SURVIVAL STRATEGIES: What lessons for engaging the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)?
In 1979 the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) of Ghana started to organise rural workers, including subsistence farmers. The constitution of the union was changed to cover a broader scope of “all employment in Agricultural Services or undertakings generally, including Rural Workers and self-employed Peasant Labour“. These changes were brought about after structural adjustment programmes in Ghana had had a devastating effect on waged labour in the rural areas, and the membership of GAWU had dropped from 130 000 to 30 000 as a result. In 1972 the ILO adopted a Convention on Rural Workers. GAWU used this Convention to expand its area of work to non-waged workers and subsistence farmers in the rural areas.
In the 1990s the membership of the Uganda Public Employees Union (UPEU) dropped from 108 000 to a mere 700 as a result of privatisation of government services. The union realised that its only chance of survival was to radically change its outlook and scope. UPEU revised the concept of “public employees” and transformed concept from the traditional narrow meaning of civil servants to a much broader concept of public employees being anybody engaged in serving the public. UPEU further amended their constitution by developing several categories of membership. The first category was the traditional category of employees working for the government. New categories included the following:
– retrenched workers;
– retired workers;
– trainee workers;
– workers in the informal sector serving the public (e.g. street vendors)
As a result of these changes and a new organising drive, the membership of the union started to grow again, reaching 17 000 by the year 1999.
These are two isolated accounts of unions in different parts of Africa which transformed their organising strategies to include workers in the informal economy, as an essential survival strategy in the face of developments, which were decimating their traditional membership. However, how isolated are the circumstances which faced them and to which they were responding?
Research has shown that the informal sector comprises over 70% of non-agricultural employment in Africa. In the agricultural sector it is even higher. Some unions have become painfully aware of this, and what it means for them as representative working class organisations. Those who have not, are nevertheless still losing membership as employment in the formal economy continues to drop as a result of de-regulation, privatisation, structural adjustment and other neo-liberal programmes designed to boost economic growth without due regard for their implications for employment.
This carries major implications for trade unions and their representativity. As their traditional base of full-time permanent employees shrinks, the section of civil society that they represent becomes increasingly more marginal. In countries where the economy is held up by market women, street vendors and mobile hawkers, small-scale agricultural producers, home-based producers of goods and services, own-account workers, casual and sub-contracted workers, and what is euphemistically referred to as “family labour”, and none of these sectors are unionised in any significant numbers, the trade unions often find themselves representing a numerically miniscule (usually rather elite) group of workers in the labour market who have better wages and working conditions (even where these are bad relative to workers in other countries) than the rest of the working population. Such a marginal group cannot in all seriousness hope to properly represent the entire workforce, no matter how strong they have been in the past and no matter what proud history of their struggles remains in the memory of workers and civil society. However, trade unions usually have systems of direct democracy (either working or lapsed in practice) that provides a stronger basis for democratic and representative civil society actions, than do many other kinds of civil society organisations. For this reason, the rest of civil society often looks to trade unions for leadership in broad civil society actions and campaigns.
Trade unions world-wide face the challenge of either finding and applying strategies for effectively organising workers in the informal economy, or remaining helpless to prevent the slow attrition of being reduced to very small weak organisations as their traditional membership base dwindles to little or nothing.
Trade unions and NEPAD
According to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Overview on the website of the South African Department of Foreign Affairs, “the primary objective of NEPAD is to eradicate poverty in Africa and to place African countries both individually and collectively on a path of sustainable growth and development to thus halt the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process. At the core of the NEPAD process is its African ownership. ….. The expected outcomes are:
* Economic growth and development and increased employment;
* Reduction in poverty and inequality;
* Diversification of productive activities;
* Enhanced international competitiveness and increased exports; and
* Increased African integration.”
Despite these noble objectives (which nobody could really disagree with) NEPAD has got off to a rocky start with most civil society organisation, because, among other problems, NEPAD was hatched between certain African heads of state without any consultation with organs of civil society, and the economic growth path envisaged is the same neo-liberal growth path which has been imposed by the developed countries with such disastrous results for Africa. However, it is not sufficient for the trade union movement of Africa just to join the chorus of condemnation of NEPAD. Trade unions should be putting forward viable alternative strategies and programmes by means of which the above objectives could be achieved.
The question is – how well placed are trade unions to do this?
Economic growth and development and increased employment:
The reality at the moment is that most new employment in Africa is taking place in the informal economy. The challenge for the trade union movement is to ensure – if economic growth is to lead to the eradication of poverty in Africa – that increased employment is decent work, whether it is in the formal or informal economy. Decent work means work which complies with basic labour standards, by workers who have access to social security and enjoy the basic rights of organisation and representation. However, unless trade unions are active in the informal economy, they are not in a position to ensure that increased employment in this part of the economy is decent work.
How can trade unions know what are the right issues and demands to put forward in order to create decent work in the informal economy, if they have not yet organised workers in the informal economy? With the best will in the world, all they can do is guess what they think may be the interests and demands of workers in the informal economy, and put these forward. But this is no better than those Heads of State who formulate policies after guessing what their people need, instead of engaging in proper consultation with civil society.
The strength of trade unions lies in their ability to represent the interests of members to whom they are directly accountable and from whom they get a direct mandate. It is not good enough for formal sector trade unions to claim the right to represent workers in the informal economy who are not their members and who have not given them a direct mandate, just because they define themselves as working class organisations. The only way to genuinely represent workers in the informal economy and put forward their demands for decent work is by organising them, and enabling their elected representatives to participate directly in negotiations and policy dialogue.
Reduction in poverty and inequality:
While many African countries have most of their labour forces doing survivalist economic activities in the informal economy, poverty will continue and worsen. The disproportionate number of women at the survivalist end of the informal economy, who are trapped there by the social discrimination against women in most societies, the lack of skills development or access to credit, and the child care responsibilities which society foists upon women, deepens the many inequalities in the labour market (particularly those between formal and informal workers). Trade unions are in no position to address these inequalities or the poverty which they constantly reinforce, without organising the women and men who work in the informal economy.
As most of us recognise, poverty eradication is not merely a question of pushing for more welfare grants, but of raising the levels of work security, income security and social security for the working poor. The working poor are situated both in formal waged employment as well as in the informal economy. Unfortunately, many of the working poor in the informal economy (particularly home-based workers, the vast majority of whom are women) are counted in unemployment figures and their work is not recognised in the official statistics. This results in inappropriate policies which view them solely as potential recipients of welfare grants instead of a part of the informal labour market whose working conditions need to be improved so that they can earn more income for the work they do. Trade unions with a strong formal economy bias are major culprits in promoting such inappropriate measures, in their eagerness to pressurise governments to do more to eradicate poverty.
However, by starting to organise these socially invisible workers in the informal economy, trade unions can obtain proper mandates from them for the kinds of measures they would like to see in place for the eradication of their own poverty. This would enable trade unions to speak with greater authority on the demands of the working poor, backed by organised workers in the formal as well as the informal economy.
Diversification of productive activities:
Unless the diversification of productive activities takes place under the watchful eye of trade unions, it is a foregone conclusion that labour standards and decent work cannot be protected or guaranteed. However, it is also highly likely that much of such diversification would take place in the informal economy. Where trade unions are restricted to organising formal workers, one of the best ways for governments to exclude trade unions from having any role would be to focus on productive activities in the informal economy. It is therefore imperative that trade unions have to be organised to ensure decent work and labour standards in the entire economy – formal and informal.
One of the excuses of governments, who ignore trade unions when they indulge in unilateral policy-formulation, is that trade unions only represent a small, elite section of the labour force, while government is responsible for the entire population. This may be an excuse, but often there is also truth in it. Unions may be able to jump up and down, and bring some parts of industry to a standstill, and force governments to engage with them to some extent. But the truth is, unless the unions do genuinely represent the growing numbers of own-account, casual, seasonal, sub-contracted, home-based and “family” labour, their representativity of the wider working class is always in question. And governments can sneak in and implement labour-unfriendly policies with those workers who are not organised, long before the trade unions even notice what is going on.
The kind of vigilance which trade unions are better placed to exercise than other civil society organisations comes from having members at the workplace in all sectors of the economy. This can be easily undermined by diversification or informalisation of productive activities – unless the unions follow the workers through processes of diversification and informalisation, and either continue to organise them or make sure another union organises them.
Enhanced international competitiveness and increased exports and increased African integration:
It may not be the case that the goods and services produced in the informal economy are exported in large quantities or traded on international markets. However, a lot of goods and services are bought and sold in informal cross-border trade throughout the continent. Because of its informal nature, the extent of informal cross-border trade has probably not been properly measured and counted. However, it does form part (and possibly quite a substantial part) of the trade which takes place between different countries in Africa. The challenge which presents itself to trade unions in different countries is to organise the workers involved in informal cross-border trade, and co-operate with each other on the cross-border issues which arise.
In conclusion, a viable alternative to the NEPAD concept which is being marketed by African heads of state, which nevertheless offers possibilities of economic growth with increased employment, reduction of poverty and inequality with African ownership, would need to bring civil society on board, preferably with strategic leadership from the trade union movement. However, the trade union movement can only do this where it is representative of a large part of the labour force – i.e. including in the informal economy.
A new international approach on the informal economy
The ILO originally coined the term “informal sector” in the early 1970s. At that time it was hoped, particularly by governments and employers, that the informal sector would create lots of jobs where the formal sector was failing to do so. The quality of jobs was a secondary concern in this line of thinking. In the early 1990s the ILO again discussed the informal economy, focussing on the “dilemma” of the informal sector – being the dilemma as to whether to have proper labour standards or rather more jobs, assuming that job creation and labour standards are mutually exclusive or contradictory. However, at the 2002 International Labour Conference, the issue was again discussed in relation to “Decent Work in the Informal Economy”. The concept of the informal sector was replaced with the concept of the informal economy, with a recognition that there are varying degrees of informality, rather than two parallel sectors of the economy. Positive and negative features of the informal economy have been recognised, as well as obstacles which have prevented many workers from entering the formal economy and kept them trapped in the informal economy, with a view to promoting decent work in the informal economy. Basic worker rights, access to work and social security, and organisation and representation have been identified as all being elements of decent work which should be enjoyed by workers in the informal economy.[1] This clearer position on the informal economy provides a good internationally agreed framework for organising informal workers.
Are trade unions ready ?
In the two examples mentioned earlier (General Agricultural Workers Union, Ghana, and Uganda Public Employees Union) the unions were pushed by very drastic loss of membership into organising workers in the informal economy as a way of recovering membership and surviving. One hopes that this does not mean that unions will only take these steps when they have already drastically lost members. The writing is on the wall for the entire trade union movement, and it should be possible to make great strides in the organising of workers in the informal economy well before unions are decimated by job losses.
However, we see a great reluctance and cautiousness on the part of most unions to taking such bold organisational steps. The following obstacles are often cited by trade unions for not moving into the informal economy:
– no proper definition of workers in the informal economy;
– most of these workers do not have employers;
– other members are not keen to subsidise the organisation of workers in the informal economy from whom it is difficult to collect membership fees;
– they have not completed the organisation of workers in the formal economy, and this must be done before tackling the informal economy;
– and there are others.
Basically, all the above are problems and concerns that need to be addressed by any union serious about organising workers in the informal economy. They are not insurmountable problems. There has to be the political will, first and foremost, to organise workers in the informal economy, for it to succeed. All these problems confronted those unions that have taken the plunge, and they have been addressing them one way or another.
There are now enough examples of trade unions organising workers in the informal economy in Africa (and other parts of the world – the very famous example being the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India) for unions to be able to learn from and consult about how to deal with these various concerns and get on with the job or organising workers in the informal economy. In Ghana there are other affiliates of the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC) apart from GAWU, which have also been organising different sectors of informal workers. The entire experience has been very systematically documented by the present Secretary General, Kwasi Adu-Amankwah in a collection of articles published by the ILO.[2] The Self-Employed Women’s Union (SEWU) in South Africa, which was established in 1994 along the lines of the SEWA model in India, has been organising women working in the informal economy in both rural and urban areas. Unions of informal workers such as agricultural, plantation, fishermen, scooter-taxi drivers, market vendors, etc. have commonly been formed in francophone African countries such as Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal. The Mozambican OTM has established an informal sector association (Associação dos Operadores e Trabalhadores do Sector Informal – ASSOTSI), which it intends to develop into a union. The Zambian ZCTU set up the Workers Education Association of Zambia (WEAZ) to find out about the educational needs of workers in the informal economy to help build organisation. (see endnote – ed.) Informal economy unions have also been established in Malawi and by the national centre in Sierra Leone. In fact, we have come across more widespread examples of trade unions in Africa organising workers in the informal economy than in other regions.
However, in order for these organising experiences to contribute to the building of a more consolidated movement in Africa, these organisations should meet together, share experiences, discuss ways to work together in a more co-ordinated way and seek ways to promote the organisation of workers in the informal economy in those countries and work sectors where unions are not yet active.
Therefore, although trade unions and national centres in many of the African countries are still lagging behind, there is a part of the trade union movement of Africa which is in a position to take on the broader challenges of engaging, as a representative of workers in the formal and informal sectors of the economy, with the rest of civil society in developing strategies to take on the issues which NEPAD purports to address.
Challenges
1. Political will: getting trade union leadership to prioritise the organisation of workers in the informal economy, and to make human and financial resources available to implement this.
2. Legal changes: if a country’s laws are an obstacle to organising workers in the informal economy, unions need to lobby for the necessary changes to the laws.
3. Constitutional changes: changing trade union constitutions where this is the obstacle to organising informal workers.
4. New organising strategies: learning new organising strategies that are more appropriate for workers in the informal economy. This could mean identifying new negotiating partners (e.g. municipalities in the case of street vendors, rather than employers) and new collective bargaining strategies and demands.
5. Women leadership: overcoming the traditional male bias in formal sector trade unions in order to have significant leadership by women (who are in the majority) in the informal economy.
6. Learning from those doing it already: by means of exchange visits or other engagement, unions can learn from the experiences of those who are already organising in the informal economy, avoid some of the mistakes and replicate the more successful strategies – rather than re-invent the wheel. There are many different models operating in different African countries – so sometimes a combination of different models can be applied where no single one fits exactly.
7. Organising workers in the informal economy as workers and as equals: because of the greater marginalisation of workers in the informal economy, their often lower levels of formal education, there is often a tendency for formal workers to want to do things on their behalf instead of organising for them to represent themselves and set their own organisational agenda. Formal workers need to be always conscious and well disciplined to avoid this tendency – remembering the struggles they previously had to wage to represent themselves instead of being represented by others.
8. Joint campaigns: it needs to be borne in mind that, for successful joint campaigns, there must be demands set by the workers in the informal economy as well as the demands of the formal workers. If the formal workers set all the demands and the agenda and expect the support of workers in the informal economy when there is nothing in it for them, it will not work.
9. Tackling globalisation: workers need to confront the negative consequences of globalisation in a unified way (i.e. formal and informal workers should identify their common ground and organise around that) in order to find ways of influencing or acting on the way in which they are affected by globalisation.
10. Taking a lead in civil society: if trade unions are sufficiently representative of the working people (which is usually the majority of adults) in any society, they are the natural leaders of any civil society or social movement. They become much more representative of the wider working class if they genuinely represent the workers in the informal economy, and are then much better equipped to take up a leading civil society role.
11. Owning and transforming NEPAD: it is good to have an African development plan (like NEPAD) but one which is owned by the people of Africa. Its character (or that of any alternative plan) should be shaped by the organs of civil society. The most broadly representative trade unions and social movements, especially those which represent the poor, should play a leading role in doing this.
Conclusions
To make NEPAD (or any alternative plan) meaningful for the people of Africa, it has to be a process, which is owned by and enjoys the full participation of civil society in Africa. To make the objectives of economic growth, poverty eradication and diversification of productive activities a reality, the trade union movement of Africa needs to play a leading role in this civil society participation – but a trade union movement which represents all the working people of Africa in the formal as well as the informal economy. Only such a truly representative trade union movement could really properly lead civil society engagement in a meaningful way.
Pat Horn
StreetNet
August 2002
Note to p. 7: In the meantime, the Alliance of Zambia Informal Economy Associations (AZIEA) was formed in October 2003, as the result of the Informal Economy Workers’ Education in Zambia Project of the ZCTU, the WEAZ and the WEA England and Scotland. AZIEA, representing one million workers, is an affiliate of the ZCTU.
[1] Report no.25 of 90th session of the International Labour Conference held in June 2002
[2] Labour Education no.116, ILO