written contracts. In
those countries which have information available from the beginning
of the 1990s, formal hiring fell by four percentage points between
1990 and 2005 (EClaC, 2007). In 2005, 12 countries in the region
reported that 49 per cent of their wage workers had a formal
contract with their employers, with one in four having a permanent
contract (i.e., one in every eight wage workers overall) (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Wage workers with formal and permanent contracts in latin america (12 countries) in 2002
and 2005.
60
50
48.7 49.3
54.4 54.2
50.3 51.5
46.4 46.3
40
Percentage
30
20
10
16.5
13.3
16.3
14.5
25.5
24.9
6.1 6.3
14.9
13.5
18.6
13.1
0
2002 2005 2002 2005 2002 2005 2002 2005 2002 2005
Total wage workers Wage workers in mediumand
Wage workers in low-
Male wage workers Female wage workers
high- productivity productivity sectors
sectors
Total wage workers with formal contracts Wage workers with permanent contracts
source: economic commission for latin america and the caribbean. (2007). social panorama of latin america 2006. santiago de
chile: united nations.
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