The Globalisation of Work

The BBC is on spanking good form at the moment. Here’s another little gem from them this time on globalisation.

Usually we think of globalisation as moving production to China or the fact that you can get Coke Cola in every country in the world (except Cuba and North Korea apparently! ). We might look at how this means lower costs of production and how this might be hard to organise and manage due to language and distance. Perhaps even looking at any regional differences that are needed to make the brand work (McDonald’s have just announced their first vegetarian outlet in India, for example) and so on.

This looks at the problem from a slightly different slant. As more and more people are connecting both to the internet and each other through mobile devices the world of work is becoming more and more globalised too, for example through MIT's OpenCourseWare, Open Yale, iTunes U and Khan Academy anyone can access education that was previously rationed allowing more people access to the qualifications needed for the top jobs

The article raises several key points that Governments will have to respond to.

Firstly, in many places only high-skilled/high wage or low skill/low wage jobs will exist as the middle jobs will have migrated to low cost countries. So, what will all of those in the middle do? What kind of society will it be when there is a much greater spread of wealth and income? This could also raise issues of social mobility and opportunity.

Another issue raised is the nature of those in the high paid jobs. They will be global citizens moving to wherever their work takes them. Will this mean the rise of more hub cities like Singapore and London where the wealthy congregate leaving others to rot in ‘slums’ elsewhere? If these people and their jobs are easy to move around the world, what impact will that have on taxation? Will tax systems become more regressive with
those who can; moving to low tax countries or at least threatening too?

All in all it is not the most cheery of articles. My first thoughts were of a return to a sort of Georgian/ Victorian society with an elite with unimaginable wealth a huge struggling mass at the bottom living as an underclass. However, it is possible to look at these changes (assuming they happen) in a much more positive way.

For example, I was at a conference a while back and they were discussing online courses for High school students. In Washington State in the US the speaker said that this was starting to cause problems as students are enrolling on these courses rather than attending their local High School. The reason this is interesting is that it was the poorer areas where this was most prevalent. Students were using the flexibility that online courses offered to fit around their other responsibilities such as working to support their families, childcare of siblings and so on. These changes offer great opportunities for social mobility. If we can all access the best teaching from around the world then why wouldn’t we? The only thing stopping us would be our grades. Instead of a few mega cities, would you not rather work by a pool in your villa on Thati connected by super-fast broadband rather than in an office in rainy Staines? This would spread the wealth around the world and might lift others out of poverty.

Without really thinking about it in too much depth, there are discussion points that could seriously alter the way societies exist. The question is will it be a positive or a negative step. An excellent article for those students who want to go beyond the requirements of the exam and think about what the world they will live in will be like and how we should respond to change. Or for those who just like a good debate!