NOBODY could say they knew exactly what the future of work looked like because it was a moving target, chairperson of Productivity SA Professor Mthunzi Mdwaba told an Uber Future of Work round table held on Tuesday.
Mdwaba said no one could say they knew what it looked like because it did not have a window or door that one could use to step in or step out. “People must not forget that Africa is different. Asia, Latin America, Europe and the USA are different and, for this reason, we cannot speak, on a generic level, for everybody without having their experience,” Mdwaba said.
The founder and owner of The Barefoot Facilitator, Rehana Moosajee, said it could well be that the future of work becomes screen-based with no access to the natural environment and people got increasingly cut off from others and themselves and nature.
“All of this could be problematic because it is new and we do not understand what the implications are. Whilst it moves very fast and whilst it has quickened its pace, we need to remember that we are talking about human beings,” Moosajee said.
She said Covid-19 had also caused many people to re-evaluate what it was they valued in life as some were making decisions that they would not have thought pre-Covid. “We call for the future of work to be cognisant of the youthful population we have in the continent but to also be cognisant when people are disconnected from themselves, each other and the environment, the notion of climate change and what it will mean for humanity, the sense of increased pressure on all parts of the environment and what it will take to navigate the increasingly uncertain future.”
Strategic projects lead for Uber SSA Ofentse Mokwena said that one of the biggest questions the world faced was how do people adapt, retain their empathy and remain human in the process.
“The hardest thing which the society has not been able to capture is the floating nature of entrepreneurship in Africa. South Africa is essentially a marketplace and it has been like that for many years. Today what we are seeing is that the marketplace is so diverse with technology.
“On one hand, someone could be sitting and working on a social media firm capturing pictures, etc. On the other hand, someone could be providing a service through a platform that is a physical experience like coming to clean a house or driving you around.
“The next layer is in a scenario where an individual designs a shirt, shows it on social media and someone orders it on the platform. There is an entire industry behind the scenes that is stitching up the shirt, printing, packaging and distributing it,” Mokwena said.
He said that what they were seeing was an opportunity to unlock an industrial landscape that basically did not exist right now.
“If we think about it in the broader picture we do not know what to do with it. People who are using the various platforms do not really go into the details of how the platform works, and what are the options that they have and can they also be a provider of this service? Is there an opportunity for me to participate in this landscape as well?”
He said all this goes back to the ideological problem where people had laptops and cellphones now, from which one can easily make a living.
“For some reason, we own the means of production. And that is not supposed to happen. One is supposed to work in an environment where they are participating and contributing as an input into the production process.
“In the digital world right now we have this unusual space where everybody can participate and earn a living and develop themselves. This is digital entrepreneurship - fascinating but nothing unusual. It just unlocks the marketplace for everyone to participate in.”
Mdwaba said the law moved very slowly as it tried to catch up with the reality of life, while legal experts were using what they had as their framework to protect and defend, analyse and interpret, which became a problem.
“You are trying to interpret in a projected futuristic way something one does not know. The ILO is behind the curve because everybody is looking at arresting the future of work so that they can deal with it. However, it keeps on changing.
“But at the heart of it, what we need to be doing is finding some way of understanding that anything digital is to say how do we respond first by accepting that anything digital is not the enemy. And it should not lose the face as people do not want to be alienated.
“As much as rights are important, we need to focus on the solution-orientedness of what we are doing and what we do as we create employment and create an environment where we enable people to come and have innovation without limitation. Innovation cannot be controlled. Technology will occur whether one likes it or not. What is important is to interface it with human elements like human rights.”
Civic Tech Innovation Network programme co-ordinator Sihle Gcilitshana said the country needed context-based solutions, referring to resource points and not necessarily re-inventing the wheel since the marketplace in itself, like the platforms and the gig economy, already existed as forms of models and for one to compare what has worked and innovate where it has not.
“The missing part from civil society was bringing everyone on board. There is a lot of work that feeds back to the needs of people on the ground but that never truly reaches it to government work.
“If the end-goal is social impact for all and better well-being for all, then surely all should always participate in the processes of getting there as opposed to being the last point of consultation.”
Legal researcher Nkanyiso Ngqulunga said the government needed to acknowledge that the gig economy was already a reality with over 3 million people doing gig work. “Usually this is the relatively younger generations who want flexibility. Once that is acknowledged, it contributes immensely to employment and also that the services sector was one of the large contributors to the economy and became an integral part of daily lives. It forms part of a new dimension or form of employment and economic participation,” Ngqulunga said.
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