Tag: inequality

Choosing to challenge gender inequality in the post-COVID future of work

Choosing to challenge gender inequality in the post-COVID future of work

Challenges to the future of work for women COVID-19 has touched almost every facet of life across the globe, radically affecting health, livelihoods, social interaction, and more. Beyond its more tangible impacts, COVID-19 has also upended the progress made in gender equality, with women in many countries disproportionately affected at work and home.

In Thailand, women account for a significant part of the workforce in industries that have been hard hit by the pandemic – about 65 percent in hospitality and services, and about 49 percent in manufacturing. With the pandemic-induced increase in responsibilities for care and housework, many women […]

Bitcoin highlights the opportunity for sustainable data processing

Bitcoin highlights the opportunity for sustainable data processing

Getty Images The price of Bitcoin is not the only thing that is surging. According to an analysis by Cambridge University and reported on by BBC News , the computer processing power that is now required to “mine” the cryptocurrency is 126.35 terawatt-hours each year. Or put another way: if Bitcoin was a country, it would be in the top 30 energy users worldwide, according to Michel Rauchs from The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

The emergence of cryptocurrency into the mainstream is challenging what had long been the sovereign monopoly of Governments over the right to issue currency and […]

Algorithms are increasingly treating workers like robots. Canada needs policy to protect them

Vass Bednar is the executive director of McMaster University’s new master of public policy in digital society program .

You may have heard about cameras that constantly monitor someone’s movements at work, and clocks that document the time taken to complete every task. Though this extreme surveillance may seem like something that is only happening overseas – think Foxconn factories in China , where workers produce Apple products – human beings being supervised by AI is increasingly a distressing reality for low-wage retail and service workers here in Canada.

While many professionals are working from home and casually ordering food […]

The future of work is already here, but how fair is it?

The future of work is already here, but how fair is it?

(Image credit: Image source: Shutterstock/Rawpixel.com)

In 2003, the cyber fiction writer William Gibson coined the intriguing phrase; “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”. When it comes to the workplace, this statement most certainly holds true. There is so much to be excited about as technology continues to evolve and be integrated into our workplaces: whether it be the ever-expanding capabilities of robotics, the rise of artificial intelligence, or the introduction of other intelligent technologies. But as with any great societal change, opportunity for some spells uncertainty for others. The integration of automation in organizations […]

Should We Abolish the Minimum Wage? James Vandrau

The National Minimum Wage, as of April 2020, in the UK depends on age with those in the wage band of 25 and over and those between 18-20 receiving £8.72 and £6.15, respectively. Since the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, the flagship policy of the 1997 general election, the Labour Party has been pushing for a significantly higher minimum wage in the form of an obligatory “National Living Wage” for workers 25 and over, but does the imposition of an increase in such a government policy actually have a positive impact onto households, the government and businesses or should […]

Winners and losers in the digital transformation of work

Winners and losers in the digital transformation of work

Perhaps no single aspect of the digital revolution has received more attention than the effect of automaton on jobs, work, employment, and incomes. There is at least one very good reason for that – but it is probably not the one most people would cite.
Using machines to augment productivity is nothing new. Insofar as any tool is a machine, humans have been doing it for most of our short history on this planet. But, since the first Industrial Revolution – when steam power and mechanisation produced a huge, sustained increased in productivity – this process has gone into […]

Post-Capitalist Futures? Work After Automation

Post-Capitalist Futures? Work After Automation

Widespread social concern about potentially negative consequences of technological automation for workers is nothing new. Since the era of early industrialism, commentators and economists have mused about the potentially damaging effects of technological change that augments and displaces human with machine labour. Mid-19th century theorists like Charles Babbage, John Adoplhus Etzler and, and Andrew Ure envisioned the coming of fully automated industrial factories, where human labour would be reduced to a supervisory and maintenance role. Marx believed automation had the potential to de-skill and permanently replace human labour. In one memorable passage, Marx highlights the destructive potential of the […]

The future of work is already here, but how fair is it?

In 2003, the cyber fiction writer William Gibson coined the intriguing phrase; “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”. When it comes to the workplace, this statement most certainly holds true. There is so much to be excited about as technology continues to evolve and be integrated into our workplaces: whether it be the ever-expanding capabilities of robotics, the rise of artificial intelligence, or the introduction of other intelligent technologies.

But as with any great societal change, opportunity for some spells uncertainty for others. The integration of automation in organisations will undoubtedly bring productivity benefits, but […]

ABC demands foreign slave labour for the plantation

There is no such thing as a worker shortage. There are only price movements to reflect the relative availability of labour. This is a maxim that years of trickle-down economics brainwashing has erased from the Australian press.

We would expect to see this kind of partial analysis from the AFR, which is has been governed by overly simplistic trickle-down economic thought since the appointment of Michael Stutuchbury as editor. Hence, we see a story like the following today in which an employer has a good old whinge about lazy workers: Rashid Khan, the chief executive of Khan’s Supermarkets, wants to […]

Give Workers a Fighting Chance

Give Workers a Fighting Chance

At a time when businesses are awash in technologies capable of replacing human labor, the US tax code is encouraging them to embrace excessive levels of automation – even to the point where it is no longer efficient to do so. Rarely before has the deck been stacked so fully against workers.

CAMBRIDGE – The first months of US President Joe Biden’s administration will be defined by the efforts to contain COVID-19 and deliver vaccinations on a mass scale. Over the medium term, however, the economy will determine the administration’s success. Here, Biden has indicated that tax reform will be […]