National campaign "You deserve decent work" in Armenia

On 12-13 September 2009 the workshop ”Informal work: information, protection and representing of workers” organised in Tsaghadzor in Armenia prepared the launch of the national campaign under the logo ”Ty dostoen dostoinogo truda” (You deserve decent work)

It is foreseen to announce the beginning of the campaign on 7 October ”WDDW” sending information via SMS what has been agreed already with the biggest national mobile communication operators.

According to the different sources data from 34% up to 69% of the working age Armenians are involved in informal labour relations. The peculiar feature of Armenia is that informal work is spread by the relatives’ ties that cover the cousins of the cousins and relatives of the relatives. The special term is used in the country to characterize such phenomena – the social net. Quite big source of informal work is originating from the refugees from the national conflicts zones. Very big challenge for the country is economic migration, just within 2002-2007 as many as 461 000 inhabitants left Armenia.

There are first results of work with the workers in informal economy, namely – one of the biggest petrol stations chain has been organized as well as the Yerevan jewelry workers, agricultural workers. The ITUC/PERC IE project is being implemented in close coordination with the ILO Migrant workers’ protection and ITUC campaign against forced labour. The migrant workers’ information centre is opened in the HAMK (Trade Union Confederation of Armenia), there is hot line for the forced labour victims.

The government of Armenia is using non-traditional methods to activate the collection of taxes and declaration of the economic activities. There is the lottery of the cash apparatus checks each of which contains the special number. The winning numbers with the serious money prizes are announced on television and internet on air live with participation of the famous people who are the members of the independent commission. Also the Tax inspectorate is paying small amount of money for collecting the cash apparatus checks for the certain sum (for example, a person can receive 10 Euros payment for the checks for the amount of 500 Euros). After many years the inhabitants of Armenia are demanding in mass the cash apparatus checks even for very small purchases. Since the beginning of the action in January 2009 the income to the budget of the country has grown by 60 million Euros.