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Fostering Decent Work Through Cooperatives
By Brian Kenety
At the start of the 1990s only two out of every five workers could be considered ‘socially protected’. Today, four out of five workers in the Third World fall into that category, that is, they are covered by collective agreements with social security provisions, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO)
It was against this background and the spectre of increased external competition that has come with globalisation - that representatives of co-operative movements convened at ILO headquarters in Geneva Wednesday to trade experiences and strategies for creating, retaining and expanding job
opportunities for fostering what they call ‘decent work’ through cooperatives in industrialised and developing countries.
The United Nations estimates that in 1994 the livelihood of nearly three billion people, or half the world’s population, was made secure by co-operative enterprises.
In a number of countries in Africa, the co-operative movement has become the second-largest employer, surpassed only by the State.
In India, 93 percent of the economy is in the informal sector, with 40 percent of Indian exports coming from the informal sector in recent years.
Namrata Bali, Secretary of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) spoke of how her organisation, was established in 1973 with a contribution of 10 rupees from 6,000 women. That co-operative has now grown to include more than 150,000 depositors and developed partnership with various trade unions.
“Co-operatives and trade unions can complement each other, develop joint strategies and increase the bargaining power of the workers,” she said. “The trade union keeps it radical and the co-operative conservative,” added Bali.
According to SEWA, India has 300 million families which live below the poverty line. Of these, 60 million have some form of paid employment, but only three percent of them have access to direct finance in spite of government's initiatives toward poverty alleviation through the Integrated Rural Development Programme and 20 years of private sector lending through public sector banks.
Micro-finance which has been tried and proven in neighbouring Bangladesh, has only begun to catch on in India.
When SEWA started the SEWA Bank in 1974, it was the first micro-finance institution of its kind in the country. It has also been a pioneer of this concept worldwide and has been one of the founding members of the Women's World Banking (WWB) network which today reaches millions of women in more than 40 countries.
The success of co-operatives is also evident in the world’s most-developed economies. In Europe, 130,000 co-operatives account for 3.7 million jobs, and many have become launching pads for female entrepreneurs.
Paul Hazen, President and CEO, of the National Co-operative Business Association in the United States said the US has seen “an explosion of co-operatives,” as a tool for retaining and expanding employment opportunities.
“Our goal is to make co-operatives a strong, unified sector of the economy,” he said. “Traditionally, people think of three sectors: for-profit, government and non-profit. We see a fourth sector, serving the economic and social well-being of people.”
Hazen said in the US there are now 47,000 co-operatives with 120 million members, while over the last five years, the number of credit union membership has grown from 60 to 76 million people.
“Co-operatives believe in earning a living wage, but the gaps between cost of living and minimum wage are huge,” said Hazen. The cost of living is, in most cases, twice the official minimum wage.
Along with the economic boom in the US, many people have been cut off from welfare. “Co-operatives are creating jobs to fill the gap by providing quality home care employing semi-skilled African-American and Latino women who were previously on welfare and might not otherwise earn a living, said Hazen.
“In the new millennium, co-operatives are crucial. They have empowered millions of people over the years to take control of their lives. As the global economy grows, people all over the world are seeking greater control. Co-operatives provide a safe haven; provide solutions that the profit-sector doesn’t offer,” he added.
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