- Katunayake EPZ based report notes the precarious work conditions and vulnerabilities that was the lot of informal workers in the apparel sector during the pandemic’s height
Informal workers’ contribution though prevalent in many sectors,the apparel sector, a leading foreign exchange earning sector has not received adequate attention on its informal workers’ contribution.While the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on these workers have been considerable, they have also raised the importance of having in place proper social and legal protection measures for these workers and how they could be improved.
These are some of the points discussed in a recently released report titled, ‘Re-imagining Vulnerabilities: The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Informalised Migrant Apparel Workers in Sri Lanka” authored by Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, Shyamain Wickramasingha, and issued by the think tank, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES). The report aimed at shedding some light on the precarious conditions of informal work, with a view to explaining how the Covid-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerabilities of informal workers in the Sri Lankan apparel industry. With qualitative research in the Katunayake Export Processing Zone (KEPZ), the study examined the informality in the post-pandemic context under four themes, i.e. income, regulatory gaps of informal work, employment arrangements, and the way informal workers’ citizenship rights were eroded during the pandemic.
Informal workers in the apparel sector
According to the report, the State outsourcing its responsibility of providing livelihood security and labour rights to the private sector has resulted in certain invisibilities that have increased the vulnerabilities of informal workers, especially in times of crisis. Adding that it is important to stress that informal work is needed as an option for a segment of the labour force who seek the flexibility, and the ability to decide when to work and when not to work, the report explained that this is particularly important for women with care related responsibilities. “Informal work also supports and facilitates the volatilities of production cycles, where in certain seasons, garment factories require an additional labour force. This way, factories can hire temporary workers to meet their seasonal demands rather than having to meet the higher expenditures of maintaining an excessive permanent labour cadre throughout the year. Importantly, informal work helps alleviate the worst effects of the labour shortage, by providing a steady supply of contract labour,” the report said, adding that, thus, contrary to the opinions of stakeholders who remain divided on the need for informal work, the study supports the existence of informal work as an important fixture of local labour markets.
In addition, the report called for regulating informal work in the sector in order to ensure decent working conditions for informal workers and to protect their basic employment rights. It stressed that any regulatory mechanisms must take into account gendered insecurities given the women’s income is closely intertwined with decision making abilities, social status, and physical and emotional safety. Noting that administratively, it may not be possible to regulate informal work overnight, the report has identified incremental steps that could be taken with the least bureaucratic formalities, which it said would provide relief for informal workers in areas they struggle the most, thereby reducing the vulnerabilities of informal work: “Firstly, the proposed measures will ensure that informal workers receive a fair wage, statutory payments, and employment security. Secondly, with increased regulatory measures, garment factories will have a greater responsibility in hiring and maintaining informal workers. These measures are also likely to reduce the undue financial benefits of hiring and maintaining informal workers for garment factories. This is likely to minimise overreliance on informal work by garment factories, especially where they do so to avoid legal obligations and statutory pay. As the financial and administrative advantages of employing informal workers diminish, a route may open for informal workers who wish to be employed as regular workers to enter the formal labour force. Thirdly, registering migrant workers in the Katunayake Grama Seva (GS) Division will ensure that migrant informal workers are able to access Government assistance and relief programmes in times of crisis. Importantly, this would also allow them access to facilities restricted for constituents, such as entering their children to local schools. Regulating informal work or rather, ensuring that garment factories and manpower agencies comply with the existing regulations, would take minimum efforts at this juncture, given the already existing laws in the books. The results of these efforts would provide greater social protection and relief for informal workers currently labouring under extremely precarious conditions.”
Challenges in regulating informal work
The report emphasised that it is important to acknowledge two notable challenges in regulating informal work.
The first challenge is the fluidity of employment relations in the informal sector that would make it difficult for regulatory bodies, i.e. the Department of Labour and the Board of Investment (BOI), and the garment factories to trace the compliance of laws by manpower agencies. The report explained that at present, in most cases, workers rotate between different manpower agencies, while manpower agencies themselves keep shifting workers between different factories. It added that regulating informal work would mean one worker having contracts with several manpower agencies, and manpower agencies having multiple employment contracts with the same worker based on the pay and working conditions of different factories. With this level of complexity, it would be time and resource consuming for manpower agencies and factories to keep track of each informal worker hired, and this, in turn, would complicate the monitoring of compliance for the Department and the BOI, as per the report’s conclusions.
The second challenge is regulating informal work with formal contracts being likely to affect the flexibility of employment that informal workers seek and value. With formal conditions of working hours, leave, overtime pay, and statutory payments, the report said manpower agencies may impose unreasonable demands on the labour related time of workers, and that this would likely lead to the inability of workers to choose when to work and when not to work, which is currently the main attraction of informal work.
“Regulating informal work, which is an urgent need in the sector, thus requires careful consideration of the practicalities and needs of all stakeholders including the workers, manpower agencies, and garment factories. A productive way forward would be to engage all three parties, and work together to find equitable solutions that protect the rights of informal workers but are also workable for the agencies and garment factories,” it added.
Measures to improve the situation
The report recommended several actions to ensure that the basic labour rights of informal workers are protected and enforced in the apparel industry, with a focus on pragmatic measures that can potentially capitalise on the existing laws and regulations, rather than advocating for new laws and regulations. The recommendations aimed at mitigating the vulnerabilities of informal workers in times of crisis, help regulate informal work in the local labour markets, and devise effective mechanisms to address the issues of informal work, both during normal times and during crises. It explained that while some of the actions and recommendations are based on existing laws, others are based on the expectations of informal workers themselves, trade unions, and civil society organisations.
The registration of manpower agencies was one of the measures recommended. In this regard, the report said manpower agencies should be registered under the Department, the BOI, or the Registrar of Companies, and that currently, there is a requirement that manpower agencies do so although this does not happen, mostly, in practice. It added, thus, it is imperative that active measures are taken by manpower agencies as well as the authorities to formally register manpower agencies.
The regulation of working conditions was another recommended step, regarding which the report said: “A common complaint about informal work among respondents was that there is no standard pay or working conditions in the industry. As noted previously, wages fluctuate between Rs. 800-1,700 with inequality of wages reported between men and women. Similarly, working hours fluctuate between nine-13 hours. The nature of the job varies from cleaner, helper, to machine operator, with alarming incidents of forced sex work reported. In this context, all respondents spoke of the need for the pay and working conditions to be regulated. On this, the BOI Zonal Office can play an important role as they already have stipulations in place to govern the pay and working conditions of informal work.”
The monitoring of compliance is also an aspect that could help these endeavours, according to the report. Recommending a proper mechanism to monitor the compliance of these regulations, the report said, given the BOI requires enterprises (in this case, garment factories) that engage manpower agencies to fulfil certain obligations, the BOI Zonal Office can play a pivotal role in enforcing the compliance of this requirement. If executed well, it said it has the potential to regulate contract work to a greater extent. This, in turn, is expected to ensure that the basic rights of the workers are secured, and the report stressed that having laws in the books are of little use if they are not implemented and enforced on the ground.
Also, recommending the registration of migrant workers in the Katunayake local administrative divisions, the report said: “Local civil society organisations and trade unions voiced the strong need to establish a formal presence of migrant workers in the Katunayake local administrative divisions. They propose three actions, i.e. to register migrant workers in the Katunayake GS Division which would ensure workers being recognised as constituents of Katunayake, introduce postal votes in EPZs so that migrant workers, whether informal or regular, can vote during elections, and/or install 25 ballot boxes in the KEPZ to represent all 25 Districts. This way, migrant workers can access the ballot boxes representing their respective villages and cast their votes. These points have already been raised with the Human Rights Commission and the Election Commission by the Dabindu Collective.”