by Daniele Fabbri | Jul 19, 2019 | Research
Credit Picture CC(OECD/Marco Illuminati)
The OECD published “The Future of Work Employment Outlook 2019“.
Change is underway, driven by digitalisation, globalization, and demographic changes, and will impact each and every way in which our society operates. While on the one hand these mega-trends can amplify our capacity to better our lives, on the other they also pose challenges, which need to be dealt with.
With estimates suggesting that 14% of jobs are at risk of disappearing completely in the next decades and 32% changing radically, middle skilled jobs are particularly exposed to the transformation, with the risk of a hollowing out of the middle class: automation works “from the middle out”. The transition will bring to the emergence of many lower quality jobs on one side, and to other with a high degree of knowledge intensity. The risk is that earning inequalities between low and high skilled workers will increase.
“Shaping a future of work that is more inclusive and rewarding calls for a Transition Agenda for a Future that Works for All- a whole-of-government approach that targets interventions on those who needs it most”
Traditional means of income support will need to be revised, as they leave out a great number of precarious workers, which will make up for a greater share of the labour force. In the context of a flexible job market, which will see an increase in the number of entries and exits, and the need for continuous modernization of skills and work practices, the design of new systems of workers protection will become pivotal to the functioning of societies. It is important that workers know where they stand and can get the necessary protection and help in the area that they are in. So if they need something like a portsmouth workers compensation attorney or something similar that relates to legal requirements, they will be able to do so for their support.
Workers outside of the traditional form of contract are the one in the direst situation, as access to social protection is difficult for workers in non-standard employment; those who are falsely self-employed, finding themselves under the yoke of employers who don’t want to be held accountable for them. With little control over their wage and their working hours, they are the ones requiring more protection.
With non-traditional workers 50% less likely to be unionized, the emergence of monopsony in the labour market cannot be discarded, and with the instrument of collective bargaining lacking, changes to address the problem by providing the employees with more leverage are required.
Whilst the outlook discards universal basic income (UBI) as being too costly, this says nothing about its actual capacity to work as a solution. It is true that the main obstacle to the introduction of a UBI is to find its source of financing, but the measure’s design would help solving many of the problem arising in the labour market, as recent publications by the World Bank and the International Labour Organization pointed out.
Article reviewed by Dawn Howard.
More information at:
OECD, The Future of Work
by Andre Coelho | Mar 13, 2019 | News
By: Rebecca Warne
This article by Alex Gray summarizes a presentation given by historian Rutger Bregman at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, January 2019.
Bregman would like to see ‘work’ redefined as ‘activity which adds value to society.’ He sees the starting point for this as more general recognition that some jobs are socially useless (at best). Bregman quotes Jeff Hammerbacher, an early employee of Facebook who apparently said: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”
Bregman’s interest in an UBI is twofold. Firstly, it would enhance individual quality of life by removing the necessity to work for money. Secondly, workers whose jobs are poorly paid but socially useful would be freer to draw attention to this fact by withholding their labour.
He rejects the further argument that an UBI will be necessary to offset the inevitable replacement of human beings by technology: “Automation throughout history has never meant mass unemployment. We should never underestimate the power of capitalism to come up with more socially useless jobs. Theoretically, it’s possible we will all just be pretending to work.”
Bregman doesn’t engage with economic arguments around the feasibility or impracticability of an UBI, so much as the ‘hearts and minds’ aspects: “The obstacle is not about economics or technology, it’s ideology. We have to redefine so many of our basic concepts.” According to Bregman, “We’re all basically nice, meaning-seeking creatures, and if you assume the best, that’s what you get out. It’s the power of expectation…. The first time I wrote about basic income was five years ago, and back then no one was talking about it. Now the idea is everywhere and there are experiments around the globe. The first talks I gave were for small groups of anarchists and now I’ve been invited to the World Economic Forum. It just shows how ideas change the world. Life-changing ideas never start in Washington, Westminster or Davos, they start at the fringes. In a basic income society, wages would better reflect societal value, and kids would live out their dreams.”
More information at:
Alex Gray, “This is our chance to completely redefine the meaning of work”, World Economic Forum, January 9th 2019
by Genevieve Shanahan | Apr 6, 2017 | News
The MIT Tech Conference, an annual event hosted by the MIT Sloan Tech Club at the MIT Media Lab, took place on Saturday, February 18th this year. TechTarget reports an impassioned exchange regarding basic income that occurred at the conclusion of a panel on the current state of robot technologies. Universal basic income was “largely seen as the best answer to taking care of a displaced workforce,” though the challenges of such proposals were also addressed.
This discussion of basic income arose from points made regarding the rise of automation and the associated predicted loss of jobs:
“To be sure, embracing and adopting technology has always been a competitive advantage. Horses, for example, used to be a major force by which work got done; they labored alongside humans to plow fields and deliver goods, but they were sidelined by advances from the second industrial revolution.
“Liam Paull, research scientist in the distributed robotics lab at MIT’s CSAIL and the panel moderator, asked panelists if robotics will present a scenario where humans are the horses? The comparison was crude, but the point was clear: When robots perform factory jobs or drive trucks better than humans, those careers disappear forever.”
Points raised over the course of this discussion, reported by TechTarget, include the following: that new, unforeseen jobs may emerge when existing jobs become obsolete; that automation risks exacerbating inequality both within the US and around the world; and that more evidence is necessary before solid policy recommendations can be made.
Nicole Laskowski, “Roboticists: Universal basic income demands attention,” TechTarget, March 2017
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: MIT Robotics, CC BY-NC 2.0 Adrian Black
