The changing world of work

Since its release last week, nobody here has raced to the press to declare enthusiastic interest in the ILO’s latest study on “work-life balance around the world.”

This confirms the view that our leaders in the fields of politics, labour, and business are yet to come to terms with some of the lessons learned through the ongoing pandemic.

Labour unions, whose raison d’etre is rooted in the interests of workers, are among the most negligent of the social actors. Their withdrawal from organised tripartite dialogue in T&T and tragic inability to come to terms with emerging realities sadden many of us.

The ILO report promotes the idea that some of the measures to cope with the disruptions of the pandemic - including but not limited to “telework” - have long-term positive implications for the well-being of most workers.

“Reduced working hours and more flexible working time arrangements, such as those used during the COVID-19 crisis, can benefit economies, enterprises and workers, and lay the ground for a better and more healthy work-life balance,” the ILO says.

The report also speaks to the appropriate and valuable employment of “digitally-enabled” workplaces – once properly applied to regulate time spent on the job.

Those of us who work in the virtual space can attest to the fact that online assignments are not inhibited by workplace commutes and other barriers that are inconvenient even as they help regulate actual time on the job.

The fact is work-from-home regimes can promote increased productivity while creating time for leisure, family, and other interests that lead to a better quality of life. But it can also, if improperly managed, greatly increase time spent “on the job” at the expense of the quality time needed to achieve emotional and physical balance.

Nuanced discussions on such matters ought to be led by our unions and others with an interest in the well-being of workers. But I have heard nothing to suggest any organised interest in such matters, even prior to this interesting ILO report.

This space has repeatedly been used to harp on the excellent opportunities presented by digital technologies and platforms for their deployment. The benefits extend to all stakeholders – from clients to an enabling workforce. The creation of an entire ministry to promote and to pursue the possibilities in the public sector is however yet to make an impression.

To be fair, the benefits of mechanisation have, indeed, profitably pushed industry and manufacturing in the direction of digital possibility and action. But I am yet to see its more wholesome embrace by other business, financial, and commercial sectors – some of which continue to erect digital facades to mask fully manual back-end processes. So many still want a “piece of paper” in their hands – banks, insurance companies, retailers … almost everybody.

It is even worse when it comes to government transactions. We all have our own horror stories. I refuse to hold my breath in anticipation of meaningful change. The digital embrace and its accompanying implications for the world of work in the public sector are not anywhere on the immediate horizon.

The ability to download and manually complete a form does not comprise a “transformation” of any reasonable substance. Change, you see, has the potential to undermine power structures and avenues for wrongdoing.

Where sensible adjustments have been made, they confront the countervailing passion for long lines and delays at public offices.

What, for instance, got in the heads of those who thought online appointments at the Licensing Office could have been withdrawn? The very fact that this had been contemplated tells the story. True, the decision was withdrawn, but think about the mindset that led us in that direction in the first place!

The ILO is meanwhile particularly instructive on the question of “working-time arrangements” including shift work, on-call work, compressed hours and hours-averaging schemes – much of which are anathema to bosses craving shoulders over which to peer.

The report however cautions that “the benefits of some of these flexible arrangements, such as better family life, may be accompanied by costs including greater gender imbalances and health risks.”

So, all of this requires a national conversation and negotiation involving all the social actors including, in my view, people who work but are not aligned to organised labour. It cannot be left to unthinking dismissal by politicians, solely profit-led businesspeople, or unenlightened trade unionists living in the distant past.

A new world of work is unfolding before our very eyes in many places. It’s within our reach. The pandemic, at its deadly peak, provided pathways to the possible. We haven’t embraced them.