By Ayuba Wabba
President Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)
Over 2 billion workers are earning their livelihoods in the informal economy. This represents over 60% of workers globally and 90% of total employment in low-income countries. ILO posits that 71% of people globally have little or no access to social protection. COVID19 has exposed the vulnerabilities of working people in every country in the world. Where decent work deficits have long been obvious, they have now become matters of basic human survival.
Job losses, loss of income and livelihoods, lack of paid sick leave and lack of access to healthcare have resulted in whole communities and economies, faced with lock-down measures, finding it very difficult to manage local and national uncertainties of health and socio-economic impacts.
ILO Convention 102 on Social Security and Recommendation 202 on Social Protection Floors are complementary and mutually reinforcing and together provide a framework for comprehensive social protection coverage.
We can adopt the following measures to address the massive vulnerabilities occasioned by the dearth of social protection:
• Implementation of the ILO Centenary Declaration which calls for universal access to social protection for all workers and emphasises the continued relevance of the employment relationship as a means of providing certainty and legal protection to workers;
• There is now the urgent need to institutionalise a Global Fund for Universal Social Protection to enable the poorest nations to respond to the pandemic and to build resilience for future economic, health and climate shocks. Already, some US$ 10 trillion has been pledged by governments and international financial institutions for economic recovery. According to pre-crisis estimates, a Global Fund for Universal Social Protection would need some US$37.8 billion for the first 5 years, to close the financing gaps. This represents a small fraction of the total global funding to build recovery and resilience; and
• Combination of both comprehensive contributory social security schemes and non-contributory social security guarantees.
Other Practical measures to bridge the massive vulnerability gap include
• conditional wage subsidies;
• the extension of unemployment benefits;
• universal access to health care, paid sick leave to all workers, including casual workers, the self-employed, platform workers and workers in the informal economy including migrant workers;
• Trade Unions should connect with civil society allies nationally and globally; to promote universal social protection; and
• A network of government champions for universal social protection should be established.
Formalizing the informal economy and moving decisively towards universal social protection coverage
ILO Recommendation 204 on Formalising the Informal Economy provides a very good roadmap for formalizing the informal sector. Other measures that are necessary to accelerate formalisation of the informal economy especially for workers in Medium and Small Enterprises (MSEs) include:
• Extending Legal Coverage to SMEs and Operators in Informal Sector: Legal coverage can be extended to workers in MSEs by lowering or removing minimum thresholds with regard to the enterprise size in the social security or labour legislation;
• Facilitation of Access and Simplification of Administrative Procedures: Removing administrative barriers is crucial to enhancing coverage of workers and employers in MSEs and facilitating their transition to the formal economy;
• Facilitation of Contribution Collection and Financing Mechanisms: Some countries have developed ways to facilitate contributions payment for MSEs, thus enhancingworkers’ coverage; and
• Increase the Verve for Unionization: For trade unions, the starting blocks for formalizing the informal sector is to get workers involved in this sector unionized. Most of the social protection deficits in the informal sector is due to paucity of knowledge. The presence of trade unions in the informal sector would go a long way in addressing this challenge.
Other Practical measures include:
• Extending contributory arrangements to allow informal workers to contribute; and
• Extending non-contributory schemes in order to reach those who are left out.
Conclusion:
Many workers have faced and continue to face the unacceptable choice between continuing to work at risk to their health or falling into destitution and even starvation. Therefore, Universal Social Protection is a necessary investment in human security, in building peace, in addressing gender and other inequalities, in local economic development and in delivering on international commitments to meet SDG Goals 8 on Decent Work and Goal 1.3 on Social Protection Systems.
By Ayuba Wabba, Worker, Nigeria
ILO Virtual Summit
Covid-19 and the World of Work:Building a better future of work
9th July 2020
