Davos 2024: UN Secretary General Says Rebuilding Trust Requires Action | ILO Calls for New Social Contract | Interview with Olivier De Schutter UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty
Dr. Anu Bradford on her fireside chat last week with EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager
DAVOS
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this Wednesday. He is delivering a special address on the state of the world where he will highlight two existential threats to our planet. The climate crisis and the development of artificial intelligence without any guardrails.
“He is warning leaders that geopolitical divides are preventing us from coming together around global solutions to these threats and causing people to lose faith in governments institutions, financial and economic systems.”, said the UN Secretary General Spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric.
The Secretary General will call on leaders to prevent further damage by pushing for reform of financial institutions and rebuilding trust to get the world back on track to safety, prosperity and peace. While at the forum the Secretary General will have bilaterals with various international leaders and also leaders from the private sector.
On Thursday, he will head to the UN annual retreat with all his special representatives, heads of peacekeeping missions, and political missions.
World Economic Forum
This year’s theme is Rebuilding Trust.
“Trust hinges on establishing a new social contract.”
ILO Director General Gilbert F. Houngbo
UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty and Human Rights Calls for Wage Increases in Services and Healthcare
I interviewed the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier de Schutter, about how this new social contract needs to address inequalities, wages and the working poor, plus the 2 billion people around the world working informal jobs with no security, and the 4 billion people with no social protection schemes.
Value Essential Workers and Curb Harmful Industries
UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier De Schutter has called for a fundamental shift in how workers are compensated. His proposal, unveiled at the UN General Assembly in New York last fall, advocates for substantial wage increases for essential workers and implementing pay caps for those in industries that cause significant social and environmental harm.
"It is an absurdity," De Schutter declared, "that those who contribute the most to society, especially those who serve those in need, are often among the lowest paid, while others reap immense rewards for actions that inflict damage on the very fabric of our world."
In his report, De Schutter identifies financial trading, fossil fuels, pesticides, plastics, tobacco, and advertising as sectors where excessive salaries exacerbate social ills and environmental degradation. He urges governments to establish a mechanism to restrict pay in these industries to a level that aligns with their positive societal contributions.
"We need to recognize that our economic system is deeply flawed," De Schutter said. "It incentivizes profit over people and planet, rewarding those who harm society while undervaluing those who uplift it."
De Schutter's proposal stems from the alarming reality that one in five workers worldwide now live in poverty, despite holding jobs that are crucial to society’s functioning. The expert attributes this phenomenon to the erosion of full-time employment contracts, the prevalence of low-paid casual, outsourcing labelling AI to the Global South, or part-time work, and the persistent suppression of trade union rights.
"It is time to dismantle the scandal of poverty wages," De Schutter asserted. "We must ensure that all workers, including informal and migrant workers, receive a living wage that provides them with a decent standard of living."
De Schutter's recommendations challenge the status quo and demand a paradigm shift in how we value labor and reward contributions to society. His call for a more equitable and sustainable economic system resonates with growing calls for a just transition towards a more equitable and sustainable future.
Job guarantee programmes – whereby the government guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work – can protect workers from the biggest global employment challenges of our time.
“With miserable working conditions and low pay affecting the majority of the world’s workers, plus the 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,” said De Schutter at the presentation of his report to the 53rd Session of the UN Human Rights Council last May in Geneva.
“It is no longer enough for governments to merely try to create the right conditions for job growth,” the UN expert 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.”
The International Labour Organisation puts the global jobs gap at 473 million people: 205 million unemployed and 268 million who would like to work but are not actively looking due to circumstances beyond their control such as a lack of childcare. Around two billion people, 60% 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 programmes in the past have tended to create jobs in infrastructure projects such as building roads or dams, De Schutter’s report highlights the alarming workforce gaps in the care, education and health sectors they could fill.
“The global employment paradox is that while there are too few decent jobs, there is certainly no shortage of work to be done,” 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.”
De Schutter urged governments to guarantee a "living wage" for all workers, including informal and migrant workers. A living wage is defined as a wage that provides a decent standard of living for the workers and their families, or at least 60 percent of the median wage in the country, whichever is the highest.
"This is not a radical proposal," De Schutter emphasized. "There are successful examples of living wage policies being implemented around the world, such as in Argentina, Brazil, and India. These policies have not only reduced poverty but also improved social cohesion and economic stability."
“A job guarantee could fill the roles we so desperately need, but that the private sector has no financial incentive to provide,” he said. “A job guarantee scheme should be strictly voluntary and sit alongside, not replace, social protection, as a permanent feature of the labour market,” said De Schutter. “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, at the UN General Assembly last Fall.
Listen to my interview recorded yesterday on his latest report:
Street Cred
Dr. Olivier De Schutter, is a Professor at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and the SciencesPo in Paris. He was appointed Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in May 2020, by the UN Human Rights Council and is part of the Special Procedures, the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.
Underage Workers Training AI Being Exposed to Traumatic Imagery
“Companies that provide Big Tech with AI data-labeling services are inadvertently hiring young teens to work on their platforms, often exposing them to traumatic content.”, reports Niamh Rowe/Wired.
Millions of Workers Are Training AI Models for Pennies
From the Philippines to Colombia, low-paid workers label training data for AI models used by Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, reports Niamh Rowe/Wired.
Long hours and low wages: the human labour powering AI’s development, The Conversation
Digital Economy
How China, the US, and the EU Regulate
I interviewed Anu Bradford, Professor of European Law at Columbia University Law School to ask about her book, Digital Empires, a primer to understand global tech regulation competing views, and what she discussed on her fireside chat last week with EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, at Berkeley Law School, in California.
Maya Plentz - A number of AI guidelines, principles, recommendations, were issued in the last couple of years, in addition to national regulatory frameworks by the UK, EU and China. I am referring to the guidelines in ethical uses and development of AI systems by UNESCO, where public consultations were launched during the Internet for Trust Conference in 2023 and their final report in October of 2023, the UN Secretary General Tech Envoy/AI Advisory Group first report on artificial intelligence issued last December, and the political agreement on the EU AI Act reached also in December. What do you make of these? How different are their approaches? Are non-binding guidelines and principles doomed to be ignored or do they serve a purpose?
Anu Bradford - All these initiatives contribute towards a growing global momentum to regulate AI. They send a strong message that tech companies cannot be left to self-govern this foundational technology. There are many similarities among these initiatives, including in that they seek to mitigate harmful bias and introduce greater transparency and accountability. But there is no global consensus, for example, on whether and how AI ought to be deployed towards state surveillance. China and other authoritarian countries have a different view from liberal democracies on how to balance state security, social stability and civil liberties.
Many of these initiatives – especially the international codes – are non-binding. That does not mean they are altogether irrelevant but there are clear limits to how much they will be able to constrain the unfolding AI race.
Maya Plentz - You mention three different approaches to regulating AI in your book Digital Empire: a market-led one by the US, a human rights and privacy approach by the EU, and China still another, state-nation power preservation. Can you tell us how they compete with each other and/or can be complementary? Or is it unlikely that these three approaches will ever coalesce as they are rooted in different ideologies, economic interests, and cultures?
Anu Bradford - They all reflect different values and views about optimal digital society – in that sense they compete with one another and even come into conflict, posing a challenge for global tech companies that face sometimes conflicting demands by each of the digital empires. But they can also be complementary in the sense that some countries, including Japan, India or Singapore to cite some examples, selectively emulate aspects of different models and end up embracing a “hybrid model” as a result. For examples, Japan shares many of the values underlying the EU model and has closely emulated laws such as the GDPR. But Japan also often resorts to non-binding norms, which resembles the market-driven regulatory model.
Maya Plentz - You held a conversation at Berkeley Law School last week with the EU Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager. What were the main points discussed in light of the looming Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act coming into force in March?
Anu Bradford - Commissioner Vestager expressed confidence in the DSA and the DMA offering more effective tools than what the Commission has had in the past to enforce digital regulations. She recognizes that the existing laws have often been too slow to change the market dynamics in time for new entrants to truly benefit from them. She is therefore committed to using these new powers in ways that make markets more contestable and fair. In addition, Commissioner Vestager emphasized how the DMA is not designed as a tool to enhance European firms’ standing at the expense of their US counterparts. What the regulation is targeting is companies that have the market power and the ability to act as gatekeepers – no matter where they come from. The goal is also to create such a contestable market that tech companies will not grow into the position of being gatekeepers.
In discussing the DSA, EVP Vestager recognizes the many challenges associates with content moderation by a jurisdiction such as the EU that is committed to free speech but that needs to balance that fundamental right with other rights, including human dignity. But that difficulty does not lead her to conclude that such line drawing would not need to be done. What is not allowed offline should not be permitted online either, is her view. The DSA is therefore a key regulation to enhance the values underlying the European rights-driven model.
Anu Bradford, Professor of European Law at Columbia University Law School speaks about her book, Digital Empires, a primer to understand global tech regulation.