Employmentweb_low

EmploymEnT, woRk, and hEalTh inEqualiTiEs - a global perspective
Father and son collecting boxes in the city
dump in Guatemala.
source: antonio rosa (2002)
informal employment
The informal sector is a step below precarious employment in terms of
vulnerability. although an informal economy exists within wealthy
countries (and may be growing), informal employment is predominantly
a feature of low- and middle-income countries such as china, where it
has grown rapidly to account for over 25 per cent of the workforce, and is
especially predominant among women (cooke, 2006) (see case studies
88 and 89). in some african countries, such as Ghana, the majority of
workers are engaged in the informal economy. The danger of the
informal sector in the production of health inequalities is the fact that
both workers and dominant practices remain very difficult to monitor.
The economic pressure, deprivation, and lawlessness surrounding
much informal economic work exposes workers to an array of
heightened risks including poor mental health, physical over-exertion,
and exposure to sexual harassment and violence (prevalent amongst
domestic workers and street vendors) (nunes & Theodoro, 2006). The
problem is that informal labourers and the informal labour market as
a whole remain largely invisible to ohs statistics. Moreover, the
existence of such a substantial informal sector corrodes the regulatory
protection of the formal sector because there is no universality to
minimum labour standards. More important still, the informal sector
can be used as an alternative source of supply (through outsourcing) by
local or foreign firms seeking to evade regulatory standards (dwyer,
2006; Baumecker & de faria 2006; Beltrao, 2006).
To combat this usurpation, informal workers have occasionally sought
to organise in order to protect themselves. despite their efforts, social
marginalisation and workplace isolation make organisation problematic
and these bodies have, on occasion, been shunned by unions more
concerned about restricting membership than acknowledging the
informal economy. nonetheless, groups of informal workers mobilise in
the social, industrial and political spheres to demand dignity and rights
from employers and push to create broad alliances in order to pressure
governments to adopt food production and redistributive policies and
alleviate poverty, rather than prioritising export crops.
as we mentioned before regarding the informal economy, child and
bonded labour governments must assume the policy space to ensure
that resources are directed to achieve equitable access to health care,
that poverty reduction is a priority and that health is treated as a human
right and not as a WTo/iMf-approved outcome of the marketplace
(labonte & schrecker, 2007). as Tokman (2007) has argued with regard
to latin america, the informal economy can be incorporated into the
modern sector to address social exclusion and achieve near-universal
social protection.
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