Gantry 5

National Alliance for Social Security (NAAS) is an alliance of membership-based seven informal workers organizations across India. It was founded in 2010 to generate collective interventions to assert the social security rights of informal workers. NASS partners in India, who have a history of working with informal workers’ rights have come together to campaign for the social security rights of informal workers.

The program fights for the realization of unorganized workers’ right to social protection and security as enshrined in International Labour Standards & United Nations. The primary strategy of the program is to engage the government at the national and state level to improve the implementation status of the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act Code to ensure access to unorganized workers.

The program is covering 13 states in the country, as the first step of NASS work, cross-learning workshops were carried out in the selected states to understand the realities in the field and establish a system for program coordination.

Presently the organization is working on the implementation of social security rights by conducting National-level Research, Position papers, and conducting awareness of social security codes among informal labours all around the nation with the support of alliance organizations.

The primary focus of NASS is demanding Govt. of India; enactment of the Social Security Code which is partially approved, as following now the NASS is focusing on conveying the requirement of 4 demands of social security rights by raising position papers on the demanding rights.

MORE ABOUT NASS AND ITS PREVIOUS WORK

  • National Conference and mass rally held in 2012 in Delhi. It has a participation of more than 1200 informal workers leaders highlighting the social security rights of the unorganized workers and a memorandum of demands from the unorganized workers were submitted to the labour minister as a follow-up to the rally.
  •  Organization of the 2-day National Conference on the 3rd and 4th of December 2014 in New Delhi attended by more than 200 informal sector leaders, politicians, academics, young professionals, entrepreneurs, and others. It brought out a future roadmap for the process of securing effective implementation of the social security act and achieved adequate attention of the labour minister, with a political commitment to deal with the issue.
  • Through NASS’s efforts, the High court gave favorable judgment for representation of informal workers in the Andhra Pradesh Welfare Board.
  • In April 2012 Bihar Government has launched a new social security scheme called “Bihar Shatabdi Asangathit Karyashetra Kaamgaar Evam Shilpkaar Suraksha Yojana 2011” as a result of regular advocacy by NASS to implement the UWSSA-2008.
  • After much advocacy in Gujarat the government formed the unorganized workers social security board & recently rules were framed.
  • NASS collected 10 lakh signatures in 7 States through a campaign on demand for social security. These signatures and demands were brought to the notice of respective MPs and MLAs.
  • COVID-19 relief by the member organizations and also mobilized/ linked from the states.
  • State wise study for each state documenting the plight and coping mechanism among the informal workers was carried out with the help of the State researchers on the issues of: relief in cash, relief in other forms, unions’ demands and continuing challenges. 80 case stories were submitted by all the NASS members.
  • A charter of demands was prepared for workers right during the COVID-19 pandemic. A note on asserting rights of the informal workers to ensure, safety, health and food was prepared.
  • A webinar was organized on the Implications of the Social Security Code. The speaker for this webinar was Professor Babu Mathew who has been a faculty member of NLSIU right from its founding days and was moderated by Janhavi Dave, International Coordinator, Homenet South Asia.
  • A Webinar was conducted with Prof Sharath Babu, professor in law, Karnataka University as the speaker on the Social Security Code. As a follow up to the discussions on the Social Security Code draft, position paper was prepared.