Globalization and technological advance radically transformed the labor market, expanding inequalities and leaving millions behind. Far from equitable progress, the new paradigm privileges capital and knowledge, while weakening the role of traditional work.
The technological revolution and globalization have been the two tectonic forces that reconfigured the global labor market in recent decades. Together, the foundations of traditional work and broke ancient certainties of democratic capitalism. But far from being harmoniously integrate, they have generated a growing tension between capital and labor, between the north and the south, between the winners of knowledge and those excluded from the productive model.
The opening of the world economy allowed entrepreneurs to replace workers qualified by cheaper labor, often less qualified, in other latitudes. The salary differences between countries were exploited by capital as a competitive advantage: The trade and relocation of productive processes (Outsourcing) favored companies, but left millions of workers who could not reconvert behind.
The evidence is overwhelming: Capital moved freely in a world without borders, while the dependent remained tied to its place of residence, facing the unfair competition that charges less in another country. They were replaced dependent well payments by cheaper workforce, thus expanding inequality within rich countries.
Technology, far from being a neutral factor, became the main agent of change in the labor market. Automation and artificial intelligence increased productivity, yes, but also generated a disguised structural unemployment: middle and little qualified jobs were destroyed, while the salaries of university workers, although they increased, did more due to shortage of supply than due to demand expansion. This is radically moved away from the classical “compensatory adjustment” theory, where technology was expected to displace workers, but at the same time create new opportunities for equal or greater quality. What we see today is something else: a market that rewards high rating, and relegates others to low productivity jobs or directly to unemployment.
The deepest impact does not come only from trade or industrial relocation, but from the demolishing advance of ICT. These integrated global production, relocated services, complexized financial markets and detonated an unprecedented explosion of data flows.
On that new board, the relative performance of the workforce titled was shot. The winners: who handle software, data, networks and abstract processes. Losers: who depend on physical or manual work, even in previously protected sectors such as transport, basic education or manufacturing.
Taxes, which could have balanced this asymmetry, failed. While globalization advanced, national fiscal policies became helpless or accomplices. The tax effort to mitigate inequality before and after taxes was reduced or remained ineffective. The capital, globalized, always found an escape.
It is not about stopping technology or going back in globalization, but of redesigning the rules of the game. The conflict is no longer only economic, but deeply political: democratic control must be recovered about the processes that today seem guided by market logic and algorithms.
Technology can be allied with work if there are strong institutions, progressive fiscal policies, investment in training and international architecture that forces companies to pay where they produce real value.
The great dilemma is: Do we want a world where the technical efficiency prime about social justice? Or are we willing to rethink the global economy with a more human and equitable north?
Lawyer. Specialist in Work and Employment. Master in Employment and Public Policies. Diploma in artificial intelligence applied to management.
Source: Ambito
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