- The two papers in this session addressed
the statistical issues relating to three important recent global trends:
- Social security in the context of a) a declining role for nation
states. B) an expending role of markets and c) increasing inform-alization of labor
contracts
- Increasing number of home-based workers, particularly dependent
home-workers or outworkers (that is women who work out of their homes on a sub-contract
basis)
- Emergence of non-governmental organizations as important users of
official data in their negotations and policy advocacy on the national and global stages.
- Dr. Jeemol Unni, representative fo the internationally-renowned
Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) of India. Began her presentation on "Social
Security for Informal Sector Workers: The Role of Statistics" with a short discussion
of the generators (mainly government) and users (government, research institutions, and
non-governmental organizations/people's organizations) of official statistics. She noted
that governments are the primary data generators and governments and research
institutiions are the primary data users. However, increasingly, non-governmental
organizations and people's organizations are using official statistics for their
negotiations and policy advocacy activities.
- She briefly described the role of SEWA, in improving the working
and living conditions of women in the informal sector. She argued that organizations like
SEWA need offical statistics to support their negotiations, arguments, and policy advocacy
on behalf for women workers in the informal sector around both economic and social
security issues. For instance, in negotiating a social fund for women workers in different
industries SEWA requires data on the number of workers in the selected trades or
industries, on the contribution of these workers (Value-added, saving and investment,
taxes and revenues paid to government). In order to generate the necessary statistics.
SEWA has been demanding improved classification systems (By task, industry and employment
status) in the census and labor force surveys. To illustrate the need for better
classification, Dr. Unni cited the case of home-based garments workers whose status falls
somewhere between casual employees and own account workers and concluded that under the
current classification system home-based work questions on place of work, how work orders
were received and method of payment need to be included in the census and or labour force
surveys. Further to calculate the contribution of home-based garment workers,
cross-classification of the home-based worker category with the gross value added by
three-digit industrial group its required
- Dr. Unni concluded her presentation with a request to data
generators to be sensitive to the needs of non-governmental organizations and people's
organizations, including statistics on economic and social security aspects of the
informal sector, number of workers in specific trades by region, contribution of these
workers to GDP. In order to get the necessary statistics. The classification of current
activities plus status of employment need to be revised. GDP needs to be calculated at the
level of three-digit industrial classifications, cross-classification of activity and
industrial status is needed, and new enumeration methods required to account for different
categories of workers and their contributions.
- Dr. Pedrero's paper on "The Mexican Experience on Household
Surveys: The Homeworkers Information" detailed the experience of Mexico in addressing
the issue of the data on homeworkers. In the first part of her paper. Dr. Pedrero
explained how, over time, the Mexican household survey was adapted to capture the reality
of the Mexican labour force (including the presence of large number of homeworkers) The
main changes involved introducing a ) more open classification to sdeparate clearly
employees, own account workers, employers, and sub-contract workers and b)more probing
questions to examine such issues as why the allegedly non-active population is not
actively seeking work.
- Dr. Pedrero concluded that several specific groups require
specific statistics and analysis, including street vendors and home-based workers: to
capture these categories, it is necessary to ask location of work and thype of payment
within the categories, it is necessary to ask location of work and type of payment within
the category home-based workers there are both independed own account workers and
dependent outworkers. To distinguish between these it is necessary to ask who provides the
raw material and who are the clients.
- In the discussion following these two presentations tow issues
were highlighted First the need for prcise and comprehensive statistics to capture both
the economic and social aspects of the informal sectors Second, the need for specific
statistics and analysis to capture large and growing numbers of sub-contract workers or
out-workers for example in Colombia sub-contract workers are the largest share of
construction workers . In recognition fo this reality, although the official statistics do
not capture this reality the Colombian governemnt has introduced a new law which requires
employers to pay benefits to out-workers.
- To capture the reality of the workforce, in particular the large
number of home-based workers and street vendors, some participants recommended that the
expert group on informal sector statistics reviews in particular its concepts
classification, methods of enumeration and survey, and quesitonnair design.
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