Home Working
Because it is one of the most flexible forms of employment, home working has emerged as a key component of the restructuring of the global economy. The homeworker is often the last link in a network of international trade spread across continents, and producing goods sold by large retailers.
In most countries, homeworkers, usually women, are the most exploited of all workers, paid less than the minimum wage, without social security coverage, denied job security, and not even acknowledged as workers. Most do homework because they cannot find jobs outside, or because of family responsibilities or the lack of child care facilities. They are almost always isolated and at the mercy of their employers.
Therefore, the ITGLWF is committed to :
- encourage affiliates to run campaigns to organise homeworkers, to make them visible, to alert them to their rights, to bring them within the scope of collective bargaining and to negotiate agreements with retailers to promote respect for their rights;
- disseminate, on a regular basis, information on legal provisions as well as details of initiatives undertaken by affiliates and groups representing homeworkers;
- provide training to affiliates on the issue of homework;
- campaign for the universal ratification and implementation of the ILO Homework Convention No.177;
- support pressure on governments to translate the provisions of ILO Convention No. 177 into national laws, by providing to homeworkers equal rights with workers in the workplace, by bringing homeworkers into the mainstream, by extending health and safety laws to homeworkers, as well as by bringing intermediaries into the open;
- support initiatives to make training available to homeworkers in order to improve their capacity to increase their earnings by taking on more skilled work or to find alternative employment;
- support pressure on governments to adopt long-term solutions to eliminate the hardship that makes it necessary for people to work at home, including the provision of affordable and available child care and care for the elderly and infirm, possibilities for parental leave and higher pensions;
- liaise with non-government organisations working with homeworkers that share the same objectives as the ITGLWF.
Agenda for Action
Links and Resources
