Indian Journal of Industrial Relations: Economics & Social Dev.

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Organizing the Unorganized Workers: Lessons from SEWA Experiences


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1 SEWA Kerala and Secretary of SEWA Bharat, Self Employed Women Association, India
     

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This paper highlights the specificities of the unorganized sector workers in the context of ongoing modernization and development. It focuses on the varied facets that have to be grappled with in building their organizations as they struggle to survive. The paper draws on the experience of the author who has spent over three decades with workers of two particular sectors, the fish workers and self employed women, both of which developed their own national organizations. She critically examines how the wider support structures that the trade unions of these sectors related to, helped develop multi level interventions that brought the significance and issues of these sectors into the mainstream discourse and thereby challenged the conventional understanding of labor organizations and the State in relating to these sectors.
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  • Organizing the Unorganized Workers: Lessons from SEWA Experiences

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Authors

Nalini Nayak
SEWA Kerala and Secretary of SEWA Bharat, Self Employed Women Association, India

Abstract


This paper highlights the specificities of the unorganized sector workers in the context of ongoing modernization and development. It focuses on the varied facets that have to be grappled with in building their organizations as they struggle to survive. The paper draws on the experience of the author who has spent over three decades with workers of two particular sectors, the fish workers and self employed women, both of which developed their own national organizations. She critically examines how the wider support structures that the trade unions of these sectors related to, helped develop multi level interventions that brought the significance and issues of these sectors into the mainstream discourse and thereby challenged the conventional understanding of labor organizations and the State in relating to these sectors.

References