the world works, it's a 19 in changing the world work. the arrangements and broad dishes that seem possible only a few years ago, now commonplace. while some of the things we used to take for granted or how can meet call with the labor pains. with to discuss that i'm now joined by. d a writer, director general of the international labor organization is a writer, is free to see. thank you very much for finding the time. thank you for your invitation. that the organization has just published every for the on the impact of the damage on people's working life. and from reading it, i had the sense that you faced a real linguistic challenge in finding a stronger force to express how damaging it has been on a scale of one to 10. how bad is it? well, it's been very bad. this is the 8th report that we've issued tracking the way the

pandemic has hit the world before we started last march. if you'd ask me that question when we published the 1st and 2nd of our report about the middle of last year, i said 10 on a scale of one to 10 of badness. this was 10, but we're trying to see how 2021 looks now. and many of us had hoped the 2021 would be the year of recovery, both of the global economy and of labor market. so we see a global economy growing at some 5 percent plus at the moment. and that looks pretty good, doesn't it? but our record looks not just took the economic growth rate, it talks about what's happening in labor markets in people's working lives. and the other news is it's less good because what we see and we measure the impact in terms of the hours that actually worked in the well, this is the best way of measuring the of labor markets in current circumstances.

and what we find, you find that after some strong recovery in ours worked in the latter part of 2020, in 2021. this recovery stalled. we're working at the same level. and that level is 4.3 percent below pre pandemic level. so with the stabilizing significantly below where we were pre pandemic, i think the most frightening part is that we still don't fully understand. where are we in the storm? i heard you say that the price is 4 times ask the beer as the one triggered by the financial crisis of 2008. g. think we have seen the peak of severity when it comes to the call that 90 damage or it gets even worse if you're right. we have said that this crisis has been 4 times more painful than the financial crisis in terms of its labor market impact. you know, at the worst of the crisis last year,

we destroyed all the fires, destroyed the equivalent of 255000000 full time jobs. today. that figure stands at 125000000. so you can see that there has been some moderation of the impact of the crisis, but you've said something, which is crucially important. you know, we don't know what's coming next. the 1st point to be made is that we still living with the health emergency. and secondly, we're seeing high levels of uncertainty creeping in economic life. and i think we're all aware of the disruption of global supply chains. we're seeing a spike in the cost of energy. we're seeing a reappearance of inflation. i think all of these constitute the economists cool down sign risks, which could mean the turbulent weather is still a head of us despite the moderation of the severity of the,

of the pandemic induced crisis. well, i guess we may want to come up with a new scale instead of one to 11 to 100. now you mentioned that you measure the impact in terms of a full time job equivalent. and i think you said that back in 2020 the equivalent of 255000000 full time jobs are lost, which is roughly the entire population of indonesia, the world's 4th most populous country, losing employment. but the question i have at this point is whether you're more at the loss of a full time job would be weighted to the loss of employment, or is it simply a racket and a very dramatic transmutation in nature and conditions? or, you know, it's a mixture of things is a great question and i think we have to see 3 things. some people are just working

less hours. they're continuing in the company in the enterprise. but they might be working few hours, sometimes called partial unemployment schemes. the 2nd thing that is happening is people are simply becoming unemployed. they are losing their jobs and they're signing up as unemployed. but as many people, again becoming inactive, they are simply discouraged and they're withdrawing from the labor market. they don't figure in the unemployment figures, but they mean that the level of participation and labor markets is going down. and that's a particular concern for 2 groups of working people. one is women. a lot of women left the labor market in the course of the non demik, and many of them haven't come back, many of them a, perhaps a rethinking that balance between working life and private life. and the other

group, of course, is young people, young people who were not well placed, even before the pandemic. it who lost jobs in very large numbers. if they had jobs during the pandemic, and whose education and training has also been interrupted on a big scale. so there is a variety of human narratives behind these big numbers. and mr. writing to be fair, not only sad story, i know a number of people are actually quite grateful for losing their jobs. actually quite grateful to depend on it for allowing them to find their calling, which brings more than just an income. and they did it when they have all online forms or digital market places. i know that you call them governments to come together support those say, you know, there is a digital platform. why do they need any support and what kind of support do they need the most. ok, that's also break that down

a little bit. how many people have been asked to go away and continue their work from their homes, but with the same employer doing ok using technology, but doing pretty much the same job. they just sitting in their living room and not in the office. that's one thing. but as you've indicated, i think this is where your question goes. we're also seeing the growth of the so called gig economy, whereby people use internet technologies, digital technologies to work on the platform economy in a totally different way. this is not about working for your employer from home. this is about being an independent case worker. and these people very often full beyond the protections of existing labor legislation, which never thought about that way of working. they don't have social protection. and many such workers suffered very badly during the pandemic because they didn't

have the protections at employees have. so we do believe that it is proper to look at this new form of work and there are many positive things about it. i, i want to agree with what you said many positive ways about it, but to extract all of the positives and make sure that there aren't the negatives. we do need to look at how to regulate and how to organize this growing phenomenon of digital platform work. i heard you say before that the key question here is whether people find employment through those platforms are, should be considered as formal employees or independent contractures with all the questions about social welfare and support then you know, benefits standing from that. but we also know that these platforms charge very handsome commission. it's a very profitable business. so rather than trying to figure out the legal relationship, it's been a just tact tasks them appropriate to make sure that the state which

ultimately will have to provide some sort of the safety and it has the resources to do that. and i think we have to do both of those things. if i'm honest, i do think that establishing the legal status, a contractual status of people who work on platforms matters a lot. and we keep coming back to this question, don't we? i, i think of the case of over drivers, people i've had many court cases about whether they are independent contractors with everything that implies or employees of an employer who therefore has to take responsibility for them. we have to do that job, but at the same time, and it is a, i think, a connected debate. there's a big discussion about taxation of digital companies, not just platform workers, but the big. we know who they are, the big giants of the digital world. but there's another element to this. i can just add it. many of these platforms are almost by definition international in that

operation. so let me pose a puzzle to you. if a platform, let's say, based in my country, the united kingdom asks a worker in india sitting in india to do a job for them. now, what legislation applies what minimum wage implies what type of social protection applies? is it british protections? is it indian protections, or is it no protection whatsoever? we don't have answers to those questions right now, but given that these platforms are a global phenomenon, i think we have to start developing those, those answers. well, i don't know if you would agree with that, but i think this whole pandemic raise a very interesting, almost existential question of how humans and human society handle uncertainty, trauma, secure, etc, or guarantees we owe or can demand from one another and back

in russia for example, if you take the issue of vaccination i batson hesitancy, is a big deal. many people don't want to, don't trust the hastily produced vaccines. but for the employers, formal employers, that's the best way against impose low downs. and frankly, all the losses associated with those down the businesses are bearing the brunt of it. so one inevitably ronson check question of whether people's how should it be a personal issue and explicitly personal issue, or whether an employer should have some sort of a possible to discriminate against those to make that decision simply because he yeah, there's the brand of the costs and responsibilities, and he needs that business to be operational in order to secure those the same labor rights. all of us in our own work places struggling with the respective

responsibilities of the individual vaccination of the employer who has not only an interest in the financial viability of the enterprise, but also a responsibility to provide a safe working place for the people who, who do work there and then of the state. so we've got very complex debates going on about monday to re vaccinations. can governments make vaccination, land data re khatri? is it possible for an employer to do that? and what about the individual's responsibility? and i'm seeing playing out in many of the member states of the io and we have 187 member states. very different ideas about this. and for example, in france, all health care work is a required now to be vaccinated. and to have proof of vaccination, it is a requirement for continued employment, and there are some 3000 french health workers who today are suspended from their

jobs for refusing vaccination. i suspect that's going to go through the french legal in italy. you have to have a vaccination certificate in order to enter a workplace. i have work as in italy, we're having to do that. so in some cases, either the state or the employer, i can mention a number of well known companies, requiring explanations, either to continue employment or to physically come to the workplace. now, that is one view that there is a collective responsibility as fate an employer to impose a position on the on workers. the other position is this is a matter of individual responsibility and individual freedoms. and at some point, these 2 ideas come into into conflict. the one with the other friends at the world health organization right next door to where i'm sitting. i've taken

a position against monday to re vaccinations to date. and yet more and more impractical terms. people are requiring proof of vaccination. tried to get on an airplane. i'm sure if i wanted to come to moscow, i wouldn't get there if i couldn't prove my mind, my vaccination status. so anybody who's work involves international travel is basically de facto in a position where they need to get back, i guess, because they're there. here's different asterix ideas or after conversations about freedoms and the practical reality. when you have to deal with those cases, there's very practical cases of people dying on a daily basis. anyway, it's a rather we have to take a very short break right now. we will be back in just a moment station. the me

i oh, driven by dreamer shapes bankers and those with sinks. we dare to ask oh, i saw a message from an online account because it had to sell through with my passport as its profile. i saw pictures of my documents, it will say i also sent a credit contract if i had just 3 days in

a comply with their demands. if i didn't send money, i sent up an online hate campaign that i was supposed to be a very dangerous man. to a welcome back to well support that gaiters director general of the national labor organization. right before the break we started talking about how come at 19 and it's huge and urgent demands. and society have already left to some rethinking not only in the role of the state, but also in the whole lot of social relations once we, or expect from one another as fellow citizens, as employers and employees, as taxpayers and providers. just come and do you think those shifts will last

beyond the emergency response or will some of those emergency response as become permanent? yeah, i think it's a great question. i think we, we have to make a distinction when i'm talking about the world of work, work issues. i think we have to make a distinction between the things that we are obliged to, we have to do in the course of the pandemic. we have little choice about it and of course that's why people are working from home. that's why we're adopting all sorts of different ways of working that we've never done before. that's one saying the other thing is what we choose to do in the future. that's a match in a moment when i can't say that the virus has disappeared. but when the pandemic has receded and is become something we live with, then we can learn from the experience of the last 18 months. choose what we want to take from it. and what we want to keep now the great example here, of course,

is exactly the use of digital technologies. we've all come to realize that to a greater or lesser extent, and there are limitations on limitations. we can all work differently. we can all work maybe a couple of days a week from home. some people might want to work 100 percent of the time from home, but others don't want to do that. so i think the question is going to be, can we empower people to make their choices in the future to improve their work life balance to live and to work as they would choose drawing on the lessons of the pandemic experience? well, i think it's all just about the work schedule and it work saturday, but also at about the makeup of a can on the system. i want to ask you specifically about capitalism, which usually favorites as the overall of government as possible. but in terms of

price is never fails to ask for help. how do you see a nomic relations and labor relations evolving over when a crisis hits, we saw it in 2008. we seen it again last year. and when enterprises get into big difficulties because of a pandemic, because of a financial crisis, people run to the state. and we seen that happen on an unprecedented level in the last year. 16 trillion us dollars spent by states around the world to keep enterprise is going to keep people's income's up there. now the normal process, of course, after that, and this is very much in line with the orthodoxies of the last 3 decades, is once a crisis has gone, please could the state go away again and leave the private sector to get on with its job undisturbed in

a fairly deregulated environment. i think that coven 19 may lead to a reassessment of that type of behavior already. and this predates cove, it, we've seen a big discussion developing about stakeholder capitalism, about socially responsible enterprise behavior. i think this has got a lot of traction in public opinion that i also think is a very vague discussion at the moment. what the stakeholder capitalism mean? how can we make it effective? and what do we really expect of businesses in the world? i don't think this calls into question capitalism per se, but i think it does add some really important questions about the way capitalism functions today. and the behavior of enterprises as well. not just a few years ago, capsule is we're relied heavily on globalization as a, as

a vehicle of its expression that has been strongly, if not reversed by, by the damage and, strangely, in my mind, it posed a question about the purpose and the mission of your own organization, because for many, many years, your organization insisted on, on the global, or at least as wide as possible, application of unified labor principles and labor ideals, labor rules. do you think ha, the pandemic, and the, the changes in your space still make it worthwhile. this unified, globalized effort. yeah, i think it makes it, sir. essential. or, you know, we started on this system if we call them international labor standard, sees as you call them, unified rules of good behavior,

the rules of the game in the, in the economy. in respect of labor, we started this over a 100 years ago. so it's not something which is the child of globalization. but when globalization really took hold and we're now talking it's, it's getting on for half a century ago now that these, these common rules became all the more important. because the notion of fair competition, a level playing field across a global economy became ever more pressing. and i think the rationale to international labor standards became stronger with globalization. now what's happening today cov, it, of course, has put a major obstacles in the operation of the global economy. we know all about them. but i am not convinced that it means the advent of a process, a long term, or a permanent process of the globalization. yes,

we're seeing global supply chains disrupted. we're also seeing strong tensions that, to be honest about it in the global trading system, which is circulating blood of the global economy. but i'm far from convinced that covey would signal a era of d globalization. i think we might see changes, we might see new considerations enter into the, into the operations of globalization. but globalization will still be with us. and therefore international labor standards as well. i think we'll have all of their value in the future just as they have in the past or one year consideration. but i think it into the debate is how variable r b and damage picture is. and i'm asking this as a, as a person of a russian mentality, you know, the russian propensity towards centralization and unification. but even here,

you know, the central government in moscow can, doesn't have resources and mental scope to deal with all the variability in the region. so they gave that right to span i, you know, employment or c, h, d slowed down to be authorities and the wrong because the industry profile and the calculation profile, the susceptibility of the population to go and 19 and the infections is so different. i simply don't understand how. * we can come up with this same sort of rules or rather, and is that how we can come up with the same sort of principles? i don't understand how these principles could be applied coherently. well, the situation, the situation is so dramatically different lesaine one region off it, there's another region of africa to say, i'm sorry, what understand the question? indeed, it's a, it's a question. it's put to us very frequently. my answer is in the process by which

these standards are created, they are negotiated and it's a long process, believe me, at our conference, which takes place every year by not just governments, but employers and workers from all of our 187 members states. and you can be sure that every national delegation has in mind as it negotiates these are these unified standards, the own local circumstances, on the applicability the realism, the effectiveness of the standards in their local conditions. and the result of that process isn't the standards and not detailed and rigidly prescriptive. they establish basic principles, practices that and this is intentions can be adopted and used in this wide variety of circumstances which exist nationally. and we have every variety of country you can imagine from the least developed countries to the most advanced

economies. and guess what? it works. so russia does ratify. that means except the legal obligations of our standards on a regular basis. so it doesn't know they would not do that if the standards were simply irrelevant or not to clickable in the way i've described. so it's a major, major challenge, but it's one that we take care to address in very realistic ways because you know, we take no pleasure in just issuing so rules. we actually want to have instruments which make a difference to people's lives and improve working life around the world of questioning those obligations on the part of the fractional or any other country. i'm just wondering about the rapid changes that we are in serving in the world and whether those think it was very clear that this rapid changes. and he said it on a number of occasions that they were required to workforce. totally new approach to

labor, to, to cation. in my view, i took a new set of social contracts, what we expect from one another on an individual, as well as a social. and i wonder if all those laws and rules and protections that the organization has. what for so many decades, whether they can be sustained in the life of very very that would be changing social conditions. yeah, i think that's a different but a really vital question as well to work is subject to transformative change and i, it is subject to transformative change. just as you have said, we need to examine the standards, you know, an io standard adopted in 19191920 is unlikely to be 40 relevant to the world of today. so we do subject these standards to constant review, updating, say we revise the standards,

sometimes we get rid of the standards because we understand they have no relevance anymore. and we also look for the new standards that we have to adopt to meet you. an arising challenges, so this transformative change in the world of work certainly requires that we maintain an up to date and relevant body of standards. and we do exactly that. it's part a major part of the work of this office. well, i'm is a good time and thank you very much for the work. thank you. thank you for watching. to see with me.

ah, ah ah, ah. join me every 1st bit on the alec salmon. sure. i'll be speaking to guess in the

world of politics. spoke business, i'm show business. i'll see you then. ah, protest senior was new lockdown restrictions or imposed violence or ups in the netherlands for a 2nd. my running while vienna sees clashes between police and protest is on the weekly this how we try to work out where it's all heading with a puddle of guests. my response to the politicians is where well, you, why in your case numbers was slightly hi. hi. hi, i still as me get you stuff, my new room with a new policy. something else comes out there was a lot of let the politicians do what they want. they didn't follow some of the mandates they weren't wearing mass.