Structural violence, a Threat to the World of Workforce
By Sonia George
Even as the International Labour Organization (ILO) is celebrating its 100th year, it is imperative to contemplate its achievements and to reaffirm its commitment towards workers rights. It should also become an opportunity to reiterate ILO’s core values and vision. This is the only organization in the UN system which follows a tripartite system in the standard setting processes and discussions for matters related to work. This 108th session of the ILC is discussing the centenary declaration on Future of Work and also the final draft towards 190th convention on Violence and Harassment in the World of work.
Many of our members have to perform various roles every day to earn a livelihood. Many women go to domestic work in the morning, will become part of a supply chain as a home based worker in the afternoon and also make some food at home and sell. Several national studies show that women headed households are increasing and they have to carry out many tasks to earn a decent livelihood. Where do we place them in the existing tripartite work relationship? Are they wage workers or self employed or piece-rate workers? Is it possible to locate a fixed employer in any of these work relations? So defining a workforce and also the responsibilities of the employer in these unusual and new situations of work are always contested and many – old and new – work arrangements don’t have an employment relationship. The workers are self employed and need protection as they often belong to the most vulnerable groups of workers.
The world of work is undergoing drastic changes in its nature and form. Conventional notions of work are becoming more and more irrelevant where the employment relations have haphazardly become volatile. If we closely follow these changes informalisation tendencies percolate into all kinds of employment relationships. While the Global North experiences the informalisation of the formal jobs, steep increase in the informal sector workforce is the reality of Global South. The hard earned rights of workers like stability, permanency and decent work conditions are now muted with new forms of work arrangements and multi tasking. Direct employer-employee relationships often do not exist in most of these work patterns. Since the production process ventures through the decentralizing of the workforce, those at the lower end of the chain are completely invisible. In many of the new standard setting documents that are emerging these complexities are not addressed fully, therefore affects its applicability. Instability of the work, hire and fire, no enrollment as workers, the difficulty to address minimum wages for piece rate workers, – all leads the work atmosphere to more frenzy and volatile situations.
Violence and harassment is an outcome of these contextual work situations where the most vulnerable naturally become more exposed to it. A power imbalance strongly operates in the world of work which results in structural violence. Structural violence in the world of work is the systemic production of inequalities and violence through coercive environments that lead to the denial of decent work, a living wage and freedom of association and collective bargaining, mobility, access to public and essential services including social protection, justice and remedies, access to benefits and natural resources.
Systemic violence creates risks for all workers, particularly marginalized groups who work in the informal sector. It invisibilises the causes and triggers off violence against women, and foments inequalities on the basis of sex, age, race, class, caste, ethnicity etc. Gender based violence is also the result of this power imbalance in the workplace where dominant patriarchal structure turns to be the perpetrator. Unless systemic, structural power inequalities are rectified, gender based violence, in and outside the world of work, cannot be meaningfully addressed. Since majority of the informal economy are victims of this unpredictable, subtle forms of violence, we like to see that there will be measures in the instrument, which are equally accessible for informal workers. Especially when the state and its agents like public authorities and law enforcement agencies act as perpetrators of violence, justice should be ensured to all the workers who are the poorest of the poor and to struggle to earn a livelihood. Violence and harassment in the world of work thus cannot be demarcated in one coherent and tangible approach, it necessitates pluralistic outlook depending on the contexts.
So when a convention addressing violence and harassment in the world of work becomes a reality, we representing workers in the informal economy, expect a holistic approach when implementing the instrument. The centenary declaration should be inclusive in its outlook while considering these shifts in the political economy of labour, where the issues of representation and inclusion really matters. The world of work no longer can operate in the formal/informal dichotomy. It is high time that ILO and labour movements start to extrapolate these concerns in the world of work. Serious interventions are needed here to enlighten the responsible people and the public to contemplate on this.
Excerpts from the Address at the International Labour Organization’s 100th Year Conference held in Geneva on 13 June 2019
Sonia George represented SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association), the largest women’s union in India and also in the world consisting of informal workers and WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising ) a global network focused on securing livelihoods for the women in the informal economy.
