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forcement and, eventually, a redesign of labourinspection institutions.For informal workers outside formal enterprises,full compliance of labour rights as establishedby national legislation needs to be enforced. Thisshould go beyond the minimum floor, requiringeventually reforms to the labour legislation for thefacilitation of compliance. Advances in this directionwould lead to full achievement of the DecentWork objectives.Unfortunately, not all employment relationshipsare explicit, where rights and obligationscan be clearly identified. Many workers areemployed under diffuse employment relationswhere the relation is hidden or where there areproblems in the application or interpretation ofthe law. There is need for additional policies todetermine if an employment relation exists and toclarify the responsibilities for compliance amongthose enterprises involving multi-parties. 52 Thelatter kinds of arrangements are continuing toexpand and are serving to decentralise the laboursystem in efforts, apparently, to reduce labourcosts. In the process, however, they are often bypassinglabour regulations and collective bargainingagreements and eroding the power of unions.Interpretation of existing laws as well as newlegislation will be needed to regulate these disguisedemployment arrangements, and to determinewhether an employment relationship existsand who is primarily responsible for obligationsto workers. This essential first step in movingtowards compliance should be followed by appropriatelyadapting labour laws and the labourinspection system. 53The situation of workers in informal enterprisesposes additional challenges, since the capacity ofmany informal enterprises to absorb the cost ofcompliance is restricted by low productivity andincome. 54 As employment opportunities could bedestroyed in such cases, a strategy is needed forincreasing compliance and promoting progressiveenforcement without legally adopting a dualsystem. An expanded minimum floor should, however,be enforced even in these enterprises, sincecost concern cannot be accepted as an argumentfor non-compliance given the nature of the rightsinvolved and the fact that compliance does notnecessarily involve significant costs.Most standards require abstinence fromdiscriminatory or unlawful behaviour ratherthan financial expenditure. A strategy could,however, recognise constraints where they exist inaddition to the obligation to comply with a minimumfloor; basically, it should commit to gradualconvergence to full compliance and to verificationof progress towards this goal. This also requiresadapting the labour inspection procedures andpractices to move from sanctions to training inthe early stages and to progressive compliance,as recommended by the ILO in a recent paper. 55A broad category that deserves special treatmentis that of home work (production or service workin a worker’s home) and domestic work (housecleaning, cooking for others). Included in thiscategory are significant numbers of workers. Workmight involve producing for intermediaries insubcontracting arrangements as well as selling orproducing directly for employers. There is also aconcentration of women and use of family workthat may involve children in these activities.National labour laws do not usually cover domesticworkers; they have no rights and little capacityto organise. Most are poor and experiencesignificant deficits of decent work. Employmentrelations, where they exist, justify the applicationof rules covering other workers in the informaleconomy. The convention (177) and a recommendation(184) adopted by the International153