Annie Delaney

Organizing Homeworkers: The Use of Mapping as an Organizing Tool

In this article we document and discuss homeworker ‘mapping’ as an emerging approach to organizing. Mapping was used by homeworker organizations to organize unprotected workers in the unregulated informal sector where there has been an exponential growth over the last two decades.

Garment homework in Argentina: Drawing together the threads of informal and precarious work

This article explores and applies Kalleberg’s concept and dimensions of precarious work in relation to garment homework in Argentina. Although precarious work exists across formal and informal employment, its nature and dimensions are most commonly researched in relation to formal work in developed economies where the loss of standard conditions can be documented. Similarly, homework is most usually discussed as a category of informal work, in the context of developing countries, within which precariousness is one among numerous aspects of adverse job quality. Applying the concept of precariousness enables homework to be assessed systematically against specific labour standards, yielding a more powerful analysis than reference to a general deficit. This may increase our understanding of homework especially with regard to addressing labour standards.

Campaign strategies to develop regulatory mechanisms: Protecting Australian garment homeworkers

Despite key universal characteristics of homework that render it complex and challenging to protect, Australia has a comprehensive suite of regulatory (legislative and non-legislative) mechanisms protecting garment homeworkers. This article proposes that it was the intense and sustained campaigning and mobilisation efforts of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, undertaken together with the FairWear Campaign and Asian Women at Work, which enabled the emergence and development of these mechanisms. We examine these homework initiatives, applying the lens of responsive regulation theory, to derive implications for global homeworker organisations, shaping their regulatory environments. The article concludes that legislative outcomes alone are insufficient and a combined strategy that encompasses campaigning, legislative reform and social movement strategies that involve the participation of homeworkers are more likely to ensure effective and ongoing homeworker protection.

Regulatory challenges in the Australian garment industry: human rights in a post-Ruggie environment

As corporations increasingly operate beyond national boundaries, the regulatory frameworks that monitor their conduct have not kept pace with the dynamic global playing field. Governance gaps are endemic to this environment, where corporate human rights abuses potentially transpire without sanction or reparation. This article investigates the human rights and business nexus in Australia, applying a labour rights lens. We examine two cases within the Australian garment industry: the Home Workers Code of Practice and Coles. We analyse the UN Guiding Principles as the baseline corporate responsibility to respect human rights in relation to two of our cases. The Regulation Theory is applied to explore the roles of three distinct actors: states, corporations and non-state actors. We also examine governance gaps as direct consequences of inadequate regulatory frameworks provided by government. We conclude that in Australia, the human rights and business agenda is functioning at the superficial level with corporate responsibilities failing to be fully met and with little evidence of states complying with their duty to protect human rights abuses resulting from corporate misconduct.

Positioning women homeworkers in a global footwear production network: How can homeworkers improve agency, influence and claim rights?

This article analyses the position of women footwear homeworkers, using global production networks as a conceptual lens. Using qualitative data collected in India during 2011 to 2014, it illustrates the asymmetry of power between network actors and attests to the poverty, invisibility and lack of acknowledgement and representation characterising leather footwear homework. It represents leather footwear homeworkers as working from the margins of these networks, with weak links to most other actors in the networks. The paper interrogates how marginalised and informal workers might increase their agency and participation capacity in global production networks, and proposes that this can occur through support and organising undertaken by appropriate non-governmental organisations.

A Comparison of Australian and Indian Women Garment and Footwear Homeworkers

This chapter compares situationally different types of homework in the garment and footwear sectors in Australia and India. Informal homework exists in highly female-dominated workforces that experience regulation distance. The conceptual tool of invisibilization is used to analyze the work of homeworkers in national and global supply chains and identify the processes that contribute to homeworkers’ work being represented as non-work performed by non-workers. Though the Indian and Australian homeworkers differ with respect to regulation and recognition in the supply chain, both experience degrees of invisibilization. Invisibilization and homework connect the sociopolitical influences that accentuate gender inequalities through the devaluation of work, lack of collectivity, lack of social and legal protections, and lack of access to protections.

Gender and informality at work – theoretical provocations: an introduction to the special issue on gender and informality

ABSTRACT This special issue examines the interaction of gender with informal work, processes of informalisation and experiences of informality as a defining feature of work under contemporary capitalism. The articles interrogate the interactions between the experiential, discursive and structural dimensions of informality as they emerge in relation to the social construction of gender relations. These analyses present a comprehensive survey of the ‘continuum of practices’ which constitute informality, and draws attention to the urgency of understanding the ways in which codified and social practices normalise, formalise and conceal the gendered dimensions of informality at work.

Thinking about informality: gender (in)equality (in) decent work across geographic and economic boundaries

ABSTRACT Perspectives on the informal economy having evolved over time from a notion of a separate and disappearing sector to a broader focus that takes account of the wide range of economic activities that comprise informal work and focuses on processes and on the interdependencies of the formal and informal economic spheres. In this article we consider contemporary thinking about informal work and ask how useful the concept is for understanding changes occurring in work and employment in developed as well as developing economies so as to develop interventions to generate decent work. We use the lens of informality to explore how analysis of work and employment outcomes might give a more central place to the political and social location and, in particular, to gender in the construction of poor jobs. We propose that the concept of informality offered by feminist and other critical approaches is suitable for the analysis of much contemporary informalisation in both developed and developing economy contexts. We also propose that analysis can be strengthened through the adoption of the concept of ‘invisibilisation’. We examine some particular types of feminised informal work in which there are high levels of vulnerability and disadvantage – homework and domestic and care work. We conclude that the constructs of informal work and informalisation of work can be used to highlight how gendered institutional and social processes construct work as beyond the effective reach of regulation.

Comparing Australian garment and childcare homeworkers' experience of regulation and representation

Labour markets in Australia have long been segmented by gender and race. This study compares two highly gendered and racially segmented labour markets, home-based family day care workers and garment homeworkers. The comparative cases examine the broader trends of migration, production and consumption that reinforce gender and racial stereotypes, and discourses that underpin representations that women workers are ideally suited to such work. We theorise the gender and racialised inequalities of homework based on the literature on invisibilisation and social reproduction to explore the vulnerable position of migrant women and the consequences of having limited options, such as legal and social protections and any capacity to collectively organise. Our analysis examines the roles and responses of institutions and conceptualises the socio-political factors that affect the characterisation of homework as non-work or as self-employed entrepreneurial activities. By mapping the differing regulatory trajectories of these two groups of homeworkers in terms of regulation and representation, we find both similarities and differences. While garment homeworkers have achieved recognition through legislation and social mobilisation, their circumstances leave them less likely to access such rights. By contrast, the failure to recognise family day care homeworkers, has left them to market forces. JEL code: J01

Non-judicial mechanisms in global footwear and apparel supply chains: lessons from workers in Indonesia

This case study describes how Indonesian garment and footwear workers, and allied organisations have used a combination of strategies to pursue their rights, which includes engaging with local and international non-judicial mechanisms. The case study analyses their efforts to influence the local and global forces that determine their working conditions. Major footwear brands that sell their goods globally produce the factories under study.