ILO: The Future of Work, Work From Home, and the Gig Economy. All in a Day’s Work.
Interview with Janine Berg, Senior Economist at the International Labour Organisation
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ILO: The Future of Work, Work From Home, and the Gig Economy
This week the International Labour Organisation, (ILO), is holding its annual conference. Central to the debates? Decent work, the gig economy, and work from home. Gig workers all over the world are asking for changes in the way the platform economy treats their employment status. They are asking for minimum wages, social protection, and for stability in the number of work hours.
ILO has, for decades, advocated for better conditions for workers worldwide. They produce solid research, looking at issues in the gig economy from a global perspective.
The UN Brief interviewed Janine Berg, Senior Economist at the International Labour Organisation, who is based at their headquarters in Geneva, to speak about their upcoming Regulating for Decent Work Conference that will take place from the 6 to the 8 of July.
We spoke about their recent and timely reports on Working From Home, From Invisibility to Decent Work, that she authored. The last WFH report was started before the health crisis and was going to cover teleworkers and low-income workers, but with the pandemic the scope widened to include white collar workers, as they were obliged to work from home.
We also looked at challenges regulating work in the digital economy, as international treaties require that ILO country-members that are signatories, adopt and enforce legislation at the national level.
“Many countries around the world have legislation, sometimes complemented by collective agreements, that addresses various decent work deficits associated with homework. Nonetheless, only 10 ILO Member States have ratified Convention No. 177, that promotes equality of treatment between homeworkers and other wage earners, and few have a comprehensive policy on homework.” Janine Berg, ILO
Follow her on Twitter @janinemberg
Read her work on Google Scholar
Check also: Gigged, Sarah Kessler
Street Cred:
Janine Berg is a Senior Economist in the Inclusive Labour Markets, Labour Relations and Working Conditions Branch (INWORK) of the International Labour Office in Geneva, Switzerland.
Since joining the ILO in 2002, she has conducted research on the economic effects of labour laws as well as provided technical assistance to ILO constituents on policies for generating jobs and improving working conditions.
From 2008 to 2011, Janine worked at the ILO office in Brazil as an employment specialist. She is the author of several books and numerous articles on employment and labour market institutions. Her latest book, Labour Markets, Institutions and Inequality: Building Just Societies in the 21st Century, was published in February 2015. Janine received her Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research in New York, USA.