Doris Martínez gets ready to start cooking at her food kiosk in Valles del Tuy, an area of small dormitory towns near Caracas. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Mar 18 2022 (IPS)

Doris Martínez was a cook in a Venezuelan restaurant that closed its doors; she emigrated to Colombia, got sick from working long hours standing in front of a stove, and returned to her country where, together with her husband and children, she runs a busy fast food kiosk on a road in Valles del Tuy, near the Venezuelan capital.

Johnny Paredes of Peru was a security guard and employee of a restaurant in Lima until he decided to become a self-employed street vendor selling fancy clothes in the mornings and food and beverages in the afternoons in the upscale neighborhood of Miraflores.

Mexican computer technician Jorge de la Teja works much longer hours in Mexico City than at his former job in a service company, but with forced telework increasing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, his clients and income have grown over the past two years.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, 140 million workers (51 percent of all employed people) work in the informal sector and have been strongly impacted by the pandemic. But, often working on the streets, they take the pulse of the crisis and take on new tasks or ventures to support their families.

Since the pandemic broke out in March 2020, 49.6 million jobs, both formal and informal, have been lost in the region, 23.6 million of which were held by women, according to data from the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest labor overview, published in February.

Informality “continues to be one of the most important characteristics of the region’s labor markets,” Roxana Maurizio, an Argentine labor economics specialist with the ILO, told IPS from the agency’s regional headquarters in Lima.

Studies by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have shown that of the 51 percent of informal workers, up to 37 percent work in the informal sector of the economy, more than 10 percent in the formal sector and four percent in households.

In practice, one out of every two employed persons in the region is in informal employment, according to the ILO, and one third is self-employed, according to ECLAC.

The ILO considers informal employment to be all paid work (both self-employment and salaried employment) that is not registered, regulated or protected by legal or regulatory frameworks. For the workers who perform it, it adds, remuneration depends directly on the benefits derived from the goods or services produced.

Street vending is one of the expressions of labor informality that dominates many streets in the region’s large cities, as in this open-air market in Lima. CREDIT: Courtesy of Johnny Paredes

Faces behind the numbers

Paredes, 46, told IPS from Lima that “in my case it worked out better, because of the independence of having my own schedule and being able to shorten or lengthen it depending on how the workday turns out, and because on the street I earn between 25 and 35 dollars a day, double what I was paid in my previous jobs.”

De la Teja, 37, agrees and explains that in Mexico City he supports his family “comfortably, with regard to food and other day-to-day expenses, because I earn more than 2,000 dollars a month. But extra expenses, such as insurance, or traveling for vacation, are difficult.”

Martinez, a 50-year-old mother of two sons and three daughters and grandmother of three, works as a domestic and caregiver in the mornings and in the afternoons she helps run the family kiosk, the “Doris Burger”, with her husband and two sons.

At the kiosk she earns “about 30 or 35 dollars a day from Monday to Friday, and up to 50 on weekends. Much more than in the jobs I have had standing in front of a stove since I was young, and it’s also better because it brings in money for several members of the family.”

The situation is different for Wilmer Rosales, a 39-year-old “todero” or jack of all trades in Barquisimeto, a city 350 kilometers west of Caracas, who said that “here in the interior (of the country) there is almost nothing to do and when there is, the pay is very low – two, three, or five dollars for a day’s work, at the most.”

Home delivery of food and other products has become a source of informal sector work in Latin American cities, in a sector driven by the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: ILO

Recovery with fewer jobs

In its February report, the ILO showed that the region’s 6.2 percent economic growth in 2021 was insufficient for the labor market to recover, and the regional unemployment rate stood at 9.6 percent.

Of the 49 million jobs that were lost at the peak of the crisis, in the second quarter of 2020, 4.5 million have yet to be recovered, the vast majority of them jobs previously held by women. And in total there are some 28 million people looking for work.

After the onset of the pandemic, the crisis manifested atypically and instead of affecting more formal occupations, there was a greater loss of informal jobs, leaving millions of people without an income.

In Argentina, Mexico and Paraguay, for example, the reduction in informal sector jobs accounted for more than 75 percent of the fall in total employment during the first half of 2020. In Costa Rica and Peru the proportion was somewhat lower, 70 percent, while in Brazil and Chile it was around 50 percent.

The situation has now been reversed, and the countries with available data indicate that between 60 and 80 percent of the jobs recovered up to the third quarter of 2021 were in the informal sector.

Among the factors favoring recovery of the informal sector are the destruction of formal sector jobs due to the pandemic, the greater ease of interrupting an informal salaried relationship, its greater incidence in small businesses and enterprises, as in the case of Martinez, and the impossibility of many informal workers to do telework.

Women are lagging behind in this recovery, due to their greater presence in sectors strongly affected by the crisis that are rallying slowly, such as hotels and restaurants. In highly feminized sectors, such as domestic service work, the rate of informality exceeds 80 percent.

Nor is informality benign to young people, who face greater labor market intermittency, explained in part by the intense inflows and outflows of the labor force; and greater labor instability is associated with their prevalence in informal, precarious, low-skilled activities.

Telework is an informal work option that has thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America and is a refuge for women, who were especially hard-hit by the abrupt drop in employment during the confinement and shutdown of non-essential activities at the beginning of the health crisis. CREDIT: ILO

Leave no one behind, especially women

Against this backdrop, informality represents a challenge to the need and proposals in the region to produce, at the pace of the pandemic and as a way to overcome it, a sustainable and inclusive recovery, “leaving no one behind”, as the mantra already embedded in the discourse of various international organizations goes.

Maurizio is clearly committed to the formalization of employment. “Today, more than ever, the recovery needs to be people-centered; in particular, the creation of more and better jobs, formal jobs,” she said.

Informality “continues to be one of the most important characteristics of the region’s labor markets. Economic and social recovery will not be possible unless significant progress is made in reducing its incidence,” said the ILO specialist.

A necessary condition is “to advance in a process of economic growth with stability, reconstruction of the productive apparatus and persistent improvements in productivity.”

There must be, according to the expert, “a particular focus on the digital transition and young people; strengthening of labor institutions such as, for example, the minimum wage; care policies that allow women to return to and remain in the labor market; and support for small and medium-sized enterprises.”

Maurizio also called for the extension of unemployment insurance, social protection policies and “income guarantees for the population that continues to be strongly affected by the crisis.”

The gender perspective takes on “a central relevance in the recovery, taking into account the fact that of the 4.5 million jobs still to be recovered, 4.2 million are in traditionally female occupations.”

Among other measures, it is necessary to “facilitate the return of women to the labor market through a policy of investment in comprehensive care services with greater coverage, which at the same time should be a source of formal employment. Also, to support the recovery of economic sectors with a high female presence.”

Precarious working conditions have been a characteristic of informality associated with poverty in Latin America. CREDIT: Marcello Casal/Agência Brasil

Unions for a new working class

In the world of the trade unions, Brazilian Rafael Freire, secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), added the challenge of “having a trade union for today’s working class, which in large part is precarious, outsourced, or working from applications.”

This workforce, “without job contracts, is increasingly part of the informal sector, in large proportions, for example 70 percent in Honduras and 80 percent in Guatemala,” said the leader of the 55 million-member central trade union from its headquarters in Montevideo.

Informality, which is structural in the Latin American social and labor panorama, is a major hurdle for economic recovery and social justice in the region, and while governments design strategies, define policies and take measures, millions of informal workers rely on their resilience to bring home food for their families.

Police officers use tear gas to crack down on a May 24 trade union march heading towards the Brazilian Congress to protest the projected labour and social security reforms which cut social rights. Credit: UGT

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 24 2017 (IPS)

In addition to driving up the number of unemployed people to 14.2 million, the severe recession of the last two years led Brazil to join the global trend of flexibilisation of labour laws in order to further reduce labour costs.

Creating more jobs without affecting rights is the basic argument of the government and advocates of the reform that has made its way through the lower house of Congress but is pending a vote in the Senate, announced for the end of the month.

“Increasing job insecurity will be the consequence of this measure,” said Ricardo Antunes, sociology professor at the University of Campinas, in the southern state of São Paulo.

This process, which “completely undermines labour rights,” according to the academic, also includes a law on outsourcing in force since March, and a social security reform still in the initial stages in parliament, and whose approval is unlikely given the requirement of a special two-thirds majority in both houses.“Outsourcing does away with the employee-employer relationship, with workers frequently moved from one worksite or job to another. Workers lose their identity, no longer knowing if they are steelworkers or service providers, or to which category they belong.” -- Wagnar Santana

“This is a global trend that advances in a country depending on the level of resistance it runs into: slower where the trade union movement is strong, like in Germany and France, and faster where trade unionism is weaker, such as Great Britain and the United States,” Antunes told IPS.

In Brazil, workers are facing this offensive already weakened by unemployment, which is projected to remain high for a long time to come.

According to the state Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), unemployment stood at 13.7 per cent in the first three months of 2017, or 14.2 million people in a country of 207.6 million with a workforce of 103.1 million.

But underemployment amounted to 24.1 per cent, or 26.5 million people who work part-time or just a few hours a week or are considered only “potential” workers, the IBGE reported.

In addition, the lineup of forces in Congress is highly unfavourable to labour rights, with the government of President Michel Temer enjoying a vast majority, although it is vulnerable to allegations of corruption against the president and almost all of the leaders of the ruling coalition, who face possible prosecution in the Supreme Court.

The legislation proposed by the government “de-regulates labour relations, with arguments that reveal ignorance or bad faith,” argued Wagnar Santana, president-elect of the Union of Steelworkers of the ABC region, an industrial region in greater São Paulo that gave rise to the Workers’ Party (PT) and the CUT central union.

“This de-regulation did not increase employment in countries such as Spain, Mexico and Portugal, but instead drove up the rate of informal work. In Mexico, people who work for Volkswagen need another job as well to have a decent standard of living,” said the trade unionist, who works for the German car-maker.

Keeping formal labour rights such as a weekly day off and health coverage on the books means little without the possibility of enforcing them, due to the growth of informal work, employment instability and outsourcing, and the weakness of the trade union movement, he told IPS.

“Outsourcing does away with the employee-employer relationship, with workers frequently moved from one worksite or job to another. Workers lose their identity, no longer knowing if they are steelworkers or service providers, or to which category they belong,” complained Santana.

Trade unions have trouble organising, in the construction industry for example, where job rotation is frequent, he said.

If collective bargaining agreements between workers and employers trump labour laws, as the government’s proposed reform stipulates, the rights of workers would be undermined.

The strongest and best organised trade unions, such as the ones in large industrial cities, could negotiate better agreements and ensure that they are respected, but many others would not be able to. “That would end up weakening all of us, since we are not isolated,” said the trade unionist.

There are other factors that conspire against labour in Brazil, besides the high unemployment and the economic crisis aggravated by political troubles. The process of deindustrialisation weakens even the most combative trade unions, such as the steelworkers union.

The union of ABC, which represented up to 150,000 workers in the 1980s, currently has only 73,000 members, based in the municipalities of São Bernardo do Campo, Diadema, Ribeirão Pires and Rio Grande da Serra, after many ups and downs over the two past decades, Santana noted.

From the steelworkers of São Bernardo do Campo emerged trade unionist and political leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who founded the Workers Party (PT) in 1980, which he led to power the first day of 2003 and with which he governed Brazil until the last day of 2011, when he handed over the presidency to his fellow party member Dilma Rousseff, who was removed from office in August 2016.

The crisis and international competition also contributed to the rise in unemployment and to lower participation by industry in Brazil’s GDP.

But it is the devaluation of work at a global scale which Antunes attributes to the transnationalization of large companies, the new modes of production and the hegemony of finance capital, which has led to the setback in labour standards that is being pushed through in Brazil.

It is a return to “archaic” labour relations that is almost like a return to slavery, according to the expert in the sociology of labour. “Slaves used to be sold, now they are rented” through outsourcing, he said.

In 1995, Antunes published the book “Goodbye to Work?”, in which he discusses the trend towards increasing informality and precariousness of labour, and “21st century slavery”. “Precarious work used to be an exception, now it has become the rule,” he said.

One example is the British “zero-hour contract” where the employer is not required to provide any minimum working hours. One million people in the UK are working under these contracts, which puts them at the disposal of the company, to be called in to work when needed, and earning only for the hours they work, without full labour rights, said Antunes.

In Brazil this modality was included in the labour reform as “intermittent employment”.

The incorporation to the labour market of China’s huge reserves of labour power contributed to the devaluation of work around the world.

“They are qualified workers that the revolution fed and educated. Five years ago China offered poor quality industrial goods, today they have cutting-edge technology,” said the sociologist, adding that Asia has an enormous cheap labour force in countries like India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

The reduction of costs is widespread. “In Italy they are closing factories that are reopening in Poland or Hungary, cutting monthly wages from 2,000 to 300 euros,” he said, to illustrate.

“There is a new morphology of labour. In Brazil we have 1.5 million workers in ‘telemarketing’ that did not exist before. Remote work, through on-line connection by cellphone or computer, has become widespread,” he pointed out.

But the working class has grown, although it is “more fragmented and diverse than before, and subjected to online work”. New forms of protest are emerging, including “picketing and roadblocks”, in Argentina for example, instead of strikes, he said.

“The outlook for the future is one of struggle, rebellions, as well as repression, massacres. The 21st century will be one of social upheavals”, concluded Antunes.

A young street vendor sells typical Argentine baked goods in a market near the Plaza de los dos Congresos, in Buenos Aires. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 23 2015 (IPS)

The 56 million young people who form part of Latin America’s labour force suffer from high unemployment, and many of those who work do so in the informal sector. Governments in the region have begun to adopt more innovative policies to address a problem that undermines the future of the new generations.

According to an International Labour (ILO) report, unemployment among young people between the ages of 14 and 25 is three times higher than among adults.

That is just one aspect of the problem, however according to the coordinator of the study, Guillermo Dema from Peru. “These statistics are compelling, but the main problem faced by young people in Latin America is the precariousness and poor quality of the work they have access to,” he told IPS.

The region’s seven million unemployed young people represent 40 percent of total unemployment. But another 27 million have precarious work, which aggravates the phenomenon.The total population of young people in Latin America is around 108 million, of the region’s 600 million people.

“Six out of every 10 jobs available to young people today are in the informal sector,” said Dema. “In general they are poor quality, low-productivity and low-wage jobs with no stability or future, and without social protection or rights.”

Gala Díaz Langou with Argentina’s Centre for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth said “An informal sector worker has no job security, health coverage, trade union representation, or payments towards a future pension. That means unregistered workers do not have decent work.”

In summary, “their basic labour rights are violated, and they can’t demand respect for their rights by means of representation or social dialogue,” she told IPS.“Six out of every 10 jobs available to young people today are in the informal sector. In general they are poor quality, low-productivity and low-wage jobs with no stability or future, and without social protection or rights.” -- Guillermo Dema

The poor are overrepresented in the informal economy. Only 22 percent of young people in the poorest quintile have formal work contracts, and just 12 percent are registered in the social security system, according to the ILO.

But precarious employment also affects middle-class young people, including those who have higher education.

“The big problem in landing a serious job today is what I call the ‘vicious cycle’. To get a job you need work experience, but to get experience you need a job,” Hernán F, a 23-year-old from Argentina who juggles work and university studies and speaks several languages, told IPS.

“Obviously if you’ve studied at university you go farther,” said Hernán, who asked that his last name not be used.” But that’s where you see the big difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ universities. The good ones, which are recognised and have good names, open many more doors for internships – even if they’re poorly paid – in better places.”

Most precarious jobs are in small and micro enterprises that do not formally exist. But 32 percent of young people who work in formal companies also suffer from precarious employment, the ILO reports.

The rate of informal labour among young wage-earners is 45.4 percent, while among those who are self-employed, the proportion climbs to 86 percent.

“When you’re young you don’t think about the future, about your retirement. You think about the present, paying rent, vacation. You don’t care about working in the black economy. You care about having a job, probably earning a little more than if you were formally employed,” said Hernán F.

But for Hernán, who worked as an unregistered employee in a boutique hotel in Buenos Aires, “it’s not the young people’s fault.”

“Capitalism, which created this system, and the people who hire you without registering you are to blame. They want more, easier money. They make you hide in the bathrooms when the inspectors come to check the hotel. And it’s also the state’s fault, because it doesn’t oversee things as it should, and allows labour inspectors to be bribed,” he said.

Dema said informal labour fuels “discouragement and frustration among those who feel that they don’t have the opportunities they deserve.

“This has social, economic and political repercussions, because it can translate into situations where people question the system, or situations of instability or marginalisation, which can affect governance,” he warned.

It also perpetuates the cycle of poverty and hinders the fight against inequality.

“Low wages, job instability, precarious working conditions, a lack of social security coverage, and a lack of representation and social dialogue make informal workers a vulnerable group,” said Dema.

But in spite of the continued problems, the region is “slowly” improving, he added.

From 2009 to 2013, the proportion of young people in informal employment in the region fell from 60 to 47 percent. But there are some exceptions like Honduras, Paraguay and Peru, where no significant progress was made.

Innovative policies to the rescue

Dema attibutes the improvement to government measures, which are cited by the ILO report, launched in April by the organisation’s regional office in Lima with the promising title: “Promoting formal employment among youth: innovative experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

He said initiatives have emerged that focus on combining attempts to formalise employment while adapting “to the heterogeneity of the economy and informal employment,” together with strategies to help young people land their first formal sector job.

He mentioned Brazil’s Apprenticeship Act, which introduced a special work contract for young apprentices, that can be used for a maximum of two years.

The law requires all medium and large companies to hire apprentices between the ages of 14 and 24, who must make up five to 15 percent of the payroll.

He also cited Chile’s Youth Employment Subsidy, Mexico’s Ley de Fomento al Primer Empleo, which foments the hiring of young workers without prior experience, and Uruguay’s Youth Employment Law.

These laws, he said, “provide for monetary subsidies, subsidies for wages or social security contributions, or tax breaks. “

For her part, Díaz Langou, with the Centre of Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth, mentioned Argentina’s “More and better work for young people” programme, which targets people between the ages of 18 and 24.

“It was a very interesting and successful initiative aimed at combining education with active employment policies, to achieve better insertion of this age group in the labour market,” she said.

Dema also cited Mexican programmes aimed at promoting the regularisation of informal sector employment, such as the Let’s Growth Together programme, which “incorporates the concepts of gradualism, advice and support in the transition from informal to formal employment.”

Another model, the expert said, is offered by Colombia with its “formalisation brigades,” which incorporate benefits and services for companies that regularise their activities and employees.

These initiatives are complemented by social protection policies.

“In Argentina, the Universal Child Allowance is compatible with the workers registered in the ‘monotributo social’ (simplified tax regime for small taxpayers) and those who are registered in the domestic service regime. And in Colombia, the law on the formalisation and generation of employment establishes the coordination of contracts with the ‘Families in Action’ programme and Subsidised Health Insurance,” he said.

Díaz Langou said that international experiences have shown that one of the policies that works best is the introduction of incentives to hire young workers, such as offering subsidies or tax breaks to companies that hire them.

“But this has provided much better results for men than for women,” she said. “Policies tailored towards improving the skills of young people by means of training and education have more modest effects on wages for young people, and also present gender disparities.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

There are an estimated 10 million street vendors in India. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jun 2 2015 (IPS)

For the past nine years, 27-year-old Jignesh has been hawking bed sheets on the bustling pavements of Janpath, a major throughway in India’s capital, New Delhi, as kamikaze traffic swirls around him.

Illiterate and jobless, the young street vendor migrated from the western Indian state of Gujarat to eke out a living for his family of four, hoping that this metropolis would offer better prospects.

"It's a daily fight for survival. Sometimes I feel like just giving it all up and getting back to farming." -- Jignesh, a young street vendor who migrated from Gujarat to New Delhi to provide for his family
But local cops and members of the city’s mafia routinely harass the poor vendor to extort ‘hafta’ – a weekly bribe of one dollar that represents a significant chunk of his daily income of five dollars, which he earns after a 12-hour grind.

If he doesn’t comply, he is roughed up, or his wares confiscated.

“It’s a daily fight for survival,” Jignesh tells IPS, rolling up his sleeves to show bruises on his wizened arms, the result of a recent tussle with the police.

“Sometimes I feel like just giving it all up and getting back to farming.”

Despite passage of the path-breaking Street Vendors (Livelihood Protection and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill last year, which ordered local municipal authorities to set up designated vending zones for hawkers to enable them to practise their trade peacefully, few municipalities have honoured the law.

As a result the vast population of vendors in India – over 10 million people – continues to live in insecurity as they attempt to earn an honest day’s living. Many are economic migrants from the country’s rural heartland, where declining agriculture has left millions of smallholders or farm labourers in abject poverty.

Before the Act came into existence, vendors used to hawk their goods illegally, making them vulnerable to extortion, harassment, heavy fines and sudden evictions.

But in 2010, the Supreme Court declared hawking a fundamental right.

“Considering that an alarming percentage of the population in our country lives below the poverty line, and when citizens by gathering meagre resources try to employ themselves as hawkers and street traders, they cannot be subjected to a deprivation on the pretext that they have no rights,” the apex court ruled.

The recent bill provides for the establishment of a Town Vending Committee with representation from all stakeholders – street vendor organisations, civil society groups, traffic police and municipal authorities.

The committee is required to register vendors, providing them with identity cards to better regulate hawking activities in public areas.

Social security and insurance schemes are part of the ambit of the new law, which also promises bank loans to hawkers to keep them out of the clutches of unscrupulous moneylenders.

However, vendors rue that ground realities – like vested interests of political parties and local policemen as well threats from resident welfare societies – continue to make their lives miserable.

“Despite the law, vendors are still regarded as a public nuisance. They are accused of depriving pedestrians of their space and causing traffic jams while local residents blame them of having links with criminals,” says Anurag Shankar, project manager at the National Association of the Street Vendors of India (NASVI), a coalition of 762 vendor organisations that has been campaigning for vendors’ rights since 2004.

“The municipal authorities and housing societies frequently target vulnerable vendors to get them evicted,” Shankar tells IPS.

This results in hundreds of obstacles, including trouble securing a licence, uncertainty over earnings and insecurity over street space.

Hawkers and street vendors in India say they face routine harassment at the hands of the police, local thugs, politicians or municipal authorities. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

According to Sharit Bhowmik, professor and chairperson of the Centre for Labour Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, the nub of the matter is that the new Act leaves too much to the discretion of local municipalities, thereby defeating the purpose of a Central legislation.

“The federal structure of the Indian government requires individual states to formulate their own policies and local urban bodies to come up with their own legislation, rules, and guidelines in the context of their local conditions,” he tells IPS.

Adding to the problem, explains the expert, who has written several international papers on street vending, is the fact that master plans for Indian cities rarely factor in space for vendors or pedestrians.

“Planners follow the western template of marketing, making provision for rich traders and big business, ignoring Indian traditions of street hawking. This adds to the space crunch and accounts for much of the current crisis,” he elaborates.

A study conducted by Bhowmik covering 15 Indian cities found that around 65 percent of street vendors took loans from moneylenders at exorbitant rates of interests ranging from 120 to 400 percent.

These loan sharks keep many vendors permanently in debt, retaining just 20-30 percent of their own income while doling out the rest in interest payments or on rent.

“The spiral of indebtedness erodes whatever little remuneration vendors earned,” says Bhowmik.

In April this year, vendors across India held massive rallies in the cities of Surat, New Delhi and Mangaluru to protest the non-implementation of the Street Vendors’ Act.

Agitated street vendors, who were evicted unceremoniously, demanded immediate government attention to the problem.

According to vendors’ representatives, city corporations neglect their interests while kowtowing to figures of authority.

“The vendors are invariably evicted without provision for a proper place for them to work,” Honorary President of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions Sunil Kumar Bajal tells IPS.

“In the process of eviction, they are physically assaulted and their wares destroyed. Often corrupt officials do not return the goods collected during eviction. We want the government to honour its commitment to vendors as directed by the apex court.”

Injustice to street vendors is compounded further by health hazards.

As this demographic spends its entire working day on open roads, its members are vulnerable to a range of health complications from chronic migraines to hyper-acidity, hypertension and high blood pressure due to pollution.

“Lack of access to toilets has an adverse effect on women’s health and many suffer from urinary tract infections and kidney ailments. Mobile female street vendors also face security issues,” explains Bhowmik.

Shankar says the new legislation entitles vendors to be included in the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM), so that they can also receive skill-based training.

“The Act gives them the right to livelihood, but they are still deprived of facilities like health, housing and education, which people in other unorganised sectors are entitled to. Inclusion in the mission will cover this glaring lacuna.”

Recognition of street vendors ought to be an integral part of urban economies around the world according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), as they offer easy access to a wide range of goods and services.

“Their market base consists of a mass of consumers who welcome [access] to inexpensive goods and services that they provide,” says the ILO.

Currently India has the largest population of street vendors in the world and will likely see a rise in their numbers as rural-urban migration picks up speed in the coming decades.

The United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) estimates that the global urban population will grow from its current 3.9 billion people to 6.4 billion in 2050. Just three countries – India, China and Nigeria – will account for 90 percent of that growth.

Given that poverty and a lack of urban planning often results in ever-higher numbers of slum dwellers in this country of 1.25 billion people – with 51 percent of people in New Delhi already residing in informal settlements – both local and international development experts say India must prioritize improving the lot of its hawkers and vendors.

If the government fails to take necessary action, millions of people like Jignesh will have to muddle through these busy streets in misery.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A sign advertising "Khmer Massage" conceals a story of exploitation of thousands of massage workers across Cambodia. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Times are tough in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, where over 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Formal employment is hard to come by and many workers find themselves drifting in the murky waters of the “informal” market, where wages are unregulated and labour laws are seldom honoured.

A recent labour dispute involving massage workers employed by a luxury spa shed some light on the “entertainment” industry, arguably one of the most vulnerable sectors to labour violations.

When King Norodom Sihanouk died this past October and five massage workers from the Aziadee Spa were refused time off to pay their final respects, a sector that had hitherto been shrouded in secrecy found itself thrust into the spotlight.

When news of the king’s death reached the public on Oct. 15, 2012, the workers requested permission to break their 12-hour-long workday “to mourn for a few hours”, explained Mora Sar, president of the Cambodian Food and Service Worker Federation (CFSWF), a union that represents entertainment workers, adding that the women work from ten in the morning until ten at night, six days a week.

They returned the following day to learn they had been fired and were denied their final month’s pay.

Although the national Arbitration Council, the government body tasked with settling labour disputes, ruled that the employers had violated Cambodia’s labour laws, the spa did not comply.

During the official three-and-a-half-month mourning period that followed Sihanouk’s death, which lasted until Feb. 5, the workers’ plight fuelled a wave of protests.

From Jan. 11 until Jan. 18, fired workers, CFSWF and other entertainment workers staged a protest in front of the popular spa catering to foreigners, using loud speakers, signs and fliers in English and Khmer, drawing local media attention to the incident.

Finally, the five women were awarded their last month’s salary, damages, annual leave and severance pay, which ranged from 300 to 1,000 dollars based on seniority.

Though this is a landmark ruling for massage workers, it represents just the beginning, according to Mora.  In addition to this latest case, the union now represents 15 massage workers in the northwestern Siem Reap province who work at Alaska Massage, a large Korean-owned establishment employing some 200 workers who earn as little as 50 dollars a month with no per customer, amounting to daily wage of about two dollars.

Fine line between sex work and ‘entertainment’

Little is known about the working conditions for massage workers across Cambodia. Though the media has long reported on the country’s entertainment industry — which includes beer sellers, hostesses, karaoke singers and dancers—this coverage has largely focused on women working in local clubs and beer gardens rather than massage parlours.

In fact, the practice has a long history in this country, and those involved in the trade – mostly women without a formal education – bear the scars of a culture that simultaneously promotes male virility and female chastity.

Researcher Ian Lubek from the Canada-based University of Guelph found that young Cambodian men turned to the sex industry in part as a result of losing their parents – who would typically set up arranged marriages — during the Khmer Rouge years of 1975 to 1979.

However, married men also frequent brothels, according to Lubek, who cited government statistics showing that 25 percent of single and married men participate in the sex industry.

When Cambodia’s brothels closed in 2008 after the passage of the controversial Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking, brothel workers migrated to entertainment venues.

This sparked massive growth in the shadowy entertainment sector; a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) showed that in 2008, there were an estimated 494 massage workers who sold sex in Phnom Penh but a year later, at the end of 2009, the number had grown to 2,424, representing a 390 percent increase.  Beer gardens and beer promoters showed parallel increases, according to the report.

This study clarifies that, although entertainment work is distinct from sex work, there is some crossover.  This is attributed to a combination of low salaries, and customer and management expectations that pressure workers to sell sex to fill the gaps in their salaries.

Women interviewed by IPS admitted to supporting extended families in the countryside, making their wages utterly insufficient to meet basic needs.

Lubek told IPS, “After interviewing over 1,800 beer-sellers, hostesses, massage and karaoke entertainment workers, we found a pernicious and constant underpayment of women by about half, whether (from) managers of entertainment venues, global brewers, or local distributors.”

Sharing his most recent data covering the period 2002 to 2012, Lubek explained that entertainment workers earned only about half of their basic needs from their salary, showing a shortfall of 40 to 60 percent expected to be made up in tips.  His research shows that the pressure to engage in sex work precedes the closure of brothels.

Pisey Ly, a representative of the sex-worker-led collective Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), told IPS, “A massage session at a local, lower-level parlour costs 7,000 to 10,000 riel (1.75 to 2.50 dollars). When a worker decides to have sex, they charge an (extra) five dollars per service outside the massage place with local men.”

Sex workers use entertainment establishments as a front because their work is now illegal, according to Ly.  This particular market involves mostly local men, since “foreigners buy sex from freelance sex workers at bars and clubs”, rather than massage parlours.

Upscale spas tend to cater to foreigners and offer only therapeutic massage.  Here, masseuses experience a comparatively fortunate work environment.

According to Mora, places like Aziadee Spa charge customers between eight and eighteen dollars per massage, and workers can earn an additional dollar per customer, plus tips.  A monthly salary of 70 dollars represents the high end of the wage scale.

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