In 1994, members of various grassroots organizations met to form HomeNet. The long-term aim of HomeNet is to support the development of organizations at the grassroots level for home-based workers, in order that they can work together to improve working and living conditions for home-based workers all over the world. The context in which HomeNet is working to develop organization and representation of home-based workers is one of growing informality, inequality and poverty. All over the world, the proportion of those working in formal, unionized jobs, with regulated pay and conditions of employment, is decreasing. More and more people, particularly women, are working informally - that is, without work security or social protection - frequently as home-based workers.

HomeNet's primary objective is the international campaign

• to make home-based workers visible
• to recognize their contribution to the economy
• to help them gain the legal protection extended to other workers

With the vast majority of women home-based workers still unorganized and usually invisible, and with any gains in organizing often wiped out by economic crises and natural disasters, the organizing process at the grassroots is very slow and difficult in comparison with the need that exists. It is this need which HomeNet seeks to address by helping its members to build alliances and by participating in meetings such as this to help mainstream the issues arising from the grassroots.

Recently, there has been progress around home-based work in numerous directions. Following its earlier involvement in pushing for the 1996 Convention on HomeWork, HomeNet has been advocating for its ratification by individual governments and monitoring this process. So far, the Convention has been ratified only by two countries, Finland and Ireland - but elsewhere there has been progress in terms of commitment to changing national policies (without full ratification) on home-based work. A good example of this is India, where national policy will focus on the whole issue of social and economic security for informal workers, particularly home-based workers. HomeNet, together with WIEGO, SEWA and UNIFEM is involved in building on this victory through organizing a regional policy dialogue on labour policies and home-based workers in South Asia, to be held in Nepal in October 2000.

Progress has also been made on the island of Madeira, with the commitment by the regional government to introduce a social security scheme for all workers, including those who are home-based, in the wickerwork sector; and in mainland Portugal, where the completion of the first major national survey of homeworkers, coordinated by the local HomeNet affiliate was completed. In Australia, the TCFAU - the union for the textile, clothing and leather sector - is bringing a major case claiming half a million dollars in underpayment for homeworkers in the clothing industry. And in the UK, the National Group on Homeworking is now following up on the government's commitment to ensure that homeworkers are included in the provisions of the new national minimum wage brought in a year ago.

New organizations and networks of home-based workers are beginning to spring up in all parts of the world. For example, in Turkey, there is a new group that gained much momentum from a meeting held in Istanbul last October which brought together HomeNet, ICRW, UNIFEM and ILO with home-based workers in Turkey, and with representation from other countries in the region. In Latin America, there is a growing network that gained great visibility at the ILO Seminar on Homework held in Santiago, Chile in May 1999. Three representatives of HomeNet attended this meeting and talked about experiences in organizing in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Key organizations with which HomeNet has worked over the year include: Dfid; the UK-based Ethical Trading Initiative; and the Clean Clothes Campaign. Most recently, in May, with the support of Dfid, HomeNet organized an international workshop to design a major mapping programme to identify and develop organizations of home-based workers at the grassroots level.