By: Carlos Sanchez, COTRADO ALAC Regional Coordinator
On August 20th 2026, from Santiago, Chile, the Executive Committee of COTRADO ALAC issued a letter addressed to the leaders of regional networks of workers in the informal, popular and solidarity economy across Latin America and the Caribbean. The letter called for a virtual meeting on August 31st at 10:30 a.m. Santiago time, to evaluate holding a regional meeting of networks from the sector and some trade union confederations at the end of October or beginning of November.
The majority of organizations in the sector — home-based workers, street vendors, waste pickers, unpaid or underpaid care workers, and solidarity economy cooperatives — do not participate in national trade union confederations, while governments across the region are reluctant to address the demands of workers in the popular and solidarity economy and of the working class as a whole.
The lack of unity is neither accidental nor attributable to a lack of organizational will within the sector. It stems from the fact that the traditional trade union model was historically built around formal wage employment, the factory, an identifiable employer and an employment contract recognised by law. The sector’s workers, scattered across homes, streets, subcontracting chains and non-commercial social reproduction, were excluded from this institutional framework from the very beginning. Deindustrialisation and job insecurity over recent decades have deepened a divide that was already present in the very architecture of the Latin American trade union movement.
The call reflects a decision to link the demands of the sector with those of the working class as a whole across the region. The letter identifies three key areas for the agenda: social security, climate change, and ILO Conventions and Recommendations. For home-based work, this last area has a specific focus: Convention 177 on Home Work, Convention 190 on Violence and Harassment, and a critical review of Recommendation 204 on the transition to formality. The call urges the traditional trade union movement to open its institutional framework to forms of work that it has historically excluded.
At the meeting on August 31st, which was attended by the International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP), StreetNet, the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), WIEGO and COTRADO ALAC, it was agreed that the Regional Meeting at the end of October would be held in person in Santiago, Chile, on October 27th and 28th. For COTRADO ALAC, this meeting will be the prelude to the common position that the movement will take to the International Congress of HomeNet International, in line with the public statement issued by the organization.
The call concludes with a commitment to move towards a shared strategy that recognizes both the legitimacy of the sector’s organizational autonomy and the political need to articulate its demands to the region’s governments, rather than resigning itself to a structural marginalization that it did not choose.
