Nepal: National Capacity Building and Planning Workshop for Stakeholders of Home Based Workers and Informal Workers in Supply Chains

The two-day workshop was aimed to build capacity, create a common understanding and concertize possible actions on the issue of home workers, home-based workers, and other workers in the informal economy, who are part of global supply chains.

The ILO Country Office for Nepal is implementing a sub-regional Japan-funded project “Towards fair and sustainable global supply chains: Promoting decent work for invisible workers in South Asia” (Sustainable Global Supply Chains in South Asia). It aims to promote decent work at the lower tier of global supply chains, including workers in the informal economy, home workers and other home-based workers, and with subcontractors, and micro and small enterprises to enable decent work in global supply chains. The project contributes to Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 8, and the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda.

The workshop brought together national trade unions and membership based/community based organizations. The two-day workshop was aimed to build capacity, create a common understanding and concertize possible actions on the issue of home workers, home-based workers, and other workers in the informal economy, who are part of global supply chains.

The purpose was to build common understanding amongst the key stakeholders working with the home workers, home based workers, and other casual and contract workers in the informal economy, so that they can work in tandem, have a joint strategic plan of action and can engage in joint advocacy for promoting decent work for such workers.

The workshop design was formulated based on the need assessment done through meeting/ interactions with the key stakeholders. Such needs included, clarity on the difference between home workers, home-based workers and domestic workers. It also brought clarity on the scope of Convention 177 on home workers; understanding labour rights and key decent work deficits for workers in the lower tiers of the global supply chains; organizing and unionizing workers in lower tiers of global supply chains working in informal the economy; and need for joint platform for advocacy and with joint action plan.

Consultations with various trade unions, membership-based organizations and civil society revealed that all were working separately on the issue of home-based and informal workers.

There was a need to integrate the various work of trade unions, membership-based organizations and civil society towards a common goal in the form of a joint medium-term action plan.

A scoping study commissioned by the project also helped further identify capacity building needs among trade unions and community based organizations which are summarized as follows:
  • Need for conceptual clarity on ILO Convention 177 and its key concepts
  • Understanding on labour rights and key decent work deficits for workers in the lower tier of global supply chain
  • Organizing and unionizing workers
  • Need for a joint platform for advocacy and action
The workshop was designed with these needs in mind and included technical presentations by ILO experts and Project Manager. Participants were then engaged in a series of group work that included problem tree analysis and a world café discussion to help identify root problems and solutions to home-based worker issues. At the end of the meeting, participants had gained:
  • A common understanding of problems faced by home-based workers and possible joint strategies that can be formulated in response.
  • Conceptual clarity and coherence in advocacy initiatives among stakeholders with regard to home-based workers.
  • Improved capacity on home-based worker issues including ILO Convention 177, labour rights and entitlements, wages, social protection, and occupational safety and health.
  • Detailed joint medium term action plan that was created with the inputs of all participants present.
  • An agreement that a Joint Platform for advocacy and action and develop a medium-term action plan.
For further details, please see the workshop report.