Introduction
Although the literature acknowledges that precarious work exists across formal and informal employment (Reference VoskoVosko, 2010), concepts of precariousness and its corresponding dimensions are most commonly researched in relation to formal work and employment, and in particular, to work and employment categories in developed economies where changes involving loss of standard conditions can be observed. At the same time, homework is most usually discussed as a category of informal work, in the context of developing countries, wherein precariousness is one dimension. However, homework has not specifically been examined using any precise typology of precarious work or its dimensions.
This article explores the case of the garment industry in Argentina, by constructing the context and characteristics of gendered homeworking, through the lens of precarious work. International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 177 defines homework as work carried out by a person, to be referred to as a homeworker, in a home or other premises, for remuneration (ILO, 1996). Homework is undertaken in the home either by independent own-account workers, those that make or sell products on an order basis or directly, or by dependent workers, those that work directly for an employer or intermediary usually on a piecework basis. Homework occurs within both developing and developed economies and is a category of informal employment, which is work conducted outside formal systems of employment and social security protection, and where there is no record of where the output is going or where it originates.
Homework is a persistent characteristic of the garment industry and homeworkers can be found in most countries, embroidering, weaving or sewing fashion garments, linked to national and global brands. The decentralisation of the production process provides companies with the opportunity to reduce or eliminate production sites and, in particular, to subcontract work to small workshops, which can then outsource the work to homeworkers (Reference Burchielli, Buttigieg and DelaneyBurchielli et al., 2008). The nature of homework, being irregular, insecure and low paid, means that workers are forced to shift constantly among employers in order to secure work, and between income activities in order to survive (Reference Tate and BrillTate and Brill, 2003). The necessity to income-hop raises questions in regard to how homework is defined and recognised, and impacts on the application of regulatory standards, protection in labour laws and social protection.
Precarious work is seen to arise from macro-level forces promoting change to production and employment arrangements. Globalisation, neoliberalism, firms’ pursuit of low-road strategies and practices shifting risk away from the firm are some of the broader environmental trends shaping precarity, while common employment features and arrangements include low union representation, low worker collectivism and irregular, insecure work (Reference Kalleberg and HewisonKalleberg and Hewison, 2013). Conceptualisations of precarious work focus on how increasing insecure work has permeated all levels of employment in both formal and informal enterprises (Reference Hewison and KallebergHewison and Kalleberg, 2012). However, most empirical evidence comes from formal employment categories, such as casual and contract work in the service sectors. Precarious work often refers to a loss of a range of conditions (Reference Kalleberg and HewisonKalleberg and Hewison, 2013). In the case of informal work, however, which is seen to exist outside of the traditional employment relationship, such as homework, it is a given that there is a deficit of conditions (Reference Trebilcock, Davidov and LangilleTrebilcock, 2006).
As categories or descriptors, informality and precariousness each provide specific perspectives. Informality commonly focuses on work and employment outside formal employment arrangements, largely in the context of developing countries, while the concept of precariousness and its dimensions identifies and articulates conditions and arrangements which have been lost in developed economies. The definitional boundaries that exist around informal and precarious work may limit our understanding of specific work arrangements in a category such as homework.
In this article, concepts and dimensions of precarious work are explored in relation to garment homework. Within the informal employment category, the precariousness of homework is generally seen as one among a range of features. We wish to turn this perception on its head and apply the lens of precariousness to homework to examine whether it can shed new light on how the conditions/deficits of homework may be addressed. Drawing from specific conceptualisations of precariousness and informality, we argue that this intersection may prove instructive in relation to homeworkers’ rights and representation.
To illustrate the intersections between informal and precarious work, we draw from our data on Argentinian garment homework. Garment homework itself is an under-researched area, and the Argentinian instance, where there are two types of homeworker, is poorly documented. The major contribution of this article lies in our examination of homework through the lens of precariousness. This enables the systematic identification of specific labour standards to homework, in a way which is more powerful than referring to general labour deficits, as in the literature on homework and informal work.
The intersection of precarious and informal work
Precarious work is a term used to describe an increasing phenomenon of temporary, contingent and insecure forms of work (Reference QuinlanQuinlan, 2012). The term ‘precarious work’ has been used interchangeably with the terms ‘non standard’ or ‘atypical work’, to describe casual, temporary, irregular, short-term contract, agency, homework and day-hire workers, with particular reference to the situation in industrialised countries (Reference Carre, Ferber and GoldenCarre et al., 2000; Reference VoskoVosko, 2010). The term accurately captures the nature of ongoing work lacking minimum standards and addresses various types of employment relationships, such as those found in temporary, self-employed, subcontracted and home-based work (Reference QuinlanQuinlan, 2012). In general, precarious work may be seen as a broad category of work, sharing such characteristics as deterioration in occupational health and safety conditions, limited access to labour laws and standards, lack of recognition as a worker and absence of the qualities of decent work (Reference StandingStanding, 2011).
The rise in precarious work is commonly attributed to broader social and economic forces, such as neoliberalism and globalisation, that have given ascendancy to capitalism’s market-driven urges for increased privatisation, greater flexibility, reduced regulation and a decline in worker protection (Reference KallebergKalleberg, 2009). Flowing from this, the specific dimensions associated with precarious work include the nature of the employment relationship and workers’ access to labour and social protection; the organisational context of employment relations, such as employers’ quest for various types of flexibility; loss of worker representation, resulting from the decline of unions and of workers’ capacity to organise collectively to improve their rights; the shifting of risk from employers to workers; and the influence of government policy. Most of these dimensions refer to employment arrangements and standards that represent a ‘loss of social protections or of the so-called standard employment relations’ (Reference Kalleberg and HewisonKalleberg and Hewison, 2013: 273).
A conceptualisation of informal work developed alongside the ILO’s decent work agenda is encapsulated in the informal employment continuum (Reference Trebilcock, Davidov and LangilleTrebilcock, 2006). This locates workers across a range of work, economic and enterprise activities. At the formal end, conditions are relatively regulated, and there are worker benefits and protections. At the informal extreme, common features include low pay; unsafe, irregular and insecure work; no recognition of worker status; and little to no legal protection (Reference StandingStanding, 2011). Labour standard deficits are taken for granted as part of conditions in developing economies.
The informal employment continuum applies across a range of industries, enterprises, phases of production and in both formal and informal work arrangements (Reference Trebilcock, Davidov and LangilleTrebilcock, 2006). Homework is situated within this continuum. The fluidity of movement across categories of formal/informal enterprises and work is significant, as workers may shift between performing work for enterprises in the formal sector and informal work arrangements. According to the continuum concept, workers constantly step between categories of work and levels of formality and precariousness. These shifts and nuances may not be adequately represented in descriptions of informal or home-based work. The ILO has applied the term ‘informal employment’ to describe groups of workers in developed and developing economies, regardless of geography and economic circumstances (ILO, 2002).
While precariousness may exist in both the formal and informal sector, and within developed and developing economies, informal work is necessarily accompanied by poor working conditions and the absence of labour standards. When accounts of homework are based on general discussions of the absence of labour standards, however, it becomes difficult to discuss the shortfall from these absent standards in any detail. By contrast, descriptions of precarious work are able to catalogue ‘lost’ employment arrangements and standards, which may be described in detail since they have previously existed (Reference KallebergKalleberg, 2009). By using the continuum approach to informal work and dimensions of precariousness, it is possible to provide a highly focussed examination of the employment arrangements and conditions of homework, increasing understanding of it.
Gendering precarious work
The gendered nature of informal and precarious work has been well documented (Reference Fudge and OwensFudge and Owens, 2006; Reference VoskoVosko, 2010). Women’s participation in the labour market has increased, yet their ongoing responsibility for social reproduction has contributed to stereotypical notions of women as more compliant, nimble-fingered or less reliant on ongoing employment, resulting in their over-representation in industries with high levels of precarious and informal work such as production of garments, footwear, textiles and electronics, and the provision of care and domestic work (Reference BairBair, 2010). Importantly, blurred boundaries between paid and unpaid work, and formal and informal work are critical to understanding women’s involvement in homework: although insecure, unrecognised, low paid and usually unprotected, it provides an opportunity to combine paid and unpaid roles. Therefore, the overlaps between formal and informal work, private and public spheres, and productive and reproductive labour are factors that need to be considered in relation to homework.
A key characteristic of homework is its ‘invisibility’ (Reference Boris and DanielsBoris and Daniels, 1989). Homeworkers contribute to the global economy, but are invisible to labour market regulators, to consumers and perhaps even to themselves, in the sense that they may not identify as workers (Reference HillHill, 2005). In so far as homework is unacknowledged and unprotected by industrial laws (Reference Prugl and TinkerPrugl and Tinker, 1997), homeworkers have no voice. The invisibility of homework appears to be directly related to its location inside the home, understood as the private realm of women’s reproduction, the location of women’s unpaid caring work and a location ‘beyond regulation’ (Reference ThorntonThornton, 1991). Feminist texts understand the public/private dichotomy as legitimising inequalities, including the undervaluing of women’s work and, importantly, avoiding state intervention (Reference ThorntonThornton, 1991). The limited visibility of homework/homeworkers may be related to dimensions of precarious work, but this is not explored in the literature.
The global rise of homework
Although it is difficult to obtain accurate figures on the incidence of homework, informal employment is growing in all regions of the world (Reference Jütting and De LaiglesiaJütting and De Laiglesia, 2009). Through the use of garment homework in urban and rural locations, suppliers to national and multinational corporations reduce their overheads and economic risk by transferring the pressures of prices and tight deadlines imposed by buyer-driven chains onto the most vulnerable workers at the bottom of supply chains. Increasingly, workers are pushed into various forms of precarious employment, and growing numbers of women are incorporated into global chains of production, where protections barely exist (Reference BarrientosBarrientos, 2012). Argentina is one of the few countries that have legislation to regulate the complex subcontracting and homework arrangements in the garment industry.
Homework in the garment industry in Argentina
Informal garment production began in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, stemming from the great influx of migrants from Europe, many of whom were skilled in sewing and garment construction (Reference LieutierLieutier, 2009). Payment for this work was by the piece, and the subcontractors and workshop owners charged not only for the job lot but also a percentage on workers’ wages. The abuses that occurred under these employment relationships gave rise to the Law, no. 12.713, passed in 1941.
The intention of the legislators was to protect workers from the ‘excessive exploitation to which they were subjected in garment workshops or in their homes’ (Reference LieutierLieutier, 2009: 114). The legislation included joint liability, whereby responsibility for work conditions lay on both the intermediary and on the upstream manufacturer, and sought that homeworkers should be guaranteed equivalent conditions as those obtained by factory workers. The Law has always defined homework to include workers in small workshops and those working individually.
Within Argentinian manufacturing, the garment industry was impacted by the liberalisation policies of the dictatorship (1976–1983), which opened the economy to imports, increased debt and led to a drop in wages, ballooning inflation and the gradual disappearance of factories, thus decimating the garment industry. Subsequent neoliberal policies further exacerbated this situation, leading to hyperinflation, economic collapse and contraction of salaried work with an accompanying escalation of informal work (Reference Olmedo and MurrayOlmedo and Murray, 2002; Reference WhitsonWhitson, 2007). Employers resurrected garment production due to prohibitive costs of imports following the economic collapse in the late 1990s. Under these conditions, garment homework has continued to grow in Argentina (Reference Olmedo and MurrayOlmedo and Murray, 2002; Reference WhitsonWhitson, 2007).
Data from the Household Survey for 2012 (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares) indicate that 50% of workers in the garment sector are ‘not registered’. This term refers specifically to workers who are not registered by their employer for the purpose of social security; more generally, it makes reference to informality, unregistered workshops, work in the cash economy and conditions below minimum standards. The garment industry has one of the highest rates of informality according to the Household Survey data. However, industry representative sources (including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the garment industry chamber of commerce) place estimates in the sector higher than the household survey, at around 80%.
In 2008, the Argentinian government sought to amend the Law in three major ways as requested by employer groups. Amendments sought the elimination of the penal clauses, a modification in the type of joint liability and the elimination of the informal workshop as an intermediary defined in the Law. Manufacturers and brand owners wanted the workshop owners and employees to be considered their suppliers rather than dependent workers (Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011). This would have exonerated them from any responsibility for conditions in the workshops and deregulated the price of garment production. While the amendments did not pass, there have been very few prosecutions based on this law in recent years, and all recent prosecutions relate to Bolivian homeworkers or other immigrant sweatshops (Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011).
SOIVA (Sindicato Obrero de la Industria del Vestido y Afines) is the registered clothing workers’ union in Argentina with coverage of sewing workers, although it does not cover, represent or advocate for homeworkers; for example, Reference PascucciPascucci (2011) concludes that given the historic presence of homework in Argentina, it is clear that SOIVA is ‘not very interested’ (p. 3) in organising homeworkers. Owing to the lack of collective representation for homeworkers, other organisations have emerged to advocate for and represent garment homeworkers. Principal among these is La Alameda.
La Alameda is one of the many ‘popular assembly’ groupings that exist throughout Argentina, which arose from community concerns around the economy and politics in the early 2000s. According to its stated aims, La Alameda (2013) works to expose human rights and labour violations, such as child labour, human trafficking and informal or ‘clandestine’ garment workshops, employing homeworkers. La Alameda is an active membership organisation, engaging in various activities and campaigns, including community development and political activism. One of its key activities is to collect information about ‘clandestine’ sweatshops and conduct public exposés to initiate prosecutions of the owners. The large presence of Bolivian homeworkers living in the suburb where La Alameda is located led to an advocacy focus on Bolivian forced/slave labour and to invoking the Law to achieve prosecutions.
Linked to La Alameda is an alternative union which emerged to represent a range of garment workers including homeworkers. The Union de Trabajadores Costureros (UTC-La Alameda) has no formal status in Argentina’s labour relations system but it is attempting to put up a candidate to challenge SOIVA leadership (Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011). A third organisation linked to La Alameda is INTI-CDI, a government-sponsored model garment and textile hub, inaugurated in 2009. INTI-CDI supports a small number of fledgling cooperatives by providing factory space, training and other technical support. Cooperatives at INTI-CDI provide the minimum conditions, according to national labour laws, and the building reflects occupational health and safety standards (Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011). INTI-CDI evolved as a result of successful La Alameda prosecutions invoking the Law, which subsequently awarded workers the right to reclaim factory/workshop machinery. After workers re-grouped as cooperatives, La Alameda successfully lobbied government to provide the workspace for these cooperatives (Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011).
The Argentinian garment industry has attracted little systematic attention from researchers (Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011), and there is a lack of accurate statistics in relation to garment in Argentina (Reference Gardetti and TorresGardetti and Torres, 2012). Most current literature appears to document only what is known as the ‘clandestine’ garment workshops, or sweatshops, that employ Bolivian migrant workers (Reference BastiaBastia, 2007; Reference Gardetti and TorresGardetti and Torres, 2012), held to be homeworkers, ignoring the traditional female garment homeworkers. An exception to this is the work of Reference PascucciPascucci (2011), which refers to both the immigrant workers and the individual, predominantly female homeworker labouring from her home. In this sense, this article identifies a gap in the literature in relation to national profiles of homeworkers and makes an important contribution to our understanding of these.
Method
Data were collected in September and October, 2012, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The principal aim of data collection was to begin documenting garment in Argentina, as an under-researched area. The data consisted of 22 interviews, researcher field-notes, photographs, organisational documents and government reports and various media reports, totalling 28 distinct data sources. Initial contact was made with an academic, the Ministry of Labour, the NGO ‘La Alameda’ and the garment union SOIVA. The garment union SOIVA did not respond to our correspondence, which we speculate may be due to the fact that this union does not currently cover homeworkers in the garment industry. All the other informants provided introductions to other possible informants. For example, the initial academic contact facilitated the meeting, leading to the subsequent interview at the union peak body: Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA). Subsequently, the union peak body informant facilitated the meeting with individual women garment homeworkers.
Formal interviews were conducted with the NGO La Alameda; Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security: Ministerio de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social (Ministry of Labour, MTEySS); Argentinian academics; a union peak body: CTA; factory workers and union delegates (Commercial Workers Union and Cutters Union); a garment brand owner; a government-sponsored, model garment and textile hub (INTI-CDI) and both Bolivian and Argentinian garment homeworkers. Organisational documents, reports (including media) and photographs were obtained or accessed following interviews, and field-notes were taken over the duration of the fieldwork.
Interviews were semi-structured, based on open, general questions (Reference Miles and HubermanMiles and Huberman, 1994), such as ‘What can you tell me about the garment industry and homework in Argentina?’; ‘What can you tell me about Argentinian garment homeworkers: who is a homeworker?’; or ‘Tell me about your work’, as well as general questions relating to knowledge about existing protections for homeworkers, such as: ‘If you had a problem with your work, do you know where you could complain or get support?’. Other more specific questions followed respondents’ answers, in order to probe more deeply into an issue (Reference Miles and HubermanMiles and Huberman, 1994), such as ‘What are the conditions of the garment sweatshops?’; ‘Are there any women doing garment homework?’; and ‘What is your experience of garment homework?’.
Responses were subsequently analysed thematically and organised into broad categories (Reference RichardsRichards, 2009) responding to the aims of the research to understand garment homework in the Argentinian context. Broad coding categories included Argentinian garment industry (features); Argentinian garment and homeworkers (characteristics); and social and institutional actors, behaviours and discourses in the industry. In line with the aims of this article, we subsequently re-organised the data, making use of Reference KallebergKalleberg’s (2009) perspective of precariousness, which focuses on the employment relationship and workers’ access to legal and social protection, including the capacity for workers to collectively organise and improve rights. Accordingly, we re-cast the original categories into four new ones, as presented below. In the exposition of the data that follow, the names and identities of informants and homeworkers have been changed in accordance with ethical requirements for privacy and confidentiality.
Features of the Argentinian garment industry
The clothing industry is really complex because there are many actors, various manners of commercialisation and production … every case is a different story. (Fernando, INTI-CDI representative)
Our data suggest the industry is structured into three levels. The first level is registered or formal first-tier factories that may also have retail outlets or supply international and national brands. Formal factories employ full-time workers but may also employ others under informal arrangements. For example, some factory workers may be paid 4 hours work at the legal rate but work for another 8 hours informally, at a reduced rate, which is not recorded in factory accounting. In addition to the formal factory, there exist cooperatives, often factories ‘reclaimed’ by groups of workers. Cooperatives are self-managed and aim to pay workers according to the Law of Work Contracts (Fernando, INTI-CDI representative).
A significant proportion of factories subcontract work to small informal enterprises (workshops). Informal workshops constitute the second level of the industry. Informal workshops do not register their workers and engage homeworkers who are largely Bolivian immigrant workers for low piece-rates, at around half or less than half of the legal rate of pay. Both the formal factory and informal workshops further contract work out to individual homeworkers (the third level) who receive low piece-rates and work to tight deadlines.
Various sources, including the NGO La Alameda, INTI-CDI and the MTEySS, suggest that the Argentinian garment industry comprises both national and international garment brands. The NGO La Alameda website names over 100 national brands; however, international brands include Adidas, Le Coq Sportiff, Puma, Fila, Lacoste, Levis and Zara (La Alameda, 2013). Government statistics suggest that the garment industry is highly fragmented with many small-to-medium manufacturers (Ministry of Industry, 2013). According to NGO La Alameda, and INTI-CDI, 80% of garment production occurs through various forms of subcontracting (Fernando: INTI-CDI representative).
The use of subcontracting to smaller formal and informal workshops and to individual homeworkers appears to be commonplace, according to a union representative employed by a national garment brand:
We received the fabrics, cut the garments, and sent the pieces to the workshops, from where the clothes returned. We classified them, packed them, and sent them to the shops. (Sandro, Commercial Workers Union delegate)
These arrangements were corroborated by other garment factory workers, as well as the Ministry of Labour (MTEySS):
Here they make the designs and cut and then all is outsourced to these other informal workshops, where they sew the garments. (Alicia, garment factory worker and Cutters Union delegate)
Rather than being characterised by a commitment to investment, development and technological advances, business in this industry is committed to the opportunism of subcontracting to a workshop because it is cheaper to manufacture garments at dumping prices. (Hernan, MTEySS informant)
Alongside the variety of formal/informal arrangements, the garment industry is characterised as a low-wage industry, regardless of the employment mode. The MTEySS views the persistent incidence of informal work in the garment industry as an anomaly, ‘over which the regulatory capacity of the state … has great difficulty in making regulatory advances’ (Hernan, MTEySS informant).
Argentinian garment sweatshop ers and individual ers
In the informal sector of the garment industry, sewing is carried out by two distinct homeworker groups – Bolivian immigrants working in sweatshops or small workshops and individual homeworkers:
Sometimes [it] is understood as work done at the worker’s own home; however, it’s also the work done in workshops where the worker doesn’t live but spends long hours working. (Tania, La Alameda representative)
When asked about who were garment homeworkers, most respondents spoke about Bolivian immigrant workers. The NGO La Alameda reported that currently the garment industry was characterised by sweatshops employing Bolivian migrant workers, most of whom were male. The use of migrant labour in the garment industry was reported as a recent phenomenon from the 1990s, encouraged by regional economic conditions (Nelson, INTI-CDI representative and La Alameda member). The media supported this representation through frequent reports on the Bolivian garment worker presence in the context of numerous garment sweatshops, outsourcing and low piecework rates as characteristic features of the garment industry:
More than 5000 clandestine garment workshops in the capital and the outer metropolitan area. (Tiempo Argentino, 5 September 2010)
Piecework in the Garment Industry: 80 freed in clandestine workshop. (Pagina 12, 9 May 2012)
Slave Labour: Well-known clothing brand summoned to enquiry. (Clarin, 6 October 2011)
The NGO La Alameda, INTI-CDI and Bolivian homeworkers stated that workers for informal workshops were specifically recruited from Bolivia, at times by extended family members already living in Argentina but also by ‘scouts’ making exaggerated claims about the potential benefits of moving to Argentina. Once there, the workers were forced to work in order to pay off the costs incurred by their travel:
The family workshops were the worst: I was paid the least money there and had to work the longest hours, and the work was so exhausting that l looked for other workplaces. (David, former Bolivian homeworker)
They seek them in the provinces, where they’re more timid and aren’t used to living in the city. Nobody thinks that once you’re here you can’t fall ill; that you’ll have no clock-off time, or that you’ll become a slave and they will keep your documents. (Oriana, former Bolivian homeworker)
All sources reported that conditions in the garment sweatshops were dire, due to excessive working hours, span of working hours over the full 24-hour day, overcrowded housing in the garment workshop with poor amenities and the regular practice of ‘hot-bedding’, where one bed is used for more than one worker, so that work is continuous over the 24-hour period.
The level of awareness about the garment sweatshops was high and all the data sources concurred on the existence of this type of homework and its major contribution to production in the garment industry. Factory workers doing quality control on garments reported that their garments were produced by subcontracted work to informal workshops (Fermina, quality controller in garment factory). A garment brand owner and small manufacturer who only used ‘clean’, cooperative labour to make her garments talked about the prevalence of sweatshops and informal garment workshops in Buenos Aires:
There are suburbs with lots of workshops, many of them sweatshops; people go there and wait for prospective employers on the street. There may be some kind of tiny office looking onto the street, or a house from which they send them to different places. Most of these people are illegal migrant workers. (Elena, garment manufacturer)
La Alameda representatives stated that they only advocated on behalf of the Bolivian sweatshop workers and had no contact with local women garment homeworkers. However, they acknowledged that women homeworkers had historically existed in the national garment industry: ‘Even in its best times, the industry always depended largely on seamstresses working at home’. Moreover, La Alameda speculated that there were around 500,000 women garment homeworkers (Nelson, INTI-CDI representative and La Alameda member).
The Argentinian women homeworkers interviewed attested to the prevalence of garment homework and the arduous working conditions. Maria worked for a small local manufacturer making jackets. She spoke of working extremely long hours in order to make a living wage:
This man … pays best. In general terms, I’m happy, but to earn something significant I have to work at least twelve hours a day. (Maria, garment homeworker)
Owing to the seasonal nature of the sewing work, she also worked part-time as a domestic worker for neighbourhood clients:
I started to do domestic work because I needed to spend some time out of home. I raised seven children on my sewing. So it works for me. But I needed to get out of home. I felt I needed air after spending all day long here with the kids and no partner. (Maria, garment homeworker)
Maria stated that the sewing work paid better than the domestic work, and explained that she did the domestic work for social reasons, because of the loneliness of the sewing:
I feel lonely and isolated because I’m not connected to anyone, always sitting at the sewing machine, and my kids have grown up now. (Maria, garment homeworker)
Another garment homeworker, Tamara, who had been sewing for over 40 years, elaborated on the time/volume/quality pressure exerted over her by the contractor who supplied her work:
They brought 300 garments that had to be ready in three days … I didn’t sleep … The woman who came for the garments did a little checking. Then they checked again at the factory, and if something was wrong, they returned it and I had to undo the whole garment. Sewing is hard work. (Tamara, garment homeworker)
Tamara reported extremely low piece-rates, time and effort spent picking up work and withholding of pay:
For a shirt-cuff with double seam: three cents a piece. I could make ten in one hour; it was like begging … I delivered my work and … they didn’t pay me; sometimes they didn’t pay even after two or three months had passed … I carried the garments by bike, by bus … Sometimes I could hardly lift the bundle. (Tamara, garment homeworker)
A third homeworker, Monica, had given up on piecework. She spoke of similarly long working hours, physical pain, having to pick up the work herself and payment of 70 Argentinian pesos per 100 items, resulting in an hourly rate of 5.8 pesos per hour, or the equivalent of approximately USD1 per hour. She felt guilty about not being available to her children and the effects of her homework on them:
When I worked, I was exhausted by the evening, and I had nothing left for my five children. Even though the eldest girls helped me – if I was sewing the 11 year old would clean and the 14 year old did the cooking. (Monica, garment homeworker)
In contrast to the high level of general awareness about Bolivian migrant homeworkers, there was significantly less awareness about the ‘traditional’ homeworkers: women sewing from home. Our informant from the Argentinian Workers Central (CTA) was unsure of their existence and numbers, but quite sure that they were invisible and not represented:
There are no specific initiatives. Individual women garment homeworkers are not a recognised labour collective, protected by the state as a subject of policies. … I know of no research into the matter, and if there is some homework, it is quite invisible. (Nelida, academic and CTA representative)
Homeworker representation: Unions and the state
According to INTI-CDI and La Alameda, the official garment union SOIVA is controlled by a corrupt leadership that sides with employers against workers:
One union that has made far too many concessions over the past twenty years is the garment and textile union SOIVA, which used to be one of the strongest in the early seventies because of its many members and its power … SOIVA – the leaders – support the [factory and/or brand] owners. To make this clearer: when the union holds training courses for union representatives, they invite employers and or managers to participate. (Nelson, INTI-CDI representative and La Alameda member)
Moreover, both Bolivian and local garment homeworkers are neglected by the state, which, according to INTI-CDI and La Alameda, does not properly use its powers to inspect and prosecute labour abuses:
Workers should be protected by their Trade Unions, but the Ministry of Labour has policing powers and should inspect workshops with the necessary elements, personnel, and capacity to enforce the law. They simply don’t do that. (Fernando, INTI-CDI coordinator)
State neglect and lack of union representation for homeworkers has led to the formation of an alternative union of garment workers: UTC-La Alameda. According to our data, this union had not yet obtained any legal standing. Its aim, however, was to infiltrate the registered union SOIVA to achieve better representation for all garment workers, including homeworkers.
Discussion: Precariousness and garment homework
Our research suggests that in Argentina, the garment supply chain is basically conflated into brands, factories, sweatshops (including immigrant Bolivian ‘homeworkers’, identified as such by a variety of social actors) and individual women homeworkers at the bottom of the supply chain. Prevailing economic, political and industrial conditions, including general labour rights, gender, recognition as workers and migration, are all factors that need to be considered in analysing the garment sector in Argentina. Whereas our data suggest that the motives for Bolivian migration are economic, it does not explain why the majority of the Bolivian garment homeworkers are male, within a female-dominated industry. We can only speculate that classic gender and class factors explain both the over-representation of men among Bolivian migrant homeworkers and women among Argentinian garment homeworkers. However, further empirical studies are required to investigate this question.
Gender is a key factor in explaining the invisibility of the women who are most clearly the homeworkers, since universally, individual homeworkers are predominantly women, working from home, combining both production and social reproduction responsibilities. As women combine paid work with other unpaid work at home, all of their work is rendered invisible, and therefore, they are not considered real workers. The popular Argentinian homework discourse with its focus on migrant Bolivian sweatshop workers, articulated by NGOs and the media, appears to have reconfigured who is perceived to be a homeworker. Moreover, the blurring of boundaries seen between a range of Argentinian garment workers is consistent with the notion of the informal work continuum and an absence of labour standards, which has a direct impact on how women’s work is perceived with a corresponding lack of attention to the precarious nature of their work.
This article proposed applying Reference KallebergKalleberg’s (2009) five dimensions of precarious work to the Argentinian garment homework case to assist our understanding of this form of employment. The first dimension relates to the employment relationship and workers’ lack of access to labour and social protection. A principal issue apparent from the Argentinian garment industry data is the extensive informality characterising subcontracting in the industry, which obscures the employment relationship. Differently from most countries, homework legislative protection exists in Argentina, yet the legislation was being used for homeworkers in the sweatshops and not for the individual, national (traditionally, women) homeworkers. NGO La Alameda applied the Homework Law to challenge the conditions of migrant workers in informal workshops. The Argentinian legislation is inclusive of small workshops, where the majority of Bolivian migrants are located, and La Alameda has utilised this legislation to identify this group of workers as homeworkers. Moreover, we note that the Homework Law has been maintained due to the high profile of these La Alameda campaigns.
While it is important for migrant workers to improve their conditions, the NGO La Alameda has ignored local women homeworkers who apparently have a significant presence in the garment workforce. Despite La Alameda’s advocacy and activism in the garment industry, there is no collective organisation for Argentinian women homeworkers, who are by and large invisible. The degree of homeworker visibility has clearly affected worker access to legal protection, and as women remain ‘unregistered’ and informal, they cannot access other social protections. Based on our data, it was not clear if homeworkers identified as workers, but clearly their potential to collectivise was limited. In practical terms, our discussion of this dimension suggests that there is a need for an advocacy organisation to represent homeworkers and their issues.
Reference KallebergKalleberg’s (2009) second dimension is the organisational context of employment relations, such as employer flexibility and low-road strategies. According to our data, which supported findings in the small body of existing literature (Reference LieutierLieutier, 2009; Reference PascucciPascucci, 2011), subcontracting to informal workshops and to homeworkers is rife. The data indicate that employers profited from a re-invigorated garment industry, using the strategy of engaging homeworkers and informal workshops to reduce costs and avoid their legal responsibilities. Consequently, a significant group of workers are subject to work that is very low paid, insecure and unprotected. The nature of the work arrangements not only limits homeworkers to ongoing precarious work but also limits their access to any legal protection or means to improve their work conditions. Implications arising from discussion of this dimension suggest the need for industry-based initiatives that acknowledge the existence of homeworkers and improve their conditions.
Worker representation, the decline of unions and the capacity for workers to collectively organise, is the third dimension of precarious work. The garment union, SOIVA, is only concerned with formal workers with full recognition under the labour law, a group estimated to represent only 20% of the garment workforce. Moreover, allegations of corruption undermine their capacity to ‘properly represent’ workers. SOIVA’s discourse of a worker relegates contract workers in the factory, workshop and home to being beyond their concern. The NGO La Alameda has taken up the cause of (sweatshop) informal workers, but it continues to ignore the plight of individual homeworkers. The higher visibility of male workshop informal workers, who are not at home with childcare responsibilities, may contribute towards a perception that they are easier to organise. The invisibility of individual women homeworkers is relevant here because the invisibility and isolation of homework is known to affect women’s identities (Reference HillHill, 2005). It influences their knowledge about and (lack of) choices in terms of accessing the Homework Law provisions, social protections and social participation, and perpetuates the precarious nature of their work, diminishing their potential to collectively organise. Clearly, the issue of homeworker representation must be addressed and would ideally be provided through a collaboration including homeworkers, union and industry bodies, NGOs and the state.
The fourth dimension of precariousness relates to employers’ increasingly shifting risk onto workers. The data suggest that informal workers in both workshops and at home performed a significant proportion of garment work. The shifting of costs and risks to individual workers is evident in homeworkers’ conditions: the burden of responsibility for meeting time and quality requirements falls on them; individuals and their families bear the cost of irregular, insecure and low-paid work, even though homeworkers are legally entitled to the same rights as factory-based workers. Sweatshop workers are vulnerable due to being recruited from Bolivia to work as low-paid workers in Argentina. Individual women homeworkers are invisible in the garment supply chain, increasing their vulnerability. Although homework allows women to care for their children, employers understand that women need the work and have few choices, and that their isolation and marginalisation make it less likely that they will complain or seek assistance to gain legal protections without risking losing their work. This dimension highlights the need for authentic homeworker representation, inclusive of homeworker participation.
The final dimension in conceptualising precarious work is the influence of government policy. The data indicate that the state engaged in minimal monitoring/implementing of the Homework Law. Instead, the government joined forces with garment employers to attempt to remove key protections in the homework legislation. The official government discourse focuses on its ‘achievements’ in growing registered, salaried work. It thus belies the reality of the garment industry, characterised by a large informal sector and many regressive employers who depend on low-road strategies. Although the government reported on informal work, it in no way acknowledged the large numbers of women sewing informally from their homes: there are no projects to determine the extent or characteristics of this type of homework. The state’s disinterest in and neglect of homeworkers can only perpetuate the precarious and invisible nature of homework, ensuring that homeworkers remain unaware and unable to access any protection. Our discussion affirms the need for further research to map the extent of individual garment homework in Argentina to inform public policy and debate. Following from Reference ThorntonThornton (1991), the state may use homeworker invisibility to abrogate its responsibility to marginalised women, or it could assume leadership in developing and promoting policy and initiatives which address their needs, as suggested by current labour rights debates (Reference Delaney, Montesano and BurchielliDelaney et al., 2013).
It is reasonable to conclude that Argentinian homework satisfies all five dimensions of precarious work (Reference KallebergKalleberg, 2009). What emerges is a deeper understanding of garment homework in Argentina with clearer implications for policy and practice. We have drawn on key elements of the informal continuum to highlight the fluidity across employment categories and the deficit of work standards, together with precariousness that enables more precisely identifying and discussing those ‘absent’ standards and conditions. This is more powerful than a general discussion of deficits, as it enables pinpointing what is required for redress. What is evident is that a large number of workers in the garment industry depend on homework for their income and survival, and that the industry depends heavily on homework. Moreover, homeworkers in Argentina located in informal enterprises under informal work arrangements experience systematic denial of work rights and lack access to legal and social protections. Precarious work is evident at each level of the supply chain. The evidence in this article suggests that the further away from the first-tier factory (or the lower down the supply chain), the more precarious the work is with less likelihood of any union or collective representation. An analysis of homework in the context of the informal continuum in conjunction with precarious work is helpful to provide a more complete picture of the nuances of homework and indicates more clearly the way forward.
Conclusion
Homework in small workshops and at home is one of the most precarious forms of work, consistent with the conceptualisation of precarious work described by Reference KallebergKalleberg (2009). Our findings from Argentina indicate that the majority of homeworkers are invisible and excluded from institutional recognition despite legislative protections. Individual homeworkers describe the challenges of working from home and costs to their families and themselves. The gendered nature of working and caring from home contributes to women homeworkers’ lack of public recognition and exclusion from campaign and organising activities. Utilising the lens of precariousness to examine homework illuminates specific features and characteristics relating to the employment relationship, representation, advocacy, protection and risk factors passed down from the firm, enabling a more systematic analysis for identifying labour standards in relation to homework. There is a need for further research into the links between invisibility, precariousness and informal employment in order to extend conceptualisations of homework and inform policy.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
