What
work?
The crippling reality of
unemployment
While the work-family discourse has made as its starting point those
already in the workplace, the significant number of those not in the
workplace and whose plight ought to inform interventions and policies
ongoing in the workplace, has become of pressing concern. Global
unemployment numbers, already at their highest in many countries, are
projected to inch up by another 3 million in 2023 to total to 208
million. Of this share, the U.S is projected to witness a 1.2% increase
in unemployment rates above the current 3.4%, with Bosnia and
Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Spain projected to struggle with 17%,
15% and 12.7% unemployment rates respectively. The situation is much
grimmer on the African continent, where South Africa leads the global
unemployment rates at 30%,1.2 million graduates in Uganda remain
unemployed and the Continent’s unemployment rate more than triples
global averages. The brunt of these statistics is disproportionately
borne by young people, whose unemployment rate is often higher than that
of adults, by up to three times. The intersectionality of race, age and
gender precipitates an especially disadvantageous employment outcome for
African young women. The advent of the pandemic worsened an already bad
situation because young people again faced higher job losses or in other
instances were altogether barred from entry into the workforce at a time
of massive business losses and closures. While studies continue to
recommend stronger academia-industry relations, entrepreneurship infused
scholarship and diversifications into green, blue and orange economies
as a panacea to unemployment, little evidence exists as to the practical
reorganizations and resources directed at realizing these outcomes. In
the absence of consistently targeted efforts at both the domestic and
international fronts in narrowing the youth unemployment gap, poverty,
inequality and unsustainability will continue to shape our world.
The contours of the new age of
work
Offices, bosses, hierarchies, work hours, and other once easily
recognizable work-place features are collectively becoming artefacts of
a passing age. The new age of work is largely influenced by the dominant
21st century themes, pluralism and preference. Thanks
to the 4th industrial revolution characterized by near
real-time cooperation and communication of production systems, work is
no longer a monolithic concept. In addition to technological
advancement, rapid globalization and changing demographics are shaping
the current understanding of work.From digital nomadic workers to
crowd-workers, the employment terrain appears lined with plentiful
opportunities upon which the employee is to exercise their preference.
In order to achieve a coherent classification of the multitudinous work
arrangements, categorizes them under three subtypes of work
flexibilities; flexibility of work scheduling; flexibility of work
location and flexibility of the employment relationship. Flexible
scheduling transfers agency to the employee to determine how long and
when to work. It encompasses concepts such as flextime, in which
employees can vary when they arrive and leave work around a core time
band when all employees are present and compressed weeks where employees
elect to work longer on some days in a week in order to get longer offs
within the week. The flexibility of work location denotes the ability to
work remotely or to telecommute, away from the organization’s premises.
It was originally thought that remote work translated directly to
working from home and thereby only offering temporal flexibility. Now,
other possibilities for greater geographic flexibility, detaching the
work place from the home are emerging in concepts such as co-shared
workplaces and work-from-anywhere arrangements. These location flexible
orderings are observed to lower, or in certain instances, eliminate, the
costs associated with purchasing, building or maintaining a physical
office while at the same time increasing productivity from employees who
cut back on commute time and are able to craft work environments that
are quieter and more comfortable. However, these arrangements have been
observed to cast a dark shadow on work-family balance by blurring the
divide, increasing work intensity and employee isolation and hiking home
office costs. For employers, managing, monitoring and providing the
necessary support for remote workers has been challenging. Hybrid work,
in which work is done remotely but with the additional requirement to go
to the physical workplace in agreed intervals, has been suggested as a
happy middle ground between traditional work arrangements and remote
work. Flexible employment arrangements cover concepts such as on-demand
platform work, crowd work and jobs haring, all reliant on digital
platforms to match workers with consumer demands, provide uniform tools
towards the provision of the work and set rules governing the work done
by rewarding good services and discouraging poor ones.
The digitalization of the labour market, whether through the
incorporation of digital software into current jobs or creation of
unique digital jobs is realizing monumental impacts. credits digital
labour platforms with the generation of at least US$52 billion in 2019,
although 70 percent of these revenues were concentrated in the United
States (49%) and China (23%) with Europe’s share coming a distant
third at 11%. The rest of the world accounted for 17% . In terms of
employment digital workers are comprising a significant category of the
labour force, with the jobs requiring digital knowledge more than
tripling in the US for the period between 2002-2016, and rapidly rising
in Europe. Of note is the fact that digital employment continues to
provide employment opportunities for workers who were marginalized
within the traditional labour systems such as persons living with
disabilities, migrant workers and refugees.
The seemingly endless flexible employment arrangements notwithstanding,
trends in the digital labour market are eliciting concern. The
unregulated development of AI, robotics and nanotechnology for example
continues to heighten the fear of increased joblessness. While this
argument has often been countered with the idea that many more forms of
digital jobs are in the offing, and that humans are being set free to
pursue more creative engagements, the already existent inequalities make
the equitable realization of the technological dividends highly
unlikely. Some of these concerns are laying the foundation for the next
industrial revolution, industry 5.0 aimed at returning the human and his
concerns at the center of the industrial revolution . Although credited
for great advancements in digitalization and the emergence of AI
technologies portending great potentials for production efficiency and
flexibility, industry 4.0 paid little focus on sustainability and the
welfare of workers. It is hoped that this reorientation will achieve
human centricity, achieve sustainability and build a more resilient
industry.
The challenges posed by the new age
of work within the African
context
Numerous studies have already documented the pitfalls associated with
the new age of work. Within the African context, participation in the
digital labour market remains disappointingly low, primarily on account
of the huge gap in digital infrastructure, insufficiency of digital
skills and the sparse ownership of personal computers. found that only
17 per cent of the African population could afford one gigabyte of data,
compared to 37% in the Latin American region and Asia’s 47%. This
reality places the vast majority of Africa’s digital labour
participation firmly in the lowest cadre jobs, such as e-hailing.
Although unemployment is of pressing concern in Africa, the quality of
employment opportunities available, especially in the digital space, is
equally unsettling. Because a significant category of people falling
within the ‘Millennial’ category, that is ages 28 to 38, usually fall
outside the definition of young persons as conceptualized by
organizations such as the UN, it is assumed that they are not plagued
with the same unemployment hardships as their 15-24 year counterparts.
However, just because they are not under the microscope as a specified
vulnerable group does not mean that they are faring better. The
extensive ILO study on Platform work found that the dominant age group
within the digital workforce falls within the 28-35 age brackets. Of
this category app-hailing drivers, the segment where most of Africa’s
platform workers fall, average 36 years. And because of poverty and
limited access to social protection, this category of Africa’s workforce
is vulnerable to exploitation. Extant literature shows how the promise
of employment has recruited candidates for human trafficking from the
continent who are then forced into the highly lucrative criminal web of
labour exploitation While app-hailing services such as Uber offer income
to a large number of ‘Millennial’ workers, these drivers struggle to
reach a minimum income.In addition, platform work is considered mostly
as a supplement to other employment engagements in developed economies
while developing countries see these opportunities as alternatives to
unemployment. In addition, the loosely defined employment relationship
means that the App owning companies have no obligation at all beyond
provision of the platform. In essence, all the gains made for the
benefit of the worker, such as work hours, provision of social
protection, provision of occupational safety and health infrastructure
are being rolled back on the platform. Often, the combination of
constantly battling traffic congestion, irregular job allocations, long
working hours, the pressure to drive quickly and constant surveillance
takes a toll. And the gender gap in terms of job opportunities and wages
has no hope of narrowing, when the women representation in app-based and
delivery sectors is less than 10%.
With all the opportunities promised by the new age of work, serious cut
backs on human rights in the workplace are taking place on Platforms
every day. Slavery and servitude, scarcity of decent work opportunities,
privacy infringements, long work hours, gender inequality, little to no
social protection and almost no collective bargaining power are the
frightening hall marks of the current digitally mediated work.. Although
humanity was once in this position, the current situation is compounded
by the fact that platforms are privately owned spaces and this shifts
the power from governments, as was the case, to absolutely powerful
private entities.. And so it is that the current workplace absolutely
demands that workers upskill, Chat GPT is a good example of this
necessity, but at the same time have to grapple with rewriting the
liberties of digital workers, a category all workers will soon belong to
in the not so distant future. Within the African context the additional
challenge of leapfrogging digital infrastructure and skill endures, as
does the struggle against systemic discrimination and inequality in
machine learning. And it is the dominant workforce, those 28-38 year-old
‘Millennials’ who are required to lead these interventions.