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For waste pickers, harassment is a part of daily life, also before the pandemic. Our reports on human rights in Latin America serve as a documentary testimony both to give visibility to waste pickers’ working conditions and to mobilize support in defense of their rights.
Data from the first round of the WIEGO-led COVID-19 Crisis and the Informal Economy Study in 12 cities point to three common patterns across worker groups and continents. The first is a sudden and massive drop in earnings. Given that many informal workers earn day-to-day to meet basic needs, and...
Two domestic workers from India share their experiences about the impact of COVID-19 and the lockdown on their work and lives, the difficulties they have faced and the support they have received. They explain that, even today, as the lockdown has been gradually lifted across India, domestic workers...
Worldwide, at least 67 million people are employed as domestic workers. Their work allows families living in those households to do their jobs, so domestic workers have a crucial role to play in keeping markets and economies working globally. Yet, as lockdown orders were imposed following the COVID...
In a webinar from WIEGO’s Workers´ Voices series, Nohra Padilla—leader of the Waste Pickers Association of Bogotá and ANR—shares with other workers the key milestones of the fight that won the waste pickers recognition as recycling public service providers. In this conversation with Federico Parra...
With formal workers buffered to some extent by the protection provided through their formalized work relations, and the poorest of the poor able to cling to their pre-existing lifeline of governmental social assistance, it was the ‘missing middle’, often uncovered by any protection programmes, that...
There are no economic indicators so important or revealing as the words of workers. Today, the voices of informal economy workers, who constitute 60 per cent of the world’s workforce, are helping us unpack the hardship, injustice, and possibility for transformation within our economic system, laid...
When COVID-19 hit, Vandi Lansana knew what he had to do. As National Vice President of the Sierra Leone Traders’ Union, he had dealt with a fast-spreading, dangerous disease before: Ebola. Unlike the current COVID-19 pandemic, not much attention was paid internationally to the Ebola virus, which...
Street vendors in Mexico City are providing affordable food, in open-air settings, to food-insecure populations. Waste pickers in Accra provide recycling services at a time when recycling value chains have taken a hit. These are essential services that could be enhanced through inclusion into...
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with informal workers worldwide struggling to earn a living, the Ghanaian government began the decommissioning of Accra’s Kpone landfill site, displacing the over 300 workers who pick waste there.
Videos / Slideshows / Audio
Millions of women work long hours, in dangerous conditions, for little pay. They are fighting for change, with the help of ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Watch this video to learn how.
Workers Education/Organizing Materials
This manual helps street vendors learn more about the regulations that govern public space and how to defend the right to work in public space. It describes successful actions taken by street vendor organizations. And it offers information to help you organize and negotiate with local government.
WIEGO Working Papers
Mike Rogan reviews how informal workers are taxed, why there is growing interest in taxing them, and whether they should be included in the tax net.