1. Organising homebased workers and strengthening their networks

The stronger the organizations at the base, the more powerful will be the lobbying and alliance building at different levels.  HomeNet South Asia through the network at national and regional encourages organizing individual producers associations through which they will voice their demands and concerns and also will increase their bargaining power. The strength of organizing will enable them to bargain for better wage and secure work arrangements. Moreover, it will give them an ability to negotiate to access credit, improved technologies, training and other resources, which can improve the quality and delivery of their products.

2. National policies for homebased workers

As women predominate in the informal sector, the development of appropriate informal sector policies is critical for women’s economic and social empowerment. Therefore, many key institutions and organizations adhesively campaigned for homebased workers, which yielded a convention 177 on homebased workers, which was adopted by International Labour Organization in 1996.  The adoption of the convention calls to translate the “convention” into reality.  It obliges all the countries having homebased workers to ratify and implement the convention to improve the condition of homebased workers. There is a need to develop national policies on homebased workers, which promotes protection against discrimination, remuneration, occupational safety and health, social security protection and training.

3. Developing programmes on Social Protection for homebased workers

Most workers in the informal sector, particular in developing countries never had an access to social protection. On an average, develop countries spends 10-15 per cent of their GDP on social protection whereas; in low-income countries they spend 1-5 per cent of their GDP.

Conventional schemes of social security cannot be readily applied on homebased workers as social security presupposes that income from work will normally provide sufficient income to live on and mostly people will have regular work. However, in case of homebased workers the condition does not meet. Generally, insurance companies tend to see the informal sector as unable or unwilling to incorporate in social scheme.  Therefore, the workers of informal sector are deprived of social protection benefits like life insurance, work security, maternity benefits, health insurance.

 

4. Reaching markets

In consideration to fair labour practices many multinational companies have shown their concern in promoting fair labour practice by hiring human rights compliance officers, and establishing a monitoring firms to frame and follow the “Codes of Conduct”. However, the “Codes of Conduct” of these companies have not yet addressed the issues of homebased workers. It is learnt that companies seems eager now for concrete information, guidelines for codes, mechanism of monitoring and promising strategies.

HomeNet South Asia with partners like WEIGO will carry out following activities that is to raise awareness about fair trade practices, formulate a guiding “ code of conduct” for corporations, including core labour standards, develop a methodology for calculating piece-rates, developing guiding principles for monitoring, create an information desk on homebased workers which will include their size, their contribution, innovative strategies, up grade technical and management skills.