UN Special Rapporteur releases new report calling for job guarantee programs

UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, has called for “a rethink of the world of work” against the backdrop of low pay, “miserable working conditions” and a post pandemic employment crisis in many sectors, including early childhood education and care (ECEC). 

In response to the challenges identified in his new report, Mr De Schutter recommends job guarantee programs – whereby the government guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work – something he said “can protect workers from the biggest global employment challenges of our time”.

Certain sectors, such as ECEC, would also benefit from such an arrangement, he continued. 

“The global employment paradox is that while there are too few decent jobs, there is certainly no shortage of work to be done,” Mr De Schutter said. “Spurred largely by our obsession with economic growth at all costs, jobs in the care, education and health sectors are woefully undersupplied by the market despite being of immense value to society – no doubt because they don’t churn out obscene profits.”

“A job guarantee scheme should be strictly voluntary and sit alongside, not replace, social protection, as a permanent feature of the labour market,” he added.

“With miserable working conditions and low pay affecting the majority of the world’s workers, and disruptions and job losses in labour markets we can expect to see from the rise of AI, it is clear that the world of work needs an urgent rethink,” he said ahead of his presentation of his report to the 53rdSession of the UN Human Rights Council.

“It is no longer enough for governments to merely try to create the right conditions for job growth,” he said. “Instead, they should guarantee a secure and socially useful job at a living wage for anyone who wants one. Properly understood, this is what the right to work is truly about.”

A number of people, Mr De Schutter said, would like to work, but are not actively seeking employment given challenges outside their control, such as a lack of ECEC availability. 

Around two billion people globally, 60 per cent of the world’s workforce, work in the informal economy, often in extremely low-paid, insecure jobs with little access to employment rights.

“For too long exploitative employers have had the upper hand, knowing workers will choose poorly-paid and insecure work over destitution,” the Special Rapporteur said. “A job guarantee would turn the tables, with workers being able to fall back on government jobs that offer decent conditions and wages.”

While job guarantee programs in the past have tended to create jobs in infrastructure projects such as building roads or dams, Mr De Schutter’s report highlights the “alarming” workforce gaps in the care, education and health sectors – including ECEC – which they could fill.

“A job guarantee could fill the roles we so desperately need, but that the private sector has no financial incentive to provide,” the expert said.

“If designed in this way, it would play a hugely important role in wiping out unemployment, ending the race to the bottom on working conditions, and providing the income security and social inclusion millions urgently need to break free from poverty,” he said.

Read the report here.