Draft Plan for Discussion

The ATNC network began with critical review on the issue of capital mobility and ways of regulating that in 2003. As our work developed, the issue of informalisation of labour emerged in greater significance as an integrated and internalised process of capital mobility. First of all, there is a need on the ground. Individual member organisations have been launching campaigns, researches and supportive organising actions against state policy and enterprise practices of informalisation of labour. Contractualisation and dispatch labour are particularly pointed out as the most common form. Second, aside from Asian TNCs, informalisation is a link that relates the lives of workers and labour struggles between the capital exporting and capital importing countries. The network finally initiated a regional discussion on informalisation of labour and organising flexibilised workers in Bogor, Indonesia in November 2005 which was the first time we took an overview of the government policies, the general forms and the more impactful trends of informalisation of labour on a country by country basis. Cases of organising informalised workers (we used the term flexibilised labour at that time) were presented from different member organisations. Now piecing what we have done in the past 3 years, in fact similar gestures to identify efforts in organising informalised workers had been made in our previous research and workshops such as on the auto industry in 2004; the Philippines activist exchange on organising skills in 2005; the workers’ exchange on the electronics sector in Bogor, Indonesia in 2005 and in our annual research on major Asian TNCs namely Samsung, Toyota, Tatung 2006. While we should appreciate all that we have done and shared together, it seems that in all these dispersed cases and presentations, a systematic articulation and understanding is lacking other than the repeated recognition that informalisation of labour is malicious and devastating trade union organising and workers’ lives.

The annual meeting this year highlighted informalisation of labour as an overarching topic for the network to consolidate the research, training and campaign capacity for supporting labour organising in the region for the next 3 years. It is also an understanding in the annual meeting that the link between research and training should be strengthened without having the research losing the critical edge it has in confronting the mainstream debates and discourses on labour in/about the region. The research circle agreed therefore that the annual research for 2007 should be about organising informalised labour in the region. On the other hand the training circle plans to compile training materials on organising informalised workers, the emphasis would be micro-strategies on the shop floor or in the community and the sources of materials would be the organising experiences that have already been circulating amongst the network members. It would therefore seem that the research circle could and should focus on the macro debates on organising informalised labour that would provoke more critical thoughts on the perspectives and strategising of existing trade union and social organising in the region.

With reference to Chang Dae-oup’s article published in the ALU (no.58, Jan-March 2006), Globalising Factory & Informalising Labour – An Overview of Informalisation of Labour in Asia, some important points are made with regard towards a critical understanding of informalisation of labour:

• The encroachment of capitalist labour accelerated by globalised capital movement has enclosed almost all aspects of human life and activities into commodities subject to market operation. Thus the concept of Global Factory – referring to not only traditional labour activities in enterprises and factories, but also the realm of reproduction of labour and human relations.
•  As most of the human labour activities become capitalist work, it is also becoming informalised out of the need of capital to overcome/bypass existing state or trade union regulatory framework we have secured for ‘formal’ work (in formal sectors).
• Therefore the triple movement of
  • Expansion (largely in numerical terms) of the traditional informal sector eg street vendors, home workers, garbage pickers etc. These jobs are mostly taken by rural migrants, laid off workers, bankrupt small entrepreneurs or margins of society etc;
  • Formalisation or Expansion of the ‘always’ informal labour/sector. This includes sectors that have always been informal where commercial exchange relation disguises the labour relation and therefore not covered by legal and trade union regulation. They are however either becoming corporatised or expanding so much that they become systematic form of employment and ‘regularised’ informal sector(s), eg construction, domestic workers, cleaning jobs and private security that are incorporate into TNCs, IT engineers, freelance writers, self-employed workers in insurance companies and teaching institutes, retail sales and workers etc, and migrant workers.
  • Informalisation of formal labour or formal sector. The most typical form of which is sub-contracting of production and labour, contractualisation, flexibilisation of labour and dispatching labour.
• The major limits of the trade union movement is the adherence to defending regular employment in the formal sectors treating the informal sector and labour as ‘atypical’ and marginal while missing the insight that informalisation is not only eroding the basis of traditional trade union and labour movement but that it is a changing form of capital domination encroaching our work/non-work, public/private life.
• The challenge therefore is:
  • Not only a defensive strategy that aims at including the organising of informal workers at the workplace or in formal sectors
  • Rather articulate the capitalist encroachment in all social aspects, organise and build solidarity between people as labour

What do we want to illustrate, challenge and communicate in this research (that would be helpful and stimulating to the training and campaigning activities of the network)?
What do we need/want and what do we not need to address in this research?
Consider the limitation of manpower and resources we have for this annual research…The research team does not directly involve all the countries, research team members might not be able to directly conduct new field research. And, there might be ready information amongst other network members but need theorisation and consolidation…
Who else do we need to involve outside the research circle and how to coordinate that?

Members of the Research Circle
YARC - Kaneko
TLIEA – Tsai
TLC
Dennis Arnold
CAW
CEC
LAC - Monina
AMRC - Dae Oup

We might not need to/ want to:

• Repeat the bad conditions of informalised workers
• Repeat detailed and per se illustration of how the supply chain is informalised
• Just illustrate organising informalised workers in the formal manufacturing sector
• Generalised statement on combining community and workplace organising
• Micro organising methods we have discussed in previous workshops (that could be passed onto the training circle to consolidate)

We might want this research to:

• Capture the major trends of informalisation in the Asian countries
• Consolidate existing debates in trade union and labour movement on organising informalised labour – particularly identifying new perspectives and changes in such debates with examples.
• Illustrate with examples of organising different forms of informal labour in different sectors that highlight the above perspectives and challenges to the debates in the national context

Brainstorming Cases for Research
Labour Organising in the Traditional Informal Labour

• CCAWDU, WAC organising beer girls? Motor taxi drivers?
• Tea plantation in India - CEC

Challenging the Formalisation of the Informal Sector/Organising the New Corporatised Informal Sector

• Corporatisation of the cleaning and security sector - Cases of HK organising TNC cleaning workers, security workers, HKCTU
• Labour dispatch and the employment policy in China – cases of organising (??) the community service workers, LAC and contact..
• Construction – which country, Philippines? How to get that?
• Telecommunication, finance sector in Taiwan?
• Japan case?
• Korea case?
• Organising migrant workers in SEA?? Where?
• Organising women workers – CAW?

Organising Against the Informalisation of the Formal Sector

• Contractualisation and dispatch labour in the public sector – organising in the HK public service sector, HKCTU??
• Cases of organising down the supply chain? Thailand electronics?
• Cases of organising against contractualisation of labour – Indonesia? Philippines?
• Cases of regional solidarity in auto? Japan?

** Each part should start with a brief summary/abstract of the significance of that form of informal labour and the organising efforts
** Each case should be able to illustrate the significant reflections vis a vis the current debates on organising informalised labour in the selected context. Recapturing the major delimmas, discourses and debates on organising (different forms of) informalised labour.

Methodology
(1)    Researchers’ meeting to agree on the framework, approach, plan of work. (October 2006)
(2)    Review and consolidate the major debates in (selected) Asian countries - Desk research, literature review, supplemented with interviews with trade unions and labour organisations. What about countries that are not in the research team?
(3)    Identify and select major area/issue of debates in national or local (see which is easier) labour movement regarding informalisation of labour. (2 and 3 in 3 months)
(4)    Second researchers’ meeting, if not, email circulation on results 2 and 3. (Jan/Feb 2007)
(5)    Identify cases that would illustrate 2 and 3 – literature review, desk research plus supplementary interviews with the involved trade union, labour organisation, workers if needed – 3 months
(6)    Write up (finish by end of June/July 2007)