Trade Unions and Labour Issues

Domestic workers are in many ways oil for the wheels
of the economy (Smith 2012: 158). In 2018 the number
of domestic workers has decreased to approx. 395,200,
or 2.4% of Peru’s labour force (INEI 2018). These
women have in many ways enabled upward social
mobility for others but not for domestic workers themselves (Perez & Llanos 2017). Despite the importance
of domestic work in terms of presenting an answer to
the “care crisis”, domestic work remains highly undervalued both in economic and social terms.  Since 2011 domestic workers' unions,
in cooperation with a group of other civil society organisations, have lobbied, campaigned and eventually dialogued for the ratification of C189 in Peru. In July 2018
their goal was finally reached.

Colombia’s palm oil industry is embedded in numerous
contested issues: unlawful land-acquisitions, the
oppression of indigenous populations, environmental
degradation, labour rights abuses, the undermining
of small scale farmers, etc. The history of the sector
is inseparable from that of the violent conflict that
raged through the country for decades and the
systematic stigmatisation of trade unionists as
well as other social and political activists. Genuine social dialogue and collective bargaining in the
industry is still incipient. Despite the long history of
labour organisations sector-wide social dialogue has as
of yet never occurred and collective bargaining at firm
level has from the start been rife with conflict, at times
violent in nature. With shifting intensity, the issue of
indirect workers or tercerizados has been part of many
of the trade unions’ campaigns (in the 1970s and since
2011s more overtly) but only in two companies have
there been genuine advances with regards to formalisation: Palmera y Extractora Monterrey S.A. and Palmas
de Cesar.

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to social
dialogue practices of informal workers. Primarily
because of the sheer diversity among informal workers
in terms of working, living, economic and socio-political
conditions worldwide. But also due to the different
socio-political contexts in which social dialogue takes
place as well as the distinct history of organising and
industrial relations. Based on the case study findings – and borrowing from
the multiple streams theory on policy change – sustainable social dialogue requires the symbiosis of: a jointly
recognised problem, a clear problem-solving agenda
about which social partners are able to debate and the
existence of genuine political will to collectively find a
solution to tackle the problem. When all three elements
are present a window of opportunity opens itself through
which the foundations of social dialogue can be laid.

This article presents the principles and findings of developing a new participatory assessment of development (PADev) evaluation approach that was codesigned with Dutch nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and northern and southern research institutes over a period of 4 years in the context of rural development in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Although participatory approaches in development evaluations have become widely accepted since the 1990s, the PADev approach is different by taking the principles of holism and local knowledge as starting points for its methodological elaboration. The PADev approach is found to have an added value for assessing the differentiated effects of development interventions across different subgroups in a community through intersubjectivity. Moreover, if PADev is taken up by a multitude of stakeholders, including the intended beneficiaries of development interventions and development stakeholders, it can contribute to a process of local history writing, kno...

Introduction Impact evaluations have gained renewed attention in the wake of development effectiveness debates and discussions surrounding the post-2015 development framework that will replace the Millennium Development Goals. Such assessments illustrate what works, what does not and more importantly why certain interventions have positive, negative or no developmental outcomes. These evaluations are useful tools when it comes to deciding how donor funds should best be spent, which is a key issue on the agenda of governments, multilateral organizations and civil-society groups and actors. The approaches used for measuring impact range from random control trials, which adopt quasi-experimental techniques, to more participatory approaches that focus on stakeholder involvement. The importance of incorporating the opinions of beneficiaries of development interventions has been recognized since the 1990s and is being acknowledged as vital for understanding how development cooperation can...