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Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Jan21/05) Geneva, 15 Jan (Kanaga Raja) – Homeworkers, whose numbers have greatly increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, are usually worse off than those working outside the home, face greater safety and health risks, have less access to training and do not have the same level of social protection as other workers, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has said. In a new report, titled “Working from home: From invisibility to decent work”, the ILO estimates that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were about 260 million home-based workers in the world in 2019, representing 7.9 per cent of global employment. When the 2020 numbers are finally tallied, it is expected that the number of home-based workers will far surpass the 2019 figures, said the ILO. According to the ILO, homeworkers are a sub-group of home-based workers. In addition to working from home, homeworkers are defined statistically as employees or dependent contractors. Among the main findings in the ILO report are that when education, age and occupation are controlled for, a home work penalty is observed in almost all countries, even among higher-skilled professions. Homeworkers make 13 per cent less than non-home-based workers in the United Kingdom, 22 per cent less in the United States of America, 25 per cent less in South Africa and about 50 per cent in Argentina, India and Mexico. The ILO said that there are significant social protection gaps for industrial homeworkers and home-based, digital platform workers. In some instances, even though they are covered by social security legislation, the law is not being applied. In other instances, they are classified as self-employed and thus not covered by specific legislation. As a result, in some countries, the gap in social protection coverage for homeworkers reaches as high as 40 percentage points when compared with those working outside the home. With respect to occupational safety and health, the most pressing risks stem from handling tools, chemicals or products (for example, shoe glue) that are seldom adapted to the home and are used in the absence of protective equipment and training in safe practices. The risk is compounded as the work affects not just the homeworker but also other members of the household. Teleworkers, like other homeworkers, face ergonomic hazards that can lead to musculoskeletal disorders as well as psychosocial risks due to social isolation, said the ILO. Homeworkers also have less access to training than those who work outside the home, which can affect their career prospects. The data reveal that teleworkers are less likely to avail themselves of training opportunities and that there are few training opportunities for industrial homeworkers. For digital platform workers, training is informal and typically undertaken at their own initiative and expense. The ILO said that in some countries, there are legal impediments to forming trade unions among homeworkers, for instance, because they have been classified as self-employed or because their occupational category has been excluded from the labour code. According to the ILO, its report addresses three different types of home work: * industrial home work – refers to goods production undertaken by homeworkers either as part of, or replacing, factory production, but also artisanal production, such as in the making of handicrafts; * telework – refers to employees who use information and communications technologies to perform their work remotely; and * home-based digital platform work – refers to service-sector tasks performed by “crowdworkers” according to the specifications of the employer or intermediary, in situations in which the workers do not have the autonomy and economic independence to be considered independent workers in national law. Home work exists throughout the world. In high-income countries, it is mainly associated with telework, but there are important pockets of home work in manufacturing in these countries as well, said the ILO. Historically, industrial home work was prominent in Europe and Northern America, but the shift of labour- intensive manufacturing to the developing world in recent decades took much industrial home work with it. In the developing world, particularly in Asia, homeworkers can be found across different global supply chains in the apparel, electronics and house-ware industries, but they are also prominent in domestic supply chains. In the spring of 2020, as countries across the world imposed lockdowns to impede the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, large portions of the world’s workforce – estimated at close to one in five workers – found themselves working from home, said the ILO. According to the ILO report, home work has always existed, but because it takes place in someone’s private home and is carried out disproportionately by women, it has long been invisible. “Much of this invisibility stems from the absence of questions to identify home work in household labour force surveys and labour registries.” Although there has been progress in the measurement of home-based work as well as in the development of standards for the measurement of home work, the new standards have not yet been incorporated in labour force and other household surveys. Thus, there continues to be a lack of statistical information on homeworkers, said the ILO. “The shortcomings of measuring home-based work and home work have become apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, as wide swathes of the working population have shifted from the office to the home to join the millions who were already working at home,” it noted. According to the ILO report, the share of home-based workers in total employment varies significantly among countries. It said that in most countries for which data are available, home-based workers made up less than 10 per cent of all employed persons; but in 13 countries, home-based workers accounted for more than 15 per cent of the workforce. Most home-based workers (more than 166 million) lived in Asia and the Pacific, which accounted for close to 65 per cent of all home-based workers in the world in 2019. Since 58 per cent of all workers live in Asia and the Pacific, home-based workers are over-represented in that region. According to the ILO, in Europe and Central Asia, the opposite is true: home-based workers were slightly under- represented (21 million or 8 per cent of home-based workers versus 11 per cent of total workers). In Africa and the Americas, with 40 million and 30 million home-based workers, respectively, the share of home-based workers and of other workers was similar. Preliminary estimates also suggest that home-based work will increase more in high-income countries than in low-income ones as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, said the ILO. The ILO found that a total of 152 million own-account home-based workers comprised 59 per cent of all home- based workers and 14.3 per cent of all own-account workers. Employees were the second largest group of home-based workers, comprising about 49 million workers, 19 per cent of all home-based workers and 2.9 per cent of all employees. Most home-based workers in low- and middle-income countries were own-account workers, but in high-income countries, employees were the largest group. Own-account workers represented 47 per cent of all home-based workers in low-income countries and 65 per cent in middle-income countries, but only 35 per cent in high-income countries. In contrast, homeworkers (home-based workers who are employees) represented 54 per cent of all home-based workers in high-income countries, compared to 12 and 13 per cent, respectively, in low- and middle-income countries. These differences are not surprising given the occupational differences across countries based on their level of economic development, said the ILO. While managerial, professional and technical occupations make up 53 per cent of total employment in high- income countries, the corresponding percentages in middle- and low-income countries are 31 and 12 per cent, respectively. Conversely, 31 per cent of workers in low-income countries are in elementary or craft occupations (whether or not conducive to home work), such as agricultural labourers, street vendors or garment workers, compared to only 13 per cent in high-income countries. According to ILO estimates based on 118 household surveys, 147 million women and 113 million men worked from home in 2019, so that women represented 56 per cent of all home-based workers. The propensity of women to work from home (11.5 per cent) is so much higher than that of men (5.6 per cent) that it more than offsets the lower labour market participation of women and the net result is that women out-number men in home-based work, it said. “The fact that women are a majority among home-based workers is strongly related to gender roles that result in women shouldering most of the burden of unpaid care work, as well as other cultural norms that make it hard for women to leave the home for work.” More than half of all home-based workers worked in services, while about one third worked in industry and the rest (16 per cent) in agriculture. In contrast, agriculture and industry engage a larger share of non-home-based workers (27 and 23 per cent respectively). The dominance of services in home-based work holds true in all regions of the world except Southern Asia, where more than one third of home-based workers are in industry, and Northern Africa, where 45 per cent of home-based workers are in agriculture. Globally, home-based workers and homeworkers had a lower level of education than other workers, but this varies according to country-income level, said the ILO. According to the report, 39 per cent of home-based workers and 26 per cent of homeworkers have either no education or only primary education. The corresponding proportions are 28 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively, for all workers and employees who work outside the home. In contrast, the proportion of workers with secondary and higher education are lower for home-based workers and homeworkers. This educational disadvantage does not hold for high-income countries, in which 40 per cent of home-based workers and homeworkers had a tertiary education, compared to 34 per cent of non-home-based workers and 35 per cent of non-home-based employees. A majority of all workers in low-income countries had low education levels: 67 per cent of home-based workers had completed only primary schooling or less, but the number for those who work outside the home was similar at 70 per cent. The ILO also found that only about one third of home-based workers worked “short hours” (less than 35 hours per week), while another third worked “normal hours” (35 to 48 hours) and the final third worked “long hours” (more than 48 hours per week). More non-home-based workers worked “normal hours” (42 versus 34 per cent for home-based workers) and about the same proportion of them worked “long hours” (39 versus 37 per cent for home-based workers). Few non-home-based workers worked “short hours”. In low-income and middle-income countries, almost all home-based workers (90 per cent), comprising both homeworkers (87 per cent) and other home-based workers (93 per cent) worked informally. Most non-home-based workers were also in informal employment, albeit to a lesser extent, especially for non- home-based employees (55 per cent). The ILO said in low- and middle-income countries, the share of home-based workers in informal employment varies significantly by region. At one extreme are the Arab States, where virtually all home-based workers were informal. Informality was the lowest in Europe and Central Asia, where “only” 63 per cent of home-based workers were not registered. When the world was brutally hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, wide swathes of the world’s workers turned almost overnight to home work as a way of protecting both their jobs and their lives, said the ILO. There is no doubt that home work is likely to take on greater importance in the years to come, it added.
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