By: Carlos Sánchez, Regional Coordinator of COTRADO ALAC

The National Network of Self-Employed Workers (RENATTA) is an organization that brings together various groups of workers in informal and unregulated employment, including home-based workers.

On October 22nd, RENATTA held a meeting for the International Home-Based Workers Day in the district of San Martin de Porres, Lima, where strategies were discussed to achieve Peru’s ratification of ILO Convention 177, the Home Work Convention, and ILO Convention 190, related to gender-based violence in the workplace.

To this end, they aimed to start a round of discussions with the Ministry of Labor and Central Única de Trabajadores (Single Workers’ Trade Union), so that these bodies would take workers’ demands.

RENATTA also held a commemorative activity on November 28 in the Carabayllo neighborhood, for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, together with local women home-based workers. This event marked the beginning of planning activities for 2025.

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The country’s current economic situation is complex, especially for the most vulnerable sectors, such as women garment workers. For example, a person who makes sheets and curtains must buy fabrics at 5 soles, but can only charge 3 soles for producing them in order to sell them for 10 soles. How do these women compete with companies that import these same products and sell them for 7.5 soles?

Then there is growing insecurity. Many of our sisters are robbed while selling or delivering their products.

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), informal employment in Peru reached 73.5% in 2023. Although this figure shows some recovery in relation to 2021 —when it reached 78%— incomes in the lowest deciles of the population have decreased. For example, in the first decile, income fell from 247 to 238 soles; in the second, from 412 to 405 soles; and in the third, from 533 to 529 soles. This means that 30% of the workforce earns less than 141 dollars per month.

The Ministry of Labor said it is developing studies and proposals to address the situation of informal workers. However, the solution offered, based on trainings in manufacturing workshops, is insufficient. What is really needed is for the Ministry to hold discussions with the municipalities to avoid persecution and repression of informal workers. In downtown Lima, for example, fences installed to prevent informal trade hinders the livelihood of many people who work at home.

Training such as that proposed by the Ministry will not solve informal employment, as this is inherent to the country’s current economic development model.

RENATTA is struggling to prevent the working class from ending up confined to their homes, doing self-employed work under precarious or non-existent social security conditions. This is the reality of home-based workers: if they used to work for companies, now they work on their own in their homes, informally, unable to compete with companies that import products and sell them at prices much lower than the production costs our sisters have.
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