What will unemployable-unemployed people do in the future?

BY STEVEN KASZAB

Once upon a time when the earth was young: workers, shop keepers, labourers and farm hands were satisfied with the opportunity of employment, a full-time permanent position, with a wage that they could depend upon.

Opportunities were presented to them at times where their wages escalated due to a shortage of workers, like what happened during the first and second world wars. Even the ladies were incorporated into fields that were once filled only by gentlemen. With the economic-political evolution introducing feminism and equal pay for equal work, a financial revolution appeared, where there were more workers for the available, limited jobs our economy had available. Ladies once working at home as working housekeepers with children wanted, in fact needed to find employment that would bring money into the household.

Most ladies were regulated to lower paying wage positions such as customer service, while men still made 25-40% more money than their lady friends. In time this wage difference has shrunk, but not by much, while employers demanded more from their employees than previously. You’d think doing more would demand a greater wage, but employees knew there were a great many people unemployed or carrying out multiple jobs at any one time. The working person had shown the financial managers that they were willing to carry more than one job at a time. The workers willingness to yield to economic demands was taken advantage of by multiple employers. The multiple job holder was born.

Unions representing their membership could only do so much for these employees. Unionizing these workers was difficult, so union bosses concentrated upon professional organizations such as the: teachers, nurses and essential workers, individuals protected by the various government agencies that pay their wages. Multiple wage workers have far less rights compared to these professionals. Unions have attempted to unionize fire fighters, essential workers of all stripes, putting pressure upon governments who have used the pandemic as an excuse to not pay these workers the wages they deserve. Political organizations and political parties make speeches proclaiming that they are champions of the working Canadian, promising this and that only to decline true transparent payments to these people whom we rely upon daily.

Workers within manufacturing, technology and agriculture fields are taken advantage of, refused the wages they deserve by employers decrying their own financial stresses because of the pandemic, and the difficult times. Retailers such as: grocery, hardware, mass retailers like Costco and Walmart make massive profits, and they fail to share their good fortune with the greeter at Walmart, the merchandiser in a retail store, the driver for Costco, the cashier at Loblaws. They who have, acquire more, while those with little make up with that amount.

Striking against these corporate giants can be financially challenging and often a useless procedure. The union will often give in once a slightly reasonable offer is given.        The very economic system we live in will not allow a strike to go as long as it once did at the turn of the century, often for months to years.

While workers need to realize their positions will ultimately be replaced by artificial technology, creative management of a few machines doing what once took dozens of people to do, the worker will become threatened, quietly pacified and then replaced. Dock workers, warehouse technicians, computer assembly, corporate farm workers, manufacturers, welders, merchandisers face timely replacement by corporations demanding more work with less cost to the shareholders.

Long ago Oscar Wilde wrote, “Your talent determines what you can do, while your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do.” Yes, you can make something of yourself, but now we all will have to compete with non-human entities. I am sounding like a luddite, am I not?

If you look to the world, you will see an ocean of people with no marketable skills, living in poverty perhaps, demanding a little of this world to survive and feed their families. That will not be enough any longer. The working person whether in a: first world or third world situation faces the same economic-socio-political challenges, that hard work will not be enough in the future to achieve an excellent, or even satisfying wage. The population is increasing, introducing many more future workers to challenge us in the future marketplace.

What will unemployable-unemployed people do in the future? How can they survive and thrive? Does anyone have a plan to save our progeny? Is climate change the only way to change the path we have been on for centuries?

Rising tidal waters, flooding of entire regions, destructive natural disasters, a cause that can unite the world finally? What gets destroyed will need to be cleaned up and rebuilt. Entire new sectors of economic development and social planning will be needed.

Events will not be all bad, but our global population will decline with mass death from: rising waters, disease and war. Nations will compete for scarce land mass and resources everywhere. The rich will flourish, the worker not so much. I feel depressed, how about you?