The idea that education is inherently political was strongly argued by Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Freire, who believed that even if a neutral stance was possible it would only serve to reinforce existing oppressive structures by failing to challenge them.
What does this mean for workers in informal employment, whose living and working conditions place them on the frontlines of socio-economic and environmental injustice? Workers’ education has a political vision to expose the root causes of systemic inequalities and, at the same time, it builds workers’ agency to challenge oppression.
The WIEGO School’s foundational programme was developed to raise workers’ critical consciousness so as to identify the causes of informality, to build their collective agency through strengthened organization, and to provide support to workers in informal employment, who need strong allies in their struggle for rights, dignity and respect.
Understanding hidden power structures is central to raising workers’ critical consciousness
Workers who participate in the WIEGO School are predominantly domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors or market traders, and waste pickers. Work in these sectors is undervalued and workers face multiple forms of exploitation and discrimination. Their work is mostly regulated through punitive government policies and practices, despite common myths that work in the informal economy is unregulated.
In the context of growing authoritarianism, workers whose livelihoods are often criminalized face greater hostility from policy makers and harsher enforcement of repressive policies and practices. Workers’ education gives workers the analytical tools to understand the systemic causes of this hostility.
While workers in factories or offices are able to use strike action as a bargaining strategy, workers in informal employment - especially the self-employed cannot withhold their labour power in the same way. But greater awareness of what causes informality can influence their negotiation strategies as they bargain with local government authorities, employers and other actors to improve their working conditions.
The WIEGO School’s foundational programme focuses on the primary causes of the cost-of-living and other crises and how a critical understanding of socio-economic inequality can be drawn on in organizing for collective action.
"I learned the differences between the terms we use, for example when we refer to decent work. Our work is decent, the conditions are not." – A worker at a training-of-trainers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in May 2025.
Participants in the training discussed how they had been forced to create livelihood activities for themselves because of the formal economy’s failure to create jobs.
Raising critical consciousness also leads workers to reflect on their own membership-based and other organizations in terms of who wields power and how. Workers who have recently affiliated to global sector networks recognize the need for their local organizational strength to reflect their global voice.
Resistance requires strong organization and an active and informed membership
While rising authoritarianism threatens civic space for organizing, strong organizations on the ground are able to adapt their strategies to avoid threats of being demobilized.
Latin America holds illustrative examples: In response to intensifying repression in Argentina, worker educators in the Unión de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de la Economía Popular (UTEP) go into communities to discuss members’ experiences of the repression and how to respond. And to enable street vendors to work at the same time as preparing for active resistance, UTEP holds mobilizing sessions in public workspaces. In September 2025, after a week of protests that included a march by 8,000 people, a Buenos Aires court ordered the city government to immediately restore the transportation service for waste pickers that it had suspended.
In Colombia, waste pickers affiliated to Planeta Verde emphasize the cooperative’s hard-won victories through struggle as part of their workers’ education initiatives.
In some sectors, such as domestic work, building workers’ agency means that workers need their employers’ contact details so that, in cases of abuse, they can make a report to their union. Strong organization for effective resistance requires that unions and other worker organizations have fully engaged members, not only a layer of informed leadership. The Workers’ Education for Workers’ Power course in the foundational programme emphasizes the principles of education for social change. Collective learning involves respect for different views and finding solutions that lead to action. Active resistance is more than protest actions; it involves formulating demands for alternatives, strengthening negotiation strategies, mobilizing members, organizing campaigns and building alliances.
Participants in the School’s training-of-trainers have said they value the cross-sectoral networking that WIEGO enables, noting that their exchanges with fellow workers in informal employment from different sectors reinforced feelings of solidarity and shared purpose. As well as creating learning spaces for workers, the School encourages cross-sectoral organizing.
One participant said that in her organization “I would like to implement sharing and getting to know each other better through dialogue and debate as we did [in the programme]… There was great interest, and interest generates new ideas, routes and processes for the strengthening of our organizations.”
Real social change needs stronger movements fighting for alternatives
The WIEGO School’s programme emphasizes the importance of understanding experiences of informality from a working-class perspective and building working-class solidarity.
Also, workers in informal employment require strong allies, including human rights advocates. This is particularly crucial now as civic space closes and right-wing ideas and practices increase globally, putting the working class under constant attack. The enormity of transforming systemic inequality calls for sustained movements of resistance.
As Sheri Hamilton notes in Renewing Workers' Education: A Radical Vision, ‘’workers’ education [must be] as wide in its scope as it is narrow in its class focus” to make the connection between different working-class struggles that need strong movements for alternatives.
As well as learning for action, Workers’ Education for Workers’ Power shows how to learn from action for effective social change. For example, at the same time as worker organizations find ways to adapt to the severe impacts of climate change, it is important to understand and mobilize against climate inequality.
Organizing to build collective power is necessary for social, economic, political and environmental justice. With this understanding at its core, the programme raises workers’ critical consciousness as the basis for collective action, inspired by campaigns that build on each other for a sustained movement to create better lives and livelihoods.