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A Future Without Work

oil painting of man chopping wood

Some prominent voices suggest implementing a type of universal basic income (UBI) in order to curb the future negative impacts of AI on employment prospects. While UBI policies can vary depending on context, any UBI plan involves the governmental distribution of universal cash payments to citizens on a predictable basis. Importantly, UBI payments are not earned, but rather they are granted merely in virtue of one’s status as a citizen or resident of a certain political jurisdiction. While there have been a number of UBI advocates throughout history, the concept has never received widespread support in the American context. However, many are softening to the idea in recent years due to the seismic changes in the employment market that are on the horizon. Debate over the merits of UBI even played a prominent role in the latest presidential election cycle, as presidential hopeful Andrew Yang advocated for a Freedom Dividend to help shield Americans from the risks of employment precarity caused by advancing technology.

While there are of course a whole host of questions pertaining to the economic feasibility of such an approach to remedying the impacts of AI, there are also underlying philosophical questions. Whether or not UBI will fix the problems it’s intended to fix is not only an economic, sociological, and political question, but also a philosophical one. Clearly, one of the most obvious roles of work in peoples’ lives is to supply them with the instrumental good of money, a role that instituting a UBI could plausibly fill. However, it is clear that work tends to play other vital roles as well.

Whether or not UBI is an advisable path forward in response to the impact of evolving technology remains an open question until we address some foundational questions about the relationship between work and what it means to be human.

While there are a multitude of ways in which one can approach the intersection of work and human flourishing, I will focus on a few of the most obvious ways in which work is integral to our lives. The first is as a source of personal identity. One of the primary ways in which people derive a concrete sense of themselves in relation to others is via their vocational choices and endeavors, with over one-third of Americans claiming their work is “extremely or very important to their overall identity.” The pursuit of excellence in one’s profession and the possession of a very particular kind of expertise can anchor one’s image and sense of self-worth as they navigate through life. Different jobs provide us with different scripts about who we are and about what kind of role we play in our communities. While there are of course other sources of personal identity beyond one’s chosen profession, the fact  remains that work constitutes a major source of identity for many.

The second way in which work is integral to our lives, is that it tends to offer us a community of people with which to interact. Given the vanishing of many of our shared social spaces, work plays an even more central role in providing people with necessary social connections than in generations prior. As opposed to older generations, younger people are less likely to have relationships with their neighbors, more likely to purchase food to go as opposed to dining in communal spaces, and less likely to grow up with ties to a religious community. The bottom line is that — on average — people are interacting face-to-face less often than they once did. Of course, in the work-from-home era, this trend has also spilled heavily into the workplace.

The complete elimination of the workplace for a large segment of the population threatens to take with it certain key social benefits. People frequently meet their spouse in the workplace, and the majority of American workers also report relationships with their co-workers as the most satisfying part of their job.

If these work communities are to be entirely lost for a number of individuals, other types of communities will have to fill this void in order to circumvent a host of negative social ramifications.

The third and final role played by work that I will consider here, is that of work’s ability to provide structure to our daily lives. Whether we like it or not, our jobs are what force many of us out of bed in the morning, and they also are what we plan our vacations, holidays, and other personal commitments around. The standard 9-to-5 American workday provides a clear structure to many peoples’ lives, as it interjects at least a minimal amount of routine into one’s day. Since there are demonstrated mental health benefits to keeping a daily routine, there might be at least some reason to view the way work tends to structure our lives as a net positive. Of course, there are also downsides to the way in which work commitments can constrain us or stifle out the pursuit of other goods, with such concerns prompting a number of cultural movements, including ones to shorten the 9-to-5 workday. Despite these legitimate concerns about work structuring too much of our lives, the point still stands that humans tend to do best with some amount of daily structure and routine. If work responsibilities are to be completely wiped away for a sizable portion of the population, it is plausible that establishing other sources of structure will become necessary for the sake of many peoples’ mental health and ability to thrive on a daily basis.

Noting these trends towards a rapidly changing economy and employment landscape, valuable philosophical resources have sprung up in recent years to help us think better about the roles work does and should play in our lives. Such resources include 80,000 Hours and Notre Dame’s Ethics at Work project. Demand for these kinds of projects will only grow in the coming months and years, as speculation over the future impact of AI and other technologies on the nature and structure of the  economy proliferates. The introduction of these advancements into the marketplace pushes us towards a deeper understanding of the role work plays in the experience of being human.

While work is about securing economic security, it is not only about securing economic security. Even if UBI turns out to be a politically and economically feasible solution to the impact of AI on the employment market, it can’t be the only fix we pursue to the problem of vanishing work. While monthly pay checks will help fill the economic void left by a collapsing employment market, it will do little to nothing to fill the other voids left by a lack of work. Thus, in addition to more research on the efficacy of instituting UBI, we should simultaneously pursue research into how to remedy the other inevitable societal impacts of a shrinking workforce.

Virtual Work and the Ethics of Outsourcing

photograph of Freshii storefornt

Like a lot of people over the past two years, I’ve been conducting most of my work virtually. Interactions with colleagues, researchers, and other people I’ve talked to have taken place almost exclusively via Zoom, and I even have some colleagues I’ve yet to meet in person. There are pros and cons to the arrangement, and much has been written about how to make the most out of virtual working.

A recent event involving Canadian outlets of restraint chain Freshii, however, has raised some ethical questions about a certain kind of virtual working arrangement, namely the use of virtual cashiers called “Percy.” Here’s how it works: instead of an in-the-flesh cashier to help you with your purchase, a screen will show you a person working remotely, ostensibly adding a personal touch to what might otherwise feel like an impersonal dining experience. The company that created Percy explains their business model as follows:

Unlike a kiosk or a pre-ordering app, which removes human jobs entirely, Percy allows for the face-to-face customer experience, that restaurant owners and operators want to provide their guests, by mobilizing a global and eager workforce.

It is exactly this “global and eager workforce” that has landed Freshii in hot water: it has recently been reported that Freshii is using workers who are living in Nicaragua and are paid a mere $3.75 an hour. In Canada, several ministers and labor critics have harshly criticized the practice, with some calling for new legislation to prevent other companies from doing the same thing.

Of course, outsourcing is nothing new: for years, companies have hired overseas contractors to do work that can be done remotely, and at a fraction of the cost of domestic workers. At least in Canada, companies are not obligated to pay outsourced employees a wage that meets the minimum standards of Canadian wage laws; indeed, the company that produces Percy has maintained that they are not doing anything illegal.

There are many worries one could have with the practice of outsourcing in general, primarily among them: that they take away job opportunities for domestic employees, and that they treat foreign employees unfairly by paying them below minimum wage (at least by the standards of the country where the business is located).

There are also some arguments in favor of the practice: in an op-ed written in response to the controversy, the argument is made that while $3.75 is very little to those living in Canada and the U.S., it is more significant for many people living in Nicaragua. What’s more, with automation risking many jobs regardless, wouldn’t it be better to at least pay someone for this work, as opposed to just giving it to a robot? Of course, this argument risks presenting a false dichotomy – one could, after all, choose to pay workers in Nicaragua a fair wage by Canadian or U.S. standards. But the point is still that such jobs provide income for people who need it.

If arguments about outsourcing are old news, then why all the new outrage? There does seem to be something particularly odd about the virtual cashier. Is it simply that we don’t want to be faced with a controversial issue that we know exists, but would rather ignore, or is there something more going on?

I think discomfort is definitely part of the problem – it is easier to ignore potentially problematic business practices when we are not staring them in the virtual face. But there is perhaps an additional part of the explanation, one that raises metaphysical questions about the nature of virtual work: when you work virtually, where are you?

There is a sense in which the answer to this question is obvious: you are wherever your physical body is. If I’m working remotely and on a Zoom call, the place I am would be in Toronto (seeing as that’s where I live) while my colleagues will be in whatever province or country they happen to be physically present in at the time.

When we are all occupying the same Zoom call, however, we are also in another sense in the same space. Consider the following. In this time of transition between COVID and (hopefully) post-COVID times, many in-person events have become hybrid affairs: some people will attend in-person, and some people will appear virtually on a screen. For instance, many conferences are being held in hybrid formats, as are government hearings, trials, etc.

Let’s say that I give a presentation at such a conference, that I’m one of these virtual attendees, and that I participate while sitting in the comfort of my own apartment. I am physically located in one place, but also attending the conference: I might not be able to be there in person, but there’s a sense in which I am still there, if only virtually.

It’s this virtual there-ness that I think makes a case like Percy feel more troubling. Although a Canadian cashier who worked at Freshii would occupy the physical space of a Freshii restaurant in Canada, a virtual cashier would do much of the same work, interact with the same customers, and see and hear most of the same things. In some sense, they are occupying the same space: the only relevant thing that differentiates them from their local counterpart is that they are not occupying it physically.

What virtual work has taught us, though, is that one’s physical presence really isn’t an important factor in a lot of jobs (excluding jobs that require physical labor, in-person contact, and work that is location-specific, of course). If the work of a Freshii cashier does not require physical presence, then it hardly seems fair that one be compensated at a much lower rate than one’s colleagues for simply not being there. After all, if two employees were physically in the same space, working the same job, we would think they should be compensated the same. Why, then, should it matter if one is there physically, and the other virtually?

Again, this kind of unfairness is present in many different kinds of outsourced work, and whether physical distance has ever been a justification for different rates of pay is up for debate. But with physical presence feeling less and less necessary for so many jobs, new working possibilities call into question the ethics of past practices.

Hybrid Workplaces and Epistemic Injustice

photograph of blurred motion in the office

The pandemic has, among other things, been a massive experiment in the nature of work. The percentage of people who worked from home either part- or full-time jumped massively over the past year, not by design but by necessity. We are, however, nearing a time in which people may be able to return to working conditions that existed pre-pandemic, and there have thus been a lot of questions about what work will look like going forward. Recent studies have indicated that while many people want to continue working from home at least some of the time, many also miss face-to-face interactions with coworkers, not to mention having a reason to get out of the house every once in a while. Businesses may also have financial incentives to have their employees working from home more often in the future: having already invested in the infrastructure needed to have people work from home over the past year, businesses could save money by not having to pay for the space for all their employees to work in-person at once. Instead of having everyone return to the office, many businesses are thus contemplating a “hybrid” model, with employees splitting their time between the office and home.

While a hybrid workplace may sound like the best of both worlds, some have expressed concerns with such an arrangement. Here’s a big one: those who are able to go into the office more frequently will be more visible, and thus may be presented with more opportunities for advancement than those who spend most of their working hours at home. There are many reasons why one might want or need to work from home more frequently, but one significant reason is that one has obligations to care for children or other family members. This may result in greater gender inequalities in the workplace, as women who take on childcare responsibilities will especially be at a disadvantage in comparison to single men who are able to put in a full workweek in the office.

Hybrid workplaces thus risk creating injustices, in which some employees will be unfairly disadvantaged, even if it is not the explicit intention of the employer. While these potential disadvantages have been portrayed in terms of opportunities for advancement, here I want to discuss another potential form of disadvantage which could result in injustices of a different sort, namely epistemic injustices.

Epistemic injustices are ones that affect people in terms of their capacities as knowers. For instance, if you know something but are unfairly treated as if you don’t, or are not taken as seriously as you should be, then you may be experiencing an epistemic injustice. Or, you might be prevented from gaining or sharing knowledge, not because you don’t have anything interesting to contribute, but because you’re unfairly being left out of the conversation. While anyone can experience epistemic injustice, marginalized groups that are negatively stereotyped and underrepresented in positions of power are especially prone to be treated as lacking knowledge when they possess it, and to be left out of opportunities to gain knowledge and share the knowledge they possess.

We can see, then, how hybrid workplaces may contribute to a disparity not only in terms of opportunities for advancement, but also in terms of epistemic opportunities. These are not necessarily unrelated phenomena: for instance, if those who are able to put in more hours in the office are more likely to be promoted, then they will also have more opportunities to gain and share knowledge pertinent to the workplace. There may also be more subtle ways in which those working from home can be left out of the conversation. For instance, one can still be in communication with their fellow employees from home (via virtual meetings, chats, etc.), they will miss out on the more organic interactions that occur when people are working face-to-face. It tends to be easier to just walk over to a coworker if you have a question then to schedule a Zoom call, a convenience that can result in some people being asked for their input much more frequently than others.

Of course, those working in hybrid environments do not need to have any malicious intent to contribute to epistemic injustices. Again, consider a situation in which you and a colleague are able to go back to the office on a full-time basis. You are likely to acquire a lot more information from that colleague who you are able to have quick and easy conversations with than the person working from home whose schedule you need to work around. You might not necessarily think that one of your colleagues is necessarily better than the other, but it’s just easier to talk to the person who’s right over there. What ends up happening, however, is that those who need to work from home more often are gradually going to be left out of the conversation, which will prevent them from being able to contribute in the same way as those working in the office.

These problems are not necessarily insurmountable. Writing in Wired, Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, writes that, “Unquestionably sticking to systems and processes that made an office-based model successful will doom any remote model to fail,” and mentions a number of measures that his company has taken to attempt to help remote workers communicate with one another, including “coffee chats” and “all-remote talent shows.” While I cannot in good conscience condone remote talent shows, it is clear that if businesses are going to have concerns of epistemic justice in mind, then making sure that there are more opportunities for there to be open lines of communication, including the possibility for informal conversations with remote workers, will be crucial.

The Short- and Long-Term Ethical Issues of Working from Home

photograph of an empty office looking out over city

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a shift of working habits as almost half of the U.S. workforce now are able to work from home. This has led many to ask whether it might be the beginning of a more permanent change in working habits. Such a move carries significant ethically-salient benefits and drawbacks regarding urban development, climate change, mental health, and more.

Despite the apparent novelty of the idea of having many permanently working from home, this was the norm for most people for most of human civilization. It was the industrial revolution and 18th and 19th century reforms to travel which encouraged our need for a separate place of work. Two hundred years ago most people in North America lived and worked on farms. Artisans making textiles and other goods largely working from home. The steam engine allowed for a centralized location that could allow for efficient mass production. Early industrial production even still relied on the “putting-out system,” where centralized factories would make goods and then subcontract the finishing work on the item to people who worked from home. In other words, the concept of “going to work” everyday is a relatively recent invention in human history.

This change had many far-reaching effects. The need to be close to work resulted in urbanization. In the United States the population who lived in urban areas between 1800 and 1900 jumped from 6% to 40%. Urban development and infrastructure followed suit. Artisans who once worked for a price for their goods now worked for a wage for their time. Work that was once governed by sunlight became governed by the clock. Our political and social norms all changed as a result in ways that affect us today. It’s no surprise, for instance that during this time, as employees began working together in a common area, that the first labour unions were formed. Returning to the working habits of our ancestors could have similarly profound effects that are difficult to imagine today, however there are several morally-salient factors that we can identify in a 21st century context.

There are several moral advantages of having more people work from home rather than going to work every day. Working from home during COVID is obviously a move directed at minimizing the spread of the virus. However, permanently working from home also permanently reduces the risk of spreading other infections in the workplace, particularly if it involves less long-distance travel. Approximately 14 million workers in the United Stated are employed in occupations where exposure to disease or infection occurs at least once per week. Reducing physical interaction in the workplace and thereby minimizing infections within it can improve productivity.

In addition, less people going to work means less commuting. 135 million Americans commute to work. Avoiding commute could save an employee up to thousands of dollars per year. The shift has secondary effects as well; less commuting means less wear and tear to public infrastructure like roads and highways and less congestion in urban areas. This is helpful because new infrastructure projects are having a hard time keeping up the increases in traffic congestion. Such changes may also help with tackling climate change, since 30% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are for transportation.

On the other hand, it’s possible that working from home could be more harmful to the climate. Research from WSP UK shows that remote working in the UK may only be helpful in the summer. They found that environmental impacts could be higher in the winter due to the need to heat individual buildings instead of a single office building which can be more efficient. In other words, the effect on climate change may not be one-sided.

Working from home can also be less healthy. For example, the concept of the sick day is heavily intertwined with the idea of going to a workplace. The temptation may be to abolish the concept of the sick day with the reasoning being that the whole point of a sick day is to stay home and avoid making co-workers sick. However, even if one can work from home our bodies need rest. Workplace experts have found that those who work from home tend to continue to work during a sickness and this may lengthen recovery time, lead to burn-out, and ultimately lead to less productivity. It can also be unhealthy to develop an “always on” mentality where the line between work and home becomes blurred. According to a recent Monster survey, 51% of Americans admitted to experiencing burnout while working from home as the place of rest and relaxation merges with the place of work. This may have the effect of increasing the number of mental health problems in the workplace while simultaneously making them more physically isolated from fellow workers.

Another potential downside centers on the employer-employee relationship. For example, working from home permanently allows employees to reside in areas where the cost of living is cheaper. This may mean salary reductions since a business will now have a larger pool of potential employees to choose from and thus can offer lower, but still competitive, salaries in areas where the cost of living is cheaper. Facebook has already made moves in this direction. This means job searches will become more competitive and this could drive down salaries even lower. At the same time, large offices will not be needed, and larger urban areas may find decreased economic activity and a drop in the value of office buildings.

The shift also means that an employer is able to infringe on the privacy of home life. Employers are now tracking employees at home to ensure productivity, with software able to track every word typed, GPS location, and even to use a computer’s camera. In some cases, these features can be enabled without an employee even knowing they are being monitored. This will only exacerbate a long-standing ethical concern over privacy in the 21st century.

Finally, it is morally important to recognize that shifting to working from home on a large scale could have disproportionate effects on different communities and different job sectors. The service sector may struggle in areas that no longer have heavy workplace congestion. Also, plumbers and electricians cannot work from home so there are certain industries that literally cannot move in that direction completely. Service industries are often segregated by race and gender, thus ensuring that any of the opportunities enjoyed by working from home will not be equitably shared. It also means that disruptions in these industries caused by the shifting working habits of others could be disproportionately felt.

A permanent shift towards remote working habits carries certain specific moral concerns that will need to be worked out. Whether it will lead to more productivity, less productivity, a greater carbon footprint, a smaller carbon footprint, and so on, will depend on the specific means used and on the new work habits we adopt over the course of time as new laws, policies, and regulations are formulated, tested, and reformed. In the long term, however, the most significant ethical impacts could be the radical social changes it may cause. The shift from working from home to working at work dramatically changed society in less than a century, and the shift back may do the same.

Permalancing and What it Means for Work

A wooden desk holds up the equipment for an at home office

In early March David Tamarkin, editor of the cooking website Epicurious, posted a tweet advertising an “amazing job” for an editorial assistant. While the position called for all the buzzword-worthy characteristics of a desirable employee – such as being “sharp, organized, [and] cooking-obsessed” – it also used a phrase many found confusing, uncomfortable, and possibly illegal: “full-time freelance.” When asked to clarify what, exactly, it meant to say that a position was both freelance and full-time, Tamarkin initially clarified that it meant that it would be “Paid hourly at 40 hrs/week, no benefits.” Later, Tamarkin would reclarify that his initial clarification was a mistake, stating that the position was indeed eligible for benefits. This update, however, was only made after many Twitter users questioned the position’s legality, with some even tagging the New York State Department of Labor in their response.

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The Cost of Motherhood

Image of a woman holding a young child

Having a child is one of the most impactful decisions a person will make in their life. And yet, this decision affects women much more than it does men. From the physical act of birthing a child to the thousand daily needs encountered in a day, women frequently inhabit what Mary Mellor has called ”biological time”. ”Biological time” is distinct from remunerative, capitalist time in that it includes all the work that is necessary for the maintenance and flourishing of human life, from giving birth and palliative care, to feeding, clothing, providing emotional reassurance, interpersonal interaction, education, laundry, specialist appointments and play dates, birthdays and leisure activities, and health care. This means that women, far from possessing leisure time, have traditionally created it for men by taking care of the innumerable necessities of daily life, including child rearing.

In 2018, it seems strange that we still face a gendered division of labour that was first rationalized in Aristotle’s Politics. Aristotle justified a labour division which grouped women (and slaves) as domestic workers – an arrangement he found reasonable in order to free up the male household head for self-development and the presumably nobler activities of studying philosophy and city governance.

Some strides have been made to close the gender gap in household tasks and caregiving. While the gaps have narrowed somewhat, they are far from closed. Men typically receive adulation and support for the parenting and adulthood tasks which they complete. A man taking his children grocery shopping will likely be perceived by bystanders as a swoon-worthy superhero, while a mother doing the same thing is more likely to be scrutinized. This unfair standard follows women into the workplace, where men who leave early to take care of family members are seen as responsible individuals, but women struggle to be seen as competent and professionally motivated when they do the same thing. White men who have children earn a fatherhood bonus, while women who have children earn 20 percent less in the long-term.

The design of the work week itself is not open to those who are responsible for giving care. Instead, the structure of contemporary labour presupposes a gendered division of labour whereby the worker is freed to devote eight or more consecutive hours daily without interruptions or crises from home. While economists have already critiqued the 40-hour work week, with evidence showing higher productivity and well-being among workers for less and more flexible work hours, companies are slow to follow the evidence. Even in businesses which have implemented these policies, women may avoid taking advantage of proffered flexibility to forestall being judged as “uncommitted”. On-site child-care remains a pipe dream for most professions. Even among Fortune 100 companies, which typically have generous terms towards its employees, only seventeen offer daycare.

Loss of leisure, earnings, workplace respect, and career opportunities are not the only penalties women face in virtue of having a reproductive body. Women bear intimate scrutiny, politicization, policing and even bans for actions regarding all their choices – from contraception to breastfeeding, while condoms, Viagra, and even public urination are taken for granted as essential.

Given these challenges, it is hardly shocking to surmise why young women are choosing to have fewer or no children. Young women realize that the idea that women can ”have it all” remains a cruel joke, and it seems they are responding with pragmatism to harsh facts.

But just as was the case with capitalism’s role in shifting gender roles (though in many cases by increasing women’s work rather than transforming it), we may be headed toward another shift. The post-recession economic challenges Millennial women face may place the zero-sum competition between career and family in a much starker light, to the degree that many are embracing their professional and leisure capacities fully to the point of declining parenthood.

It is clear that women, as individuals, are responding in creative and complex ways to competing social structures that combine to exclude them from ”having it all”. Women are negotiating their limited opportunities to make the best of their singular lives. Nonetheless, the struggles that they face reveal a society where lack of gender parity runs much deeper than numbers. When we look at women’s meager options, they reveal how the structure of late capitalism, imbued with patriarchal assumptions, has made absolutely no provision or priority for caring and the culturing of humans. Women are aware that they subsidize not only career and leisure opportunities for their partners, but also subsume the costs of producing workers, citizens and leaders of society as a whole. It is our collective responsibility to address the lingering absence of care in our economic and social structures that have so marginalized women from full participation in remunerative and political life, separated men from the responsibilities and the humanity of caring labour, and left our social structures and institutions so alienated from the needs of the human spirit.

Free Riders, Agency Fees, and the Fairness of Public Sector Unions

A low-angle shot of the U.S. Supreme Court

An upcoming case in the United States Supreme Court could have significant effects on the state of the American Labor Movement: Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. At stake is whether public sector unions can require employees who have not joined the union to pay agency fees—fees that go to exclusively cover the costs of negotiating the labor contract that covers all workers at a workplace, union members and non-members alike. If the court were to rule against the legality of required agency fees, this would overturn a previous Supreme Court decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which held that agency fees were allowable, just so long as those fees were not used for the political or ideological activities of the union.

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Overworking the Western World

There’s no question that technology has caused Americans and others around the world to work more. It’s not uncommon for a typical white-collar job in the United States to come with a company phone, company iPad and company computer. All these devices contribute to increased work and work-related stress. Carol Olsby, a member of the Society for Human Resource Management’s expertise panel, states, “Technology allows us to work anywhere, anytime.” This culture of overworking is prominent in the United States and worldwide, and has detrimental effects for mental health.

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