Southeast Asian economies show notable performance in the recent years. In 2013, for instance, the growth rate of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) is 4.9 per cent compared to the entire world’s GDP growth rate of 3.0 per cent. However, despite this significant GDP growth rate, employment in Southeast Asia did not rise in the same rate as the GDP has risen. It has grown only by 1.5 per cent. Moreover, poverty remains prevalent and income gaps become wider. In other words, the economic growth in numbers does not translate to the improvement of the quality of lives of the people at the grassroots level.
Recognising that economies in Asia are developing very fast, there is a considerably widening gap in terms of income as indicated by the Gini coefficients per country. For example, in most of the countries including Laos and Vietnam the income gap has been widening while the economy grows. Aside from increasing informalisation of jobs, there are also other indicators indicating that the labor situation has not improved in the last decade. It is true that poverty in Asia is decreasing but relative poverty has been increasing which means that the income gap in society has become more serious. There are more self-employed and own account workers and more women than men in these categories. The situation of women is relatively worse than men in the informal economy because they have no voice and visibility particularly in decision making processes. Aside from increasing precarious work, the marginalised informal workers also suffer from privatisation of public goods. Increasing occupational risks comprise another difficulty faced by informal workers.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is moving forward in their regional economic integration by 2015. The regional integration includes setting up regional social protection for all migrant workers and labour standards recognizing migrant workers as an integral part of labour who need social security. The migration of workers and their families, including low and unskilled workers, many of whom are undocumented, needs more serious consideration within the national and portal regional social protection schemes.
Since the 1980s the pattern in Southeast Asia, and other developing nations and regions, has been to suppress and maintain authoritarian control over labour and trade unions in order to maintain ‘investor confidence’ and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Free trade agreements (FTA) are often falsely associated with improved labour conditions, more jobs, and better pay, but the reality is often far removed from this promise.
The Declaration of Philadelphia (1944) and subsequent International Labour Organisation (ILO) declarations recognised that availability of an "adequate level of social protection" is a basic right of all people.