AMRC with support from Committee for Asian Women and Homenet Southeast Asia

The ‘informal’ workers constitute the overwhelming majority of Asia, as much as 2/3 of the labor force. Among those, a majority is composed of women.

Informal workers predominate in the large informal economy of Asia, which comprise of a galaxy of ‘unregistered’ and usually ‘unregulated’ economic activities taking place in agriculture, industry and in the rapidly-growing service sector. Workers in the vast informal economy include seasonal agricultural workers, home-based producers, ambulant peddlers, unregistered migrants, etc.

Formal sector employment also keeps shrinking in both developing and developed Asian countries because of the ‘labor informalization’ process taking place in the sector. The ‘regular’ or ‘standard’ employees are now outnumbered by the ‘irregular’ or ‘non-standard’ agency, temporary/casual, part-time, migrant and subcontracted workers. 

Who are Asia’s informal labourers?   What are their rights under national laws – or what are the rights they have been deprived of?   Can the system of social security be extended to them? Can the ‘race to the bottom’ that is driving the informalization process be stopped? What can labor advocates and governments do to protect the dignity of informal workers– be they in the ever-growing informal economy or in the shrinking formal sector?

Expansion of TNCs in Asia and Implications for Labour

The construction industry is the single biggest non-agricultural industry in the capitalist world. More than 70% of the 111 million workers employed worldwide are in developing countries. With the two biggest countries China and India, Asia accounts for more than half of the global construction workforce.

This research study, covering Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Philippines, Malaysia and China, was conducted in 2006 and completed in 2007. It gives a picture of the current trends of the construction industry in Asia, with special focus on the workforce demographics and labour conditions in construction projects operated by TNCs and their subcontractors.

Organizing Strategies for Informal Economy Workers

Published by AMRC and Asian Labour Exchange

How do you organize those with no formal workplace? This 33-page book was written as learning material for workers and unions, about organizing workers in the informal sector. The major concepts are reproductive economy, which is the economy of the family and private sphere, and capitalist patriarchy.

Several cases of organizing efforts by informal economy workers are given, drawn from India, Indonesia and Hong Kong. The main problem facing these workers, who are all women, is the failure of the law to recognize them as workers. Yet by various means, including spontaneous actions, building alliances with dismissed workers, and mobilizing the community, organizing informal workers is achieved.

Edited by David Allen and Laurie Kazan-allen

Not long after publication of Killing the Future (Chinese version), this is another publication from International Ban Asbestos Secretariat in collaboration with seven other organizations including AMRC.

Though asbestos is an acknowledged carcinogen and is banned by developed countries, consumption of it is growing in India. The untold human health and environmental damage caused by the use of this toxic substance have remained unacknowledged by a government obsessed with the quest for economic development.

In the absence of official action, concerned citizens in India work to assist the inured and rasie awareness of the asbestos hazard. This 71-page, full-colour publication gives campaigners the opportunity to document their experiences and, in conjunction with international experts, highlight the measures needed to deal with the country’s asbestos legacy. The contrbituing authors are unanimous in their belief that the use of sbestos must be banned in India.

For more information on this publication and for free downloadable PDF of this and related publications, please see: http://www.ibasecretariat.org.

The International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) is an independent non-governmental organization which has two objectives: a worldwide ban on asbestos and justice for all asbestos victims, IBAS monitors, analyzes and disseminates news received from the ever-expanding network of individuals and groups involved in the international movement against asbestos, as well as information from legal, medical and industry sources. IBAS produces written material and organizes conferences to raise the profile of asbestos issues.

( English Version )

What has been the impact of China’s accession to the WTO in 2001? Most discussions have focused on the positive impacts from a business perspective. Yet in the period of 1996-2002, a total of 40 million workers were sacked because of restructuring and privatization, and probably 10 million of them were directly related to China’s accession to WTO. This book contains a selection of thirteen in-depth interviews with rank-and-file workers from the service and manufacturing sector in Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Suzhou and Guangzhou in China. Through this book, workers give their own comments on the accession and what it will mean for the country, their enterprises and industry, and themselves. It record the hopes, fears and aspirations of the Chinese working class in the context of China’s deeper integration into the globalization web. This publication is in Chinese, the English language version is to be published later in  2008.