Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection
Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty. Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In this monthly podcast we will discuss some of the most pressing issues related to social protection from the perspective of informal workers, including debates around the future of work, demographic changes and the informal economy, as well as social services, like child care and health that can protect informal workers’ incomes. Subscribe to the “Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection” to learn more about WIEGO’s cutting-edge research and hear from informal workers organisations about the debates, policies, successes and challenges they face in accessing and reforming social protection systems.
Episodes
April 22, 2024 • 34 mins
In the third episode of the registration block we travel to Latin America to take a regional overview of this issue regarding domestic workers. To learn the challenges these workers face to be registered, the positive experiences, as well as the opportunities and limitations digital technology tools offer in this task, among other issues revolving around registration for domestic workers in Latin America, we invited Adriana Paz. Ad...
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February 29, 2024 • 28 mins
In episode five of the systems’ mapping, building blocks approach, we continue to explore the topic of registration. This time, we look closely at the Cambodian IDPoor programme, to understand to what extent a government-led effort to improve how beneficiaries of social assistance and social protection schemes are effectively accounted for – and what are the gaps, challenges and merits of this new registration drive.
To understand...
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January 9, 2024 • 28 mins
And we start the year with the first episode of the second building block of our new season, in which we will discuss the issue of registration. How is digital technology helping to include informal workers into social protection schemes or how is it creating new barriers for these people to access protection? What are the risks and opportunities? What is the role of informal workers organisations in building more inclusive registr...
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November 28, 2023 • 33 mins
This is the third and last episode of the financing building block. Previously, we discussed alternative ways to finance social protection extension for waste pickers in India and Argentina, and the struggle to finance gig workers in Rajasthan. Now we explore the challenges of financing social protection in a changing world of work.
What are the possible paths, strategies and innovations countries are undertaking to include infor...
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September 12, 2023 • 27 mins
The current episode is the second of this new season. We will continue to look at the issue of financing, which was the topic of the first episode of the system’s mapping series.
We will talk about a very important theme: how to finance the inclusion of gig workers from digital platforms of service provisions in social protection system.
We turn our attention to the Indian State of Rajasthan, where the local legislative has just pa...
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July 12, 2023 • 20 mins
WIEGO inaugura una nueva etapa de su podcast. A partir de este episodio, vamos a comprender mejor las piezas del sistema de protección social, para poder mejor comprender los retos, oportunidades y dificultades que enfrentan los trabajadores informales. Todo eso ofreciendo la perspectiva de los trabajadores, desde una aproximación ascendente.
En esta etapa, daremos atención especial al tema de la digitalización, aunque no será el ...
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July 12, 2023 • 47 mins
WIEGO starts a new phase of its podcast. From this episode onwards, we will gain a better understanding of the pieces of the social protection system, in order to better understand the challenges, opportunities and difficulties faced by informal workers. All this by offering the workers' perspective, from a bottom-up approach.
At this stage, we will give special attention to the issue of digitalisation, although it will not be the...
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April 25, 2023 • 30 mins
In 2021, WIEGO has launched the project “Challenging the global orthodoxies which undermine Universal Social Protection”. In a nutshell, the project aimed to examine some of the dominant ideas in the field of social protection that were hindering the concrete inclusion of informal workers in these schemes.
Exactly one year ago, I invited the coordinator of this project, Florian Juergens-Grant, to talk about what this project was a...
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February 16, 2023 • 40 mins
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the world in many ways. People all around the globe had to adapt to this new reality, and it was no different for informal workers leaders that struggle to improve their organizational strength.
Capacity building, one of the key aspects to increase the voice and visibility of workers, also had to be done differently. Traditional, in person events, such as exchanges, field visits or in person trai...
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December 2, 2022 • 29 mins
In India, the government has set a huge undertaking: to register 380 million informal workers on a new database, so that it could allow the delivery of social security payments. This database, called e-Shram, was launched in August 2021.
But, of course, this initiative was followed by a range of doubts, problems and barriers that has been hindering the implementation of this social registry system.
To help us better understand the ...
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September 19, 2022 • 29 mins
Social and Solidarity Economy has got into a very high place in the international agenda. This year, SSE, as it is called, was the theme of the International Labour Conference, in which workers representatives, government officials and employers representatives have gathered to discuss this alternative form of organizing production, distribution and consumption.
One of the main outcomes of the conference was that the a proposed de...
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June 27, 2022 • 44 mins
In the episode 20 of our podcast, we discussed the first round of the WIEGO longitudinal survey, conducted in 2020. In this special episode, we will discuss the report of the second round of this global survey.
In this stage, 11 cities around the globe were part of the research that explored how the fallout of the pandemic affected informal workers’ income, working hours, access to healthcare, but also their coping strategies, dem...
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June 16, 2022 • 30 mins
For decades, domestic workers have struggled to be recognized and to enjoy the same rights as other workers – including social protection rights. There has been significant progress over the past few years, as the workers’ movement pressured in national and international forums to have labour and social protection rights enshrined in their legal system. The ILO Convention-189 and the ratification by 35 countries, is one example of ...
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April 28, 2022 • 30 mins
Over the last few years, universal social protection and the government responses to the Covid-19 crisis has generated important debates in the field of social protection.
The Universal Social Protection 2030 framework, for instance, has gained support from a variety of key social protection stakeholders, including national governments, the ILO, IMF, World Bank, and other United Nations agencies, as well as global civil society or...
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February 17, 2022 • 33 mins
The last two years have brought a huge challenge to social protection systems around the world as the pandemic hit and shed light to the need of strengthening social insurance policies to protect workers against shocks that affected their livelihoods.
We look at the case of South Africa’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (or UIF) and Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (better known as TERS) to analyze how these policies were imp...
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December 2, 2021 • 30 mins
For the past two years, the world has been facing one of the biggest challenges of our lifetime, with the Covid-19 crisis. In this last episode of the year, we invited again Laura Alfers, the Social Protection programme coordinator at WIEGO, and Rachel Moussié, deputy coordinator of the Social Protection programme and head of the Child Care initiative, also here at WIEGO, to discuss the way in which the pandemic has exposed blind s...
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October 22, 2021 • 27 mins
La pandemia ha puesto de manifiesto la importancia crucial de la prestación de servicios de cuidado infantil. En este episodio, nos fijamos en cómo la Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (UTEP), una central sindical de trabajadores informales de Argentina, ha apoyado a las cooperativas de cuidado infantil para que presten estos servicios a los hijos de los trabajadores informales.
Para entender cómo funcionan estos servic...
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October 22, 2021 • 25 mins
The pandemic has highlighted the crucial importance of child care provision.
In this episode, we look at how the Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (UTEP), an informal workers central union in Argentina, has supported child care cooperatives to provide these services for informal workers’ children.
To understand how these community child care centres work in Argentina, how they have been affected by the pandemic and th...
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July 7, 2021 • 29 mins
After two weeks of intense debates that took place from June 3rd to June 19th, the first segment of the 109th session of the International Labour Conference – ILC – is now over. In this episode, we talked to worker leaders who attended the ILC to share their impressions and learnings from the event that had Social Protection on the forefront of the debates.
Featuring:
Oksana Aboud, international Coordinator of StreetNet Internatio...
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April 28, 2021 • 28 mins
In this episode, we dive into the social aspects of Covid-19 vaccination, and try to understand its impact on informal workers. How are they affected by the policy choices? What are the barriers to access? And what does it have to do with the issue of economic justice? These and other questions were discussed in this talk with with Christy Braham.
Christy is WIEGO’s Worker’s Health coordinator, she is also a founder member of the ...
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