He UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights* asserted this Friday that in today’s world it is not enough for governments to be content with creating the right conditions to increase jobsbut that “they have to guarantee a safe and socially useful job with a living wage for anyone who requires it.”
“This is what it’s really about. right to work”, said Olivier De Schutter in the presentation of his report to the Human Rights Council.
The expert considered that with low wages and precarious employment conditions affecting most of the world’s workers, coupled with massive job losses due to artificial intelligence, it is necessary to stop and reflect.
“It is clear that the world of work urgently needs to be rethought”, he stressed.
For De Schutter, a way of protect workers One of the current challenges would be to opt for guaranteed work programs, that is, for governments to guarantee employment to anyone who is willing and able to work.
Tool to combat poverty
The rapporteur held that the guaranteed employment it is a powerful tool in the fight against poverty.
He explained that public employment programs can reincorporate people considered “inactive” into the workforce and can provide employment to those who work involuntarily part-time or depend on seasonal work.
To reinforce his statements, he recalled that employment was the factor that most contributed to the substantial reduction of poverty in a set of 16 low- and middle-income countries in the period 2000-2010: in 14 of those 16 countries, earned income generated more than 40% of the change in “poverty”, and in 10 countries, more than 50 %.
He also noted that job maintenance programs were crucial during the economic crisis stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
a paradox
In his report, De Schutter stressed the inconsistency of the fact that on the one hand there is a large employment deficit and, on the other, many social needs continue to go unmet.
All this -he argued- due to the obsession with economic growth at all costs, which has left job shortages in the care, education and health sectors despite its great social value. “No doubt because they don’t generate obscene profits,” he lamented.
“That’s the paradox: decent jobs may be in short supply, but work isn’t.”, he stated, adding that governments have very little public revenue to invest in creating the jobs that are needed to carry out the transitions that are required. “The introduction of guaranteed employment is proposed in that context,” he said.
He explained that guaranteed work programs in the past have tended to create jobs in infrastructure projects for the construction of bridges and dams, leaving alarming gaps in the care work, education and health sectors.
sense of purpose
In this line, the rapporteur stressed that access to decent work not only provides income and reduces poverty, but also enables people to gain self-confidence and gain a sense of purpose.
“The greening of the economy and the growing recognition of the importance of care economy They are opportunities in that sense”, he pointed out, alluding to the data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) that indicate that only in a group of 45 countries that bring together 60% of the world population, 117 million jobs would be needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the sections related to health, care and education .
With respect to global data, he cited the ILO numbers that estimate that in 473 million people the global employment gap: 205 million unemployed and 268 million who would like to work but cannot due to circumstances beyond their control, such as the lack of a public child care service.
In addition, he specified that some two billion people60% of the global workforce, works in the informal economyoften in insecure jobs, with precarious wages and little access to labor rights.
Change the correlation of forces
“For too long, exploitative employers have had the upper hand, knowing that workers will choose low-paying and insecure work over destitution. Guaranteed work would change the correlation of forces and workers would be able to turn to government jobs that offer decent conditions and wages,” he added.
Similarly, a guaranteed job could fill desperately needed jobs that the private sector does not provide in the absence of financial incentives.
On the other hand, he clarified that a guaranteed job must be strictly voluntary and complement, not replace, social protectionas a permanent feature of the labor market.
“If designed this way, it would play an important role in the fight against unemployment, it would provide the income security and social inclusion that millions need to lift themselves out of povertyDe Shutter concluded.
*The special rapporteurs are part of the “Special Procedures” of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN system for Human Rights, is the general name of the independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms established by the Council to deal with specific country situations or thematic issues worldwide. the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organization and act in their individual capacity.
