#25 Social Insurance for Informal Workers in South Africa

02/17/22 • 33 min

Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection

The last two years have brought a huge challenge to social protection systems around the world as the pandemic hit and shed light to the need of strengthening social insurance policies to protect workers against shocks that affected their livelihoods. We look at the case of South Africa’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (or UIF) and Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (better known as TERS) to analyze how these policies were implemented to reach domestic workers, what went wrong, what went right, the challenges ahead and what learnings this might bring to help us think about new insurance schemes that can protect informal workers. To help us understand and navigate the UIF-TERS case we invited two guests. First, I talked to Amy Takié, Co-Founder at Izwi Domestic Workers Alliance, a network of domestic workers in Johannesburg, where Amy advises domestic workers on their labour rights, supports them in accessing justice and on their advocacy efforts. The second guest is Myrtle Witbooi, general secretary of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU) and president of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF). Myrtle will provide us with an account from the domestic workers’ perspective. *Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons) *** References > Joint Statement: Impact of COVID19 on millions who work informally in South Africa - https://www.wiego.org/resources/joint-statement-impact-covid19-millions-who-work-informally-south-africa > WIEGO - Informal Work in South Africa and COVID-19: Gendered Impacts and Priority Interventions - https://www.wiego.org/publications/informal-work-south-africa-and-covid-19-gendered-impacts-and-priority-interventions > Izwi - Domestic workers pay a heavy price for employers’ non-compliance with labour law - https://www.izwi.org.za/post/domestic-workers-pay-a-heavy-price-for-employers-noncompliance-with-labour-law > Op-ed - Domestic workers hung out to dry during lockdown, by Amy Tekié https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/opinion/2020-05-01-domestic-workers-hung-out-to-dry-during-lockdown/

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#24 Lessons from the Covid-19 crisis for social protection

For the past two years, the world has been facing one of the biggest challenges of our lifetime, with the Covid-19 crisis. In this last episode of the year, we invited again Laura Alfers, the Social Protection programme coordinator at WIEGO, and Rachel Moussié, deputy coordinator of the Social Protection programme and head of the Child Care initiative, also here at WIEGO, to discuss the way in which the pandemic has exposed blind spots in social protection systems and reinforced women informal workers’ exclusion. In this talk, they explained the impact of the pandemic in their work and in the field of social protection globally. They also highlighted how WIEGO and workers’ organizations in the informal economy are engaging with social protection and developing and deepening alliances with labour movements. *Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons) References: Wiego Page on COVID-19 Crisis and the Informal Economy Study: https://www.wiego.org/covid-19-crisis-and-informal-economy-study-0 Blog: Are unfounded assumptions about the informal economy undermining universal social protection?, by Florian Juergens https://www.wiego.org/blog/are-unfounded-assumptions-about-informal-economy-undermining-universal-social-protection For Informal Workers: COVID-19 Crisis Resources https://www.wiego.org/informal-workers-covid-19-crisis-resources Statement: Workers take fight for social protection to ILC, by Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, HomeNet International, IDWF, StreetNet International, WIEGO and SEWA https://www.wiego.org/publications/workers-take-fight-social-protection-ilc

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#26 Challenging Global Social Protection Orthodoxies

Over the last few years, universal social protection and the government responses to the Covid-19 crisis has generated important debates in the field of social protection. The Universal Social Protection 2030 framework, for instance, has gained support from a variety of key social protection stakeholders, including national governments, the ILO, IMF, World Bank, and other United Nations agencies, as well as global civil society organizations. However, certain key principles and actions remain contested in practice at both the level of global financial institutions and within the roll-out of schemes at national level – which highlighted the importance of the role of the ideas. Much of the contestation over the desirable nature and role of social protection has its roots in implicit assumptions underpinned by neo-classical economic theory, resulting in powerful policy ideas which counteract the key principles of Universal Social Protection 2030, and ultimately undermine the extension of fair, equitable and sustainable provision of social protection to informal workers. In order to unpack, shed light into these assumptions and help us understand these dominant ideas and the actors behind it, we invited Florian Jurgens-Grant. Florian is leads, at WIEGO, the project “Challenging the global orthodoxies which undermine Universal Social Protection”. Before joining WIEGO, he worked on social protection for the ILO and HelpAge International. *Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons) References Blog: Are Unfounded Assumptions About the Informal Economy Undermining Universal Social Protection?, by Florian Jurgens-Grant https://www.wiego.org/blog/are-unfounded-assumptions-about-informal-economy-undermining-universal-social-protection Blog: World Bank’s Push for Individual Savings Provides Little Protection for Crisis-hit Workers, by Florian Jurgens-Grant https://www.wiego.org/blog/world-banks-push-individual-savings-provides-little-protection-crisis-hit-workers Op-Ed: The World Bank and IMF are using flawed logic in their quest to do away with the informal sector, by Mike Rogan, Max Gallien and Vanessa van den Boogaard https://theconversation.com/the-world-bank-and-imf-are-using-flawed-logic-in-their-quest-to-do-away-with-the-informal-sector-170325