Meaningful work
We advocate for a job guarantee: anyone willing should be able to find socially and ecologically useful work for a decent living wage. There is more than enough to do to achieve an ecological and just transition. Essential work like care, education, nature restoration, sustainable agriculture and food production, maintenance or public transport must be given the recognition it deserves. Emergency income for reskilling will allow for the phase-out of jobs in environmentally harmful sectors and the phase-in of sustainable jobs. Fairly sharing the necessary work to enable everyone’s access to it can furthermore bring about a working time reduction. This will help to reduce stress and free up time for friends, family, community and oneself.
The transformation of our energy systems and production patterns will inevitably affect the labor market. Yet, the working class should not be carrying the burden of making our economy ecologically sustainable: the transformation to a new economy has to be done with redistributive and equality principles in mind.
Shifting the economy away from relentless consumption and the globalization of production, doesn’t have to mean less jobs. But, the kind of work and its appreciation will change dramatically. Currently, work is a necessary but precarious, repetitive and exhausting activity for many people in our society. At the same time, a significant part of the population wastes their precious skills to jobs that are well-paid but socially and ecologically detrimental.
In the economy that we envision for the future, work is more equally shared, brought back into local contexts and more meaningful to those performing it. One step in this direction could be scaling down, eventually phasing out harmful sectors such as fossil fuel extraction, advertising, air travel and fast fashion. To enable people to transition from wasteful work towards green and social jobs, reskilling programmes and temporary emergency incomes will need to be put in place.
In parallel, a universal job guarantee for social and ecological work is crucial. There will be plenty of hands and minds needed to renovate and insulate the built environment, to provide care to the young and the elderly, to increase local food self-sufficiency, to conduct and maintain an expanding public transport infrastructure, to do cleaning, repair and recycling work and to restore and extend local ecosystems. Governments have to take the lead in this transformation of labor because the market system fails to recognize the importance of these essential activities.
The proposed transition to meaningful work is thus more about a new appreciation of all types of paid and unpaid labor. Especially important is the recognition and re-valuing of low-paid and unpaid labor of social reproduction (craftworks, caring, cleaning, etc.) that is usually performed by underprivileged groups. Consequently, a proper living wage and good, secure working conditions are central to the job guaranteed by the state. This can stimulate many to transfer to sectors essential for the realization of an ecologically sustainable and socially just society.
A more meaningful relation to work and better life quality for all can also be stimulated through work-time reduction and relocalization. Turning the tide of globalization and instead producing more goods locally will mean less transport, less waste and more appreciation for local products and craft works. Re-localizing the economy also has the potential to reinforce social relations and cohesion.
Similarly, there have been studies that point out that working less paid hours improves quality of life, because it frees time and energy for friends, family as well as communal and caring activities. Work-time reduction will be made possible in the new economy by having more people work, but all of them working less, in order for the burden and benefits to be shared more equally. While in the case of higher income jobs, work time reduction can come along with a reduction in wage, for lower incomes, wage levels should be maintained untouched so as to ensure a minimum level of life quality.
This explainer is not necessarily endorsed by all coalition partners
Further reading
Marguerite van den Berg. 2022. Werk is geen oplossing, Amsterdam: Walburg Pers.
Helen Hester & Nick Srnicek. 2023 After Work. A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time. Verso.
Helena Norberg-Hodge. 2019. Local is our future. Towards an economy of happiness. Local Futures.