COVID19 unraveled the workforce. Heres how to fix it Mary L. Gray

so right now the pandemic is throwing

many workers out of stable nine-to-five

office jobs into a dizzying world where

they are working on projects whenever

and wherever they can get a kid-free

moment to connect to the internet but

for many this is not really new nor as a

temporary instead the pandemic is

exposing and accelerating to structural

changes in our society that are 20 years

in the making

one is painfully obvious information and

service driven economies depend on

legions of workers food service daycare

creative and health care workers all

essential to our economy but whose

faiths rise and fall of consumer demand

the second transformation is much harder

the see despite the headlines of a

full-on robot takeover more and more

businesses are not using AI to fully

automate their combining algorithms

application programming interfaces and

the Internet to contract work out

letting computation schedule manage ship

and deliver bill tasks that can be

picked up by people surfing for work

online 24/7 around the globe encoded 19

is shown every business that it can meet

at least some of this labor needs

through these on-demand task based work

arrangements these are not niche jobs

that are going to go away when the

pandemic passes or with the advancement

of AI we are living through the tech

enabled unraveling of full-time

employment itself a recent study of job

skills and titles listed on LinkedIn

suggested that more than a hundred and

forty nine million new digital tech jobs

are going to come online in the next

five years alone and the bulk of these

are in information services online tasks

that are going to require

problem-solving and time-bound projects

that depend on bringing together

collaborative teams digitally connected

tasks like content review and moderation

telemedicine text based customer

support data analytics and last-mile

physical delivery of services from home

care to food delivery are all part of

this trend and all are technically hard

problems for full automation they

require keeping people in the loop to

push a I along or to take over when AI

falls short

now these open call task based labor

markets deliver two types of value to

both businesses and consumers

availability and abundance think about

the last time you used to share a

ride-sharing app like uber or lyft you

don’t want just somebody picking you up

you want the experience of opening the

app and seeing ten drivers nearby idling

waiting to pick you up when you’re

actually ready to walk out the door

businesses serving consumers of media to

meet the demands or organized around

finite projects are no longer able to

meet the needs finding the perfect

employee who must build up the skills

over the course of a twenty year to

deliver everything so arguably society

does not know how to value people who

are available in a moment’s notice

unless they have cachet as experts or

superstars where we also have a very bad

history of valuing people who put

themselves in the service of others

whether it’s teachers nurses custodians

foodservice or stage real parents but

now we increasingly don’t see or know

the people behind the services that we

take for granted which makes us even

more susceptible to ignoring their needs

in vertel a worsening their work

conditions so the information service

work that we studied can isolate workers

there’s no factory for no single

employer of that code no benefits no

base pay or they pay for being on-call

no workers are able to collectively

represent their interests and they don’t

share a sense of professional identity

that can build solidarity as it’s been

built in traditional labor movements for

example when I ask people to describe

their work some answer that they work

for themselves others said that they

work for a Silicon Valley startup and if

you proudly describes themselves as

business owners subcontracting

to create jobs for others people could

be doing the exact same task and spend

vastly different hours on the clock

motivated by different needs and

different interests yet this new form of

work depends on them all rallying when

called and leaving when their task is

done so citizens governments consumers

workers and businesses need to broker a

new social contract and safety net for

these workers we have to assume that

they don’t have a single employer or

work site that they will be constantly

learning task to task and they’ll bring

that knowledge to their next assignment

so the next business and consumer

benefits if the pandemic has taught us

anything it’s that our economy hinges on

equipping every working adult with a set

of essential benefits health care sick

leave employment insurance family leave

and continuing education for most of the

industrial era we’ve treated those

benefits as perks to recruit and retain

full-time employees we can’t afford to

do that anymore and the marketplace

alone can’t make the future of a I

enabled service work equitable or

sustainable that’s up to us thank you

thank you Mary that was great um so I

assume these ghost workers exist in

almost every community around the world

is there a typical demographic profile

for these workers no I mean they really

are just like you and me there are

people from the age of 18 to their late

70s doing this work the average age

among the people we talked with was the

early thirties really the beginning

usually the the prime of the first

couple of ladders on the wrong of going

up your career ladder there were as many

men and as men and women there was quite

a bit of gender diversity people who

identified as trans or non-binary or

trying to avoid discrimination in formal

employment so it really ran the gamut

the thing that really stuck out to us

most people were college-educated what

was significant was that there were many

who

first-generation college-goers so these

were people who hadn’t were just using

their education tool and stable

employment when the Great Recession hit

so many people had come into these jobs

because they were trying to stabilize

after the Great Recession it makes me

wonder how they’re faring during this

pandemic are they better off than some

are they continuing to work so the

workers I’m still in touch with are

really struggling in some ways they are

carrying on as they always have the

kinds of tasks they were doing have not

necessarily diminished many of them were

working subcontracting with other

businesses that still have contracts

they need to fulfill their working with

a mixture of full-time employees who are

trying to finish their jobs from home

but they’re also competing now with more

people who are furloughed or have lost

their jobs who are turning to this kind

of work to try and find economic means

so there are a lot of supports that

these workers need and other workers

need can you talk a bit about some of

those support and is there a way for

industries to share the costs and the

systems that need to be put in place

yeah I think what’s most notable from

our research is that because there isn’t

one kind of worker and because this is

really an open-call approach so think

about Facebook or Wikipedia that means

you have a range of people who are

coming to these task based jobs often on

contract because they’re trying to fill

a particular need and their lives so

there’s not one kind of worker here that

means that often there’s a core group

who called them always on who were doing

most of the work but there was a large

group of good percentage we called

regulars who had a set number of hours

or a set number of tasks certain kinds

of clashes they were doing who were

Justin as important to keep these labor

markets going and then a long tail of

people experimenting trying to figure

out if this was a place where they could

practice their graphic design skills or

be able to learn a new language all of

them were equally

important we call this the Pareto

distribution to these labor markets that

means that there are businesses that are

getting so much value out of people who

might be spending no more than a couple

of hours doing the tasks that they do

the approach we have to take and we saw

two businesses particularly who were

models for really approaching this labor

force to support it and make it

sustainable the approach is to see that

workers need colleagues they need

support they need businesses that are

responsive to them and they also need

businesses to be accountable no matter

whether they’re offering two minutes of

their time or 20 hours a week so so what

are the things that you imagine we

should we should install things like

portable health care and beyond those

sort of benefits the cultural things you

mentioned what do you imagine these

workers should should have as not

attached to they’re sort of a full-time

employer let me take the example of

actually a group that’s fairly familiar

to tedsters the open translation project

it is the backbone of translating many

TED Talks that is run by Amara it was

one of the groups that we studied and

several years ago they were able to move

from being an all-volunteer group five

hundred thousand large to being able to

offer their transcriptionists paid work

because companies were coming to them

asking them that they could quickly

translate and caption video so that’s a

really good example of a company that

took the approach of saying we have a

group of people who want to be able to

spend more time on the site and turn it

into paid work what do we need to do to

support their efforts the things that

Amara does they approach every project

as a collaborative team effectively a

cooperative of linguists and

transcribers coming together to work and

they make sure that their schedules are

the priority they do everything they can

to give people opportunities to choose

the

Jax that they wanted you and the third

thing that they’re thinking about is how

to get people that capacity to control

their schedules so that they can make

work work for their daily lives in many

cases people are juggling childcare

elder care so they need more control

over what they’re doing day to day now a

company like Amara can’t make the entire

environment the entire ecosystem of

captioning and translation equitable and

fair and sustainable we need policies

that basically recognize every company

needs to be able to provide training

every company should be providing some

opportunities that lead to committed

element we’re going to have to have some

way and we see plenty of examples what

plural benefits could look like where

you have every single company that’s

getting value out of the worker putting

in money not just for that worker but so

that some worker like them can show up

tomorrow that’s the approach that’s

going to look for this labor market that

relies on and will continue to need that

peretta distribution of participation I

mean it sounds like there’s opportunity

for exploitation but also a really

positive opportunity for both employees

and for companies yeah the exploitation

the exploitation is really coming from

the fact that we don’t have labor laws

that really approach labor as something

that can be contracted and contingent

and a good thing like we’ve literally

have written labor laws and lock them

into the equivalent of the assembly line

from the early 20th century we haven’t

updated our labor laws to think about

well how would I underwrite every worker

to be able to approach a job as though

it’s something they’re going to do and

then leave quickly as I described

earlier so there’s nothing inherently

bad about these jobs is that we don’t

value them we could make these

incredibly rich opportunities for the

globe to be able to tap in and provide

what it is that they want to do what

they excel at or what they want to

experiment with and provide

value to the businesses they’re serving

the consumers who benefit from what they

have to offer but ultimately from the

workers being able to move to the kinds

of projects that really excite them and

fit their lives like if we could give

workers control of their schedules

opportunities to control the kinds of

projects they work on and the ability to

connect with and collaborate with their

peers that would be a game-changer but I

imagine it also changes how companies

see their competitive advantages like

companies often look to hire the best

people and sort of lock them into their

ecosystem how does it change how

companies think about that so that

quality of abundance that I described

earlier that’s really critical to

understanding why companies don’t

benefit from investing deeply in one

employee trying to find the perfect

full-time worker and hoping that what

they learn will stay with that company

over the long haul there’s nothing about

service driven economies particularly

let’s use the example of health care or

medicine there’s nothing about that

world that doesn’t constantly need to

change and update and so the real

benefit for every business is to be able

to draw on the expertise of people to

now have the domain expertise that we

need to be able to deliver the new

service that I want to put out there the

worker doesn’t benefit from being stuck

in a job where they’re outdated or

they’re bored with what they have to

offer if they’re constantly being

challenged and given the opportunity to

learn what they need to keep learning

they’re going to be able to bring

something of value again to other

businesses we definitely describe this

as a Commons like if we were approaching

labor as a Commons where workers are

available to each other the primary goal

is that they’re really serving

themselves and enriching themselves to

bring what they can to market businesses

are going to benefit far more than

trying to hold on to that expert or that

superstar because odds are pretty good

that expert or superstar

is going to be outdated within a few

months of a project they won’t have the

capacities that you actually need on the

team for the speculate project where

you’re trying to figure out what does

the consumer want next okay I have one

more question before we take some

questions from the community you’ve also

written about the human elements behind

the new pandemic contact contact tracing

technology how does that relate to your

work well in the last few months I’ve

been working with colleagues at Duke

Health pandemic response Network and

idor to look at the very basic health

worker lore flows of doing contact

tracing because most of contact tracing

it actually involves teams working

together to identify someone who might

be sick and then from there talking with

them it’s a lot of emotional work and in

many cases what we’re missing

is the capacity to quickly assemble the

teams that are going to be best suited

for connecting with someone with the

right language with like cultural bat

and great cultural background to be able

to help support them in staying healthy

so we’ve been thinking how would you

take an on-demand approach to work trace

work so that the workers themselves can

work as teams to tap in and tap out to

be able to get the relief of not being

the only one who has to be providing

that support to imagine what it would

look like to have community based

contact tracing so that we really can

have the legions of people we need to be

able to support our efforts to keep

ourselves healthy yeah it sounds like an

important opportunity we’re gonna take

some questions from the community now

can you put up the first question from

Yvonne Akana how can government and

private institutions create a landing

space for the always-on workers that’s a

great question because in the most

important by that question is that it

really is about government policy and

business the private sector seeing

there’s common cause here

and listening to what workers have to

say about what they need and so that

landing pad is really starting from the

very beginning assuming that as a

business I want the worker I recruit to

my project to come in the door with the

basics with that those essential

benefits that means having the cost

sharing the businesses private sector

will need to do as well as government to

make sure every worker has health care

has sick leave has employment insurance

not unemployment insurance but

employment insurance that assumes that

people are always going to be between

tasks at some point and that’s a good

thing

so the landing pad is really about

finding a way to give workers downtime

that they aren’t absorbing the cost of

that downtime because the downtime is

going to benefit every worker every

consumer when they come back to a task

boy that’s super clear right now isn’t

it yeah we have another question from

Trevor how do you see this new world of

work affecting the non-productive

reasons people work social bonding sense

of identity contribution etc I love that

question because one of the things that

I found fascinating was when we were

doing this work even though it’s

designed literally to keep people fairly

separate and atomized to do tasks

the assumption by engineers is nobody

needs to talk here

we found workers very quickly forming

social connections building peer

relationships mentoring each other

helping each other literally texting

each other to keep each other animated

at work to keep to keep awake for

example we had a group that we studied

they call themselves team genius who

would hang out in Skype and basically

just chatter between projects that kind

of connection that kind of solidarity is

there workers create that for themselves

that is fundamental glue that doesn’t go

away we always bring our social selves

to the work that we do work is

incredibly social as much as it’s

productive and

nationalizing so what most workers are

really looking for is a way to manage

those relationships and not have them

controlled overly so by by a boss who

may not have their best interests it may

not necessarily know the best

connections that they need the

ever-present water-cooler whether we’re

in the office or not I mean this really

brings us to the idea that this is we

all relate to this right now right this

isn’t just a group of a particular group

of workers this is happening to all of

us exactly I mean for me the pandemic

really brought home how much the reality

of the lives of many people around the

globe who are effectively in informal

service relationships most of their

economic activity is helping somebody

design a shirt or get something

delivered that that exchanged and

particularly thinking about health care

how much of our population is aging and

how dependent we are on health care that

reality is not as you said futuristic

that’s that’s now and the pandemic

hopefully Prime’s all of us to see we

are in much better shape if we assume

there are some basics that need to be

there that cannot be nice to have they

can’t be the perk of landing the good

job mostly because we need people to be

able to find what works for them not

because they happened into you know a

good opportunity where they had the

social capital the cachet to get the

good job so the pandemic makes it really

obvious that we economically will be in

a better place if we provide that

baseline for everyone yeah certainly

let’s have one more question from the

community

from Jamie our current society favors

directing profits to shareholders and

senior management driven by quarterly

profit expectations workers are left out

of the equation how do we convince

companies of the short and long term

advantages of funneling benefits to the

base level workers and how do we shift

laws and regulations to protect workers

rights when the shift has been in the

opposite direction for the past few

decades I think that last part the

question is so importantly we have been

shifting to a reliance a deep reliance

on contract work for four reasons that

are now in businesses interest we could

argue to the day as long that the

dismantling of full-time employment was

never about particular needs in the

economy but we are a consumer driven

economy we depend on figuring out and

tapping into what is a consumer lot

dance that service-oriented experiential

way of creating value that that’s not

going away you know we don’t make a lot

of money off of manufacturing chairs we

make a lot of our economic lives out of

serving each other and so that reality

of realizing our employment laws are

part of a problem right now they’re

constraining businesses from offering a

suite of benefits precisely because

businesses in the United States feel

like they can’t afford to be employers

of record because in the United States

that means I’ll have to provide health

care I’ll have to provide sick leave

well wouldn’t it be amazing if those

were provided and an employer could

literally say okay I’ve got who I need

for this project and bringing them on

I’m responsible for putting in upfront

some resources so that I know tomorrow

I’m going to be able to find the next

person I need for the next project I’m

doing so it’s in our business interest

in these new markets to fully take in we

need to make sure our policies are

giving us workers who are equipped to

start today leave tomorrow and

after that I’m gonna be able to bring in

somebody who can start the next task

that means being interested in the long

term in some ways saying I am going to

have to give up quarterly profits but

the dividends down the road especially

look at what we’re learning right now it

doesn’t pay to have people without

support to be able to weather what is

effectively something that will pass we

are destroying our economy because we

didn’t think about the need for just a

little bit of upfront prep and a little

bit of a front investment in workers it

seems like we did a great job of

designing a system to react to companies

on and off needs whether because of

uncertainty or crisis or you know just

speed to market but we didn’t think

about the other side of it which is what

the workers need to be supportive in

that new reality so we all right I guess

questions are flooding in from the

community so we’ll take one more okay

from Steven is part of the problem that

these workers may not be American and

thus revisions in American labor law

could be problematic good question it’s

really I mean it’s a great question it’s

complicated because in some cases yes

for some some information services we’re

talking about localizing material for

other markets for emerging markets so

there’s no way to do that localization

the way to make sure a product or a

service is really tailored to say a

Brazilian audience without hiring

workers who really have that context

down but for a lot of this work it’s not

just a global question we have a supply

chain that’s dependent on many different

workers from around the globe

contributing but yet we in the United

States have set no marker that says this

is the baseline for how workers

participating a test based market should

be supported we could start today with

being able to say we’re going to have

expectations that every worker does have

health care we’re going to have

expectations that paid leave

is a part of employment in this setting

we will be paying more that will

eventually become the model for what the

rest of the globe sees as necessary for

supporting the workers who are

contributing to an information and

service economy so it the challenges is

not as complicated as we make it it’s

much more of our mental map for what’s

the good job it’s the full-time

employment position that’s no longer the

good job in fact those are really hard

to find in most of the world so it’s

thinking about what would make every job

dignified equitable sustainable what

does that look like and we have the

power to do that we have the means to do

that and we now have an entire economy

that needs that that’s the difference

Mary before I let you go just one more

question this has obviously been a huge

pause and a huge people to our economy

and businesses around the world do you

feel hopeful in this moment that

businesses are paying attention and may

be more interested in putting some of

these policies and plates or supporting

this kind of you know new regulation I

do I do because I think any of the

companies that are involved in on-demand

services any of the companies that know

that they’re as reliant as as much as

they need their full-time employees

there is reliant on contract workers

they know though that they need those

contract workers to be in the best

position to come and go as possible and

the way forward is precisely being able

to say gosh I actually want workers all

workers no matter where their work game

and matter how many hours they put in no

matter what projects they pick up I want

them to have this baseline you might

think of it as you know back in the day

we knew that we needed everybody to have

universal education there wasn’t a there

wasn’t a business out there that thought

gosh I don’t want my workers to have

some baseline of education well the

baseline has moved up but they

swine is now making sure that my workers

have higher education know how to learn

to learn like have that sense of being

able to pursue education that they do

have the health care they need because

they’re let they’re living longer they

have more to offer you know so these

these things that really didn’t make

sense when we first put labour laws in

place now are necessary to the

functioning of our economy and I do feel

incredibly hopeful because I think

that’s obvious to anybody listening to

me right now and to many of the

businesses that want new playing rules

they want to be told what are the ways

we can move forward together because

none of these companies can make this

new reality on their own the market is

not going to solve this this is this is

a social policy need and we’ve never had

companies define work conditions on

their own we’ve always needed society to

come together and say what’s our

baseline