ÇAlışma İLişkileri

The process of increasing informalisation of the labour market is creating a gap betweentrade unions and a growing number of workers who have no forms of collectiverepresentation at their places of work. This has been labelled the Representational Gap. Inpart this gap is the result of a trend towards the decentralization of production and theaccompanying outsourcing of workers to a third party. In other cases it has arisen from thetrend towards casualisation, part-time and temporary employment relationships. It issometimes a result of retrenchment of workers in the face of international competition andthe drive to cut labour costs. The result of these processes is a growing number of workersengaging in survival type activities in micro and small enterprises (MSEs). In particularworkers in these workplaces have no form of collective representation. This project wasinitiated by the International Labour Organisation and is designed to identify obstaclesand opportunities for closing this representational gap.The first phase of the study was conducted by Edlira Xhafa and involved an examination of the interdependent relationship in MSEs between labour and social protection legislationand organizational and representational strength (Xhafa, 2007). It did so by analyzing caseswhere, on the one hand, new legal regulations opened up better possibilities fororganizing MSEs and where, on the other hand, organizing activities/strategies led tochanges in legislation or law enforcement.The second phase of the study was conducted by the alumni of the masters programme of the Global Labour University (GLU) in Germany under the direction of Professor EdwardWebster from the Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of theWitwatersrand in Johannesburg. It consists of eleven country studies aimed at elaboratingthe dynamics between labour and social protection, and the ability of unions to organizeand represent workers in MSEs. The countries are: Albania, Barbados, Brazil, Colombia,India, Japan, Korea, Nigeria, Philippines, Turkey and the Ukraine.The report is divided into two parts. The first part covers the major trends in the MSE’s inthe eleven countries, the regulatory framework identified in these countries and theresponses of the state, employers and trade unions to compliance with that regulatoryframework. The data for this component of our report was derived from in-depthinterviews by the researchers with the key actors in government, employers associationsand trade unions in the eleven countries.The second part of the report is a presentation of the findings of the implementation of asemi-structured questionnaire amongst workers in a purposive sample of MSEs in theeleven countries. Our results reveal that unionization has a direct impact on the level of security in the workplace in the MSE sector with the exception of safety at work. Onepossible explanation for this is that there are a large number of exemptions given in labourregulations on health and safety issues, regardless of whether there is a trade unionpresent or not. Clearly it is a real dilemma for workers who are willing to take risks in returnfor danger pay. The study concludes with a number of recommendations on how toovercome the representation gap. This included the use of mapping – both vertical andhorizontal - as an organizational tool. This has led to a third phase of the study to begin inOctober 2008