Extending Health and Safety to Informal Workers: A Photo Essay

Introduction: There is great diversity in the informal economy—of occupation, place of work, status in employment, extent of regulation, and access to health services, among other things. Many articles in this special edition have described the extent of risks and hazards in different sectors of the informal economy. The lens we use in this photo essay is, first, positive interventions in different countries that have attempted to improve the safety, security, and health of informal workers and their families. They include improved access of poor women head porters to a national health insurance scheme, reform of local market regulations to control the weights carried by men porters, the installation of first-aid stands in built markets, skill upgrading for better incomes, the development of improved work equipment, reform of national legislation in the interests of workers, the importance of the local level of government, and its role in the provision of infrastructure such as water, lighting, garbage removal, the use of smart technology for more accurate estimation of work done, and the provision of child care—an issue that is directly related to the ability of poorer women informal workers’ ability to earn better and more reliable incomes.
Second, we see the different kinds of organizations involved in the interventions: associations, collectives, trade unions, a housing trust, supportive nongovernment organizations, municipalities, for example. These on-the-ground examples can be used to give support to the growing national, regional, and global alliances of informal workers around issues of health and safety. The initiatives show not only that a more inclusive work-related health and safety domain for informal workers needs to be developed—but also that it can be done.

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