Recent decades have witnessed a major shift in power from labour to capital. This is reflected above all in the growing concentration of incomes and wealth in most countries in the world. The number of billionaires and millionaires in the world has shot up in both the rich and emergent economies. There are many and complex reasons behind this massive shift in income and wealth distribution such as globalization, new technologies and new working and production systems, but everywhere a decline in the strength of trade unions and organized labour has been a contributory factor. This is especially the case in the advanced economies where the share of workers enrolled in the trade unions has been declining since the 1980s.

In most developing, especially African countries, trade union members have constituted a small proportion of the working population. Trade unions are an appropriate means of organizing workers in large enterprises. In developing countries, most workers are self-employed as peasants and in non-farming activities, typically in the informal sector. Even when they work as employees, they are usually hired in small enterprises, in the informal sector or as domestic workers where it is not feasible to form trade unions.  Nevertheless, trade unions have played a historic role in advancing the interests of workers world-wide and have developed over time some fundamental principles such as democratic representation, participation, self-reliance and accountability that should characterize all forms of organizations for workers.

There already exist in African countries a variety of organizations for the working people such as cooperatives, peasant associations, women’s groups, savings and credit societies, crafts guilds, associations of informal sector workers and so on. But there continue to be vast numbers of the working poor who eke out a living on their own without help or protection from any kind of organization. It is imperative that they form their own self-reliant organizations to fight against exploitation and oppression and to improve their earnings and living and working conditions, and to work for their fair share of public social and economic services. Furthermore, the full potential of the existing network of organizations for the working people is seldom realized.

What benefits can organizations of the working poor confer on their members? And how best can such organizations be promoted to serve their interests? These questions are addressed in the following paragraphs. Democratic and participatory organizations can replace individual weakness with collective strength. They can be a source of pride and dignity for its members. They can enhance the bargaining power of its members in their various working relationships and thus ensure better returns for their labour. For instance, small traders and hawkers can negotiate for more favourable laws and better premises, informal sector enterprises can obtain better credit terms from banks and micro-credit institutions, small growers can seek better prices for their products, women’s groups can negotiate for better credit terms and improved prices for their products, and even sex workers can negotiate better returns for their services from the clients and pimps.

Better economic returns are not the only benefit members can draw from their organizations. Such organizations can also serve as a vehicle for training to enhance the skills of their members and for improved techniques of production, thus providing them with valuable long-term benefits. More generally organizations of the working poor can be a mechanism for collective learning and organizing activities of interest for their members. They can also be an instrument for strengthening grass-roots democracy and participation, thus laying solid foundations for durable democracy at the national level. Their influence and power in all these domains can be further enhanced through federations of local associations at area, regional, national and indeed international levels.

How can such self-reliant organizations of the working poor be best promoted? Researchers and activists have by now developed a rich and realistic methodology for promoting such organizations. The ideal starting point is for the workers with common interests to get together and discuss their major vulnerabilities, weaknesses and strengths. The initial point of intervention can be any area identified by them as a priority concern such as child care and nursery schools, lack of credit facilities, low prices for their products, corruption of and harassment by public officials, inadequate incomes to meet their essential needs etc. The mere process of identifying their major problems through discussion and analysis of solutions serves to strengthen their confidence, develop a sense of solidarity and promote learning and knowledge. Once the organization is established and achieves some successes in its initial activities, it can expand its activities to other areas of concern to its members. Gradually over time, its members begin to value the organization for the benefits it brings to them and to learn to work together to solve their problems in a self-reliant manner.

In the initial stages, activists committed to promoting participatory organizations of the working poor can play a critical role in encouraging the members to come together to discuss their problems and to develop ways of overcoming them. The role of the outside catalytic agents is also to sensitize the members regarding the importance of developing democratic, participatory, accountable and self-reliant organizations. In the early stages, outsiders can help with advice on the methodology of creating participatory organizations, with cash to meet their expenses and with imparting technical and administrative skills and assistance in launching their priority activities. But the success of such catalytic agents is measured by the speed at which they can make themselves superfluous and hand over the responsibility for the management of the organization and its activities to its members, while being available for help on special projects.

While the above description of participatory organizations of the working poor may appear abstract and academic, in fact it is based upon the experience of hundreds of such organizations, most of whom received assistance in their initial stages from committed activists and researchers. Some elements of the approach to forming self-reliant organizations outlined above have been incorporated in such world famous institutions as BRAC and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India. Each of these has millions of women members. And two of them-Grameen Bank and SEWA-have spawned similar initiatives in several countries around the world. Nearer home, we have the example of the Green Belt Movement, a highly successful organization to plant and save trees and protect and preserve our heritage of natural resources. This innovative and creative initiative won its creator, Wangari Mathai, the Nobel Prize for Peace. Each of these four initiatives in turn has influenced thousands of similar grass-roots organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and indeed in the USA and Europe.

I have had some personal experience in promoting such organizations in the Third World. In the late 1970s when I was head of the ILO’s  programme on rural employment, I initiated a project entitled Participatory Organizations of the Rural Poor (PORP) and recruited a well-known specialist in this area, Anisur Rehman from Bangladesh, to provide leadership to the project. With extremely modest resources, the project achieved considerable success in initiating grass-roots participatory organizations in several countries including Tanzania, Zimbabwe, several French-speaking countries in West Africa, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Philippines. Some of the leading specialists in this area including Mohammed Yunus from Bangladesh, Fals Borda from Colombia and Srinasan Tilakaratna from Sri Lanka, were associated with the project and provided guidance and inspiration.

I was privileged to personally visit some of these projects and interact with sharecroppers, wage earners and informal sector and self-employed-workers in Nepal, Maharashtra in India, Philippines and Bangladesh. The majority of the members of these organizations were working women. In addition, we also started a special programme for promoting women’s organizations dedicated to improving the incomes and working conditions of vulnerable and exploited women in several countries .I also had an opportunity to evaluate the Grameen Bank for the International Fund for Agricultural Development at a time when the Bank was relatively unknown, as was its founder Muhammad Yunus.

My experience with such initiatives made a deep impression on me and convinced me of their enormous potential in transforming the economic situation and lives of the working poor and filling them with pride and dignity. I continue to believe that participatory, democratic and self-reliant organizations of the working poor are a powerful mechanism for improving their incomes and working conditions. And they are the best instruments for creating democratic institutions from the bottom-up.

By Dharam Ghai

Dharam Ghai is the Former Director, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, ILO World Employment Programme Research and of Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi.