Employment and work conditions in home-based enterprises in four developing countries: do they constitute 'decent work'?

摘要

Access to decent work is an antidote to social exclusion right across our global economy. (ILO, 2002). There is growing interest in the informal sector and home-based enterprises (HBEs), and in the places they fill in employment and production systems. Contributors to Work, Employment and Society, for example, have recently examined the work-life balance of women in India's informal economy (Hill, 2001), and of home-workers in the UK (Heyes and Gray, 2001; Felstead et al., 2001). Home-based enterprises start out with the weight of opinion against them. Planning officials in many rapidly developing cities wax eloquent on the problems they present for land use zoning (the use of residential space for commerce and industry), the negative effects on neighbours or the city as a whole through traffic generation, overuse of services, pollution, noise and so on. Officials responsible for workers' rights and working conditions are also confronted with the problems of inspection and enforcement in a myriad of scattered and often invisible enterprises.