Editing Informal economy (section)

===Political power of agents===
Workers in the informal economy lack a significant voice in government policy.<ref name=Gerxhani /> Not only is the political power of informal workers limited, but the existence of the informal economy creates challenges for other politically influential actors. For example, the trade unions struggle to organize the informal economy and often formal workers organized in unions have no immediate interest in improving the status of informal workers due to fears of status loss. Yet the informal economy negatively affects membership and investment in the trade unions. Laborers who might be formally employed and join a union for protection may choose to branch out on their own instead. While this hostile attitude is not always the case, the nature of informal employment - low and irregular income that is not enough to pay union dues, fast-changing decentralized work locations and a self-perception of informal workers as self-employed pose barriers to informal economy trade union organizing.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schminke |first1=Tobias Gerhard |title=Labour-centred development and decent work : a structuralist perspective on informal employment and trade union organizing in Uganda |date=2019 |publisher=Saint Mary's University |location=Halifax, Nova Scotia |url=https://library2.smu.ca/handle/01/29224 |access-date=28 August 2023}}</ref> As a result, trade unions are inclined to oppose the informal sector, highlighting the costs and disadvantages of the system. Producers in the formal sector can similarly feel threatened by the informal economy. The flexibility of production, low labor and production costs, and bureaucratic freedom of the informal economy can be seen as consequential competition for formal producers, leading them to challenge and object to that sector. Last, the nature of the informal economy is largely anti-regulation and free of standard taxes, which diminishes the material and political power of government agents.  Whatever the significance of these concerns are, the informal sector can shift political power and energies.<ref name="Gerxhani" />