Organizing homeworkers: the use of mapping as an organizing tool

Abstract

where she teaches Strategic Management and Organization Change and Development.With a background in trade unions and education, her academic interests include qualitative research methods, trade unions, union strategy and behaviour, union values, organizing approaches and mobilization, union renewal, changes to work and work intensification. She is currently involved in collaborative research which examines the organizing methods of home-based workers in the informal sector.

The FairWear Campaign: An Ethical Network in the Australian Garment Industry

“…Amongst these is the behaviour of firms (Baylina and Schier, 2002;Burchielli et al, 2008). There is evidence of many firms originating in advanced economies which are linked to homeworkers via their chains of production (Balakrishnan, 2002;Beneria, 2001;Delaney, 2010).…”

“…A key characteristic of homework is its 'invisibility' (Boris, 1994;Boris and Daniels, 1989;Burchielli et al 2008), as homeworkers work from their own or neighbours' homes. 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 (Hill, 2005).…”

“…We use these data to describe a specific instance of homework and its conditions and to examine a recent initiative to unpack the complexities of supply chains, the role of firms in these and subsequently the potential for ethical networks and corporations to make a positive contribution to homeworkers. These data address a significant gap in academic literatures, where qualitative descriptions of homework are largely absent (Burchielli et al, 2008). Second, we define and apply a concept of an ethical network to informal homework.…”

New Actors in Employment Relations in the Periphery: Closing the Representation Gap amongst Micro and Small Enterprises

“…For Burchielli, Buttigieg and Delaney (2008) mapping had proved useful in overcoming the isolation and the lack of worker identity experienced by home-workers in their study. In 2000, Home Workers Worldwide (HWW) secured funding to coordinate a home-workers' mapping programme over a three year period in fourteen developing and transitional countries.…”

“…HM focuses on gathering data on demographic characteristics of workers, their home situation, their work processes, their employment relationships, payment amounts, processes and the problems and issues that they face. In contrast, vertical mapping (VM) refers to a process that identifies the chain of production, linking home-workers, subcontractors, intermediaries, buyers and brand owners (Burchielli et al, 2008). The successful mapping programme run by HWW persuaded us to adopt a similar method in attempting to identify strategies for closing the representation gap amongst MSEs in the nine countries under study detailed in Table 1 below.…”