A joint re­port pro­duced by the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) is urg­ing that work­places pri­ori­tise their se­cu­ri­ty and health poli­cies as pro­duc­tion and em­ploy­ment are re­ac­ti­vat­ed across the re­gion.

In the re­port, ECLAC and the ILO note that both em­ploy­ers and work­ers must come to­geth­er, to en­sure work­place safe­ty and health are para­mount, and agree up­on such poli­cies to be im­ple­ment­ed.

Edi­tion No. 22 of the re­port, Em­ploy­ment Sit­u­a­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. Work in times of pan­dem­ic: The chal­lenges of the coro­n­avirus dis­ease (COVID-19) (May 2020), was pre­sent­ed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in San­ti­a­go, Chile and Li­ma, Pe­ru, via a vir­tu­al joint press con­fer­ence led by the ECLAC Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, Ali­cia Bárce­na, and the ILO’s Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Viní­cius Pin­heiro.

The re­port analy­ses labour chal­lenges in the wake of the pan­dem­ic. One of its ma­jor find­ings is that the cri­sis will like­ly cause 11.5 mil­lion more peo­ple to be un­em­ployed in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

In ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing es­ti­mates on labour mar­ket dy­nam­ics in re­cent months, the ECLAC-ILO joint re­port ex­plores some of the poli­cies im­ple­ment­ed by coun­tries to pro­tect for­mal em­ploy­ment, safe­guard the in­come of work­ers in the for­mal and in­for­mal econ­o­my, and pro­tect the pro­duc­tive sec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies aimed at re­ac­ti­va­tion will re­quire a heavy com­po­nent of se­cu­ri­ty- and health-re­lat­ed train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion for peo­ple in the world of work. Bol­stered in­sti­tu­tion­al and bud­getary re­sources will be need­ed to en­sure com­pli­ance with such mea­sures, which should in­clude good prac­tices such as: putting in­to place a health and se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­col on the job that in­volves staff in­duc­tions; adopt­ing stag­gered sched­ules for en­ter­ing and leav­ing work to avoid crowd­ing; dis­in­fec­tion rou­tines and a hand-wash­ing sys­tem; the oblig­a­tory use of face masks; and a pro­to­col to fol­low in case a work­er has symp­toms.

The ECLAC-ILO Re­port adds that if the cri­sis is pro­longed over time, it will be nec­es­sary to take a new round of mea­sures ori­ent­ed to­wards both pro­tect­ing em­ploy­ment and work­ers’ in­come, as well as lim­it­ing the im­pact on com­pa­nies, with a spe­cial fo­cus on: vul­ner­a­ble groups such as mi­grants in non-reg­u­lar­ized sit­u­a­tions; do­mes­tic work­ers and care­tak­ers for old­er per­sons; salaried work­ers and self-em­ployed work­ers in crit­i­cal sec­tors; and health work­ers on the front lines of re­sponse to COVID-19.

Look­ing ahead, both Unit­ed Na­tions of­fi­cials—ECLAC’s Bárce­na and ILO’s Pin­heiro—note that the cri­sis is start­ing to forge nu­mer­ous changes in the work­ing world that will be­come per­ma­nent with the aim of mov­ing to­wards a “bet­ter nor­mal­i­ty”.

“The poli­cies aimed at re­cov­ery should not just strive for a ‘new nor­mal­i­ty’ that is sim­i­lar to what ex­ist­ed be­fore, but in­stead a ‘bet­ter nor­mal­i­ty’ with greater for­mal­i­ty, eq­ui­ty and so­cial di­a­logue,” Bárce­na and Pin­heiro in­di­cat­ed.

In terms of the cur­rent con­text, ECLAC and the ILO state that the pan­dem­ic has pro­duced sharp neg­a­tive ef­fects on the labour mar­ket, with con­se­quences in the for­mal sec­tor (re­duced hours, a de­cline in wages, and dis­missals), and the in­for­mal sec­tor (a loss of em­ploy­ment due to dis­tanc­ing and bans on move­ment, less ac­cess to in­come com­pen­sa­tion).

In ad­di­tion, they warn that fe­male work­ers are the most vul­ner­a­ble and that labour-in­ten­sive sec­tors such as tourism, com­merce, man­u­fac­tur­ing, re­al es­tate and en­ter­tain­ment have been heav­i­ly af­fect­ed. Al­so, the Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es that ac­count for 46.6% of all em­ploy­ment in the re­gion are at a high risk of go­ing bank­rupt.

Be­fore the pan­dem­ic, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean was ex­hibit­ing low growth, and the worst eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion since 1930 is fore­cast for 2020, with a drop in re­gion­al Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) es­ti­mat­ed at -5.3%, which will have neg­a­tive ef­fects on the labour mar­ket. The un­em­ploy­ment rate is ex­pect­ed to rise by at least 3.4 per­cent­age points, reach­ing 11.5%, which is equiv­a­lent to over 11.5 mil­lion more job­less peo­ple. If the eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion wors­ens, the un­em­ploy­ment rate will be high­er.

Along with in­creased un­em­ploy­ment, a marked de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the qual­i­ty of em­ploy­ment is ex­pect­ed, the re­port in­di­cates. In­for­mal work is the source of in­come for many house­holds in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, where the av­er­age rate of in­for­mal­i­ty is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 54%, ac­cord­ing to the ILO’s es­ti­mates, with this sit­u­a­tion af­fect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble groups.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to the ILO’s cal­cu­la­tions, the health cri­sis prompt­ed by COVID-19 and re­lat­ed con­fine­ment mea­sures are caus­ing a loss of around 10.3% of work­ing hours in the sec­ond quar­ter of this year, which is equiv­a­lent to 31 mil­lion full-time jobs (based on a 40-hour work­week).

Both UN of­fi­cials ob­served that this sit­u­a­tion will neg­a­tive­ly af­fect pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty dy­nam­ics and the achieve­ment of the 2030 Agen­da’s com­mit­ments. ECLAC es­ti­mates that in 2020 the pover­ty rate will rise by up to 4.4 per­cent­age points and ex­treme pover­ty by 2.6 per­cent­age points ver­sus 2019. This means that pover­ty would there­fore af­fect 34.7% of the Latin Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion (214.7 mil­lion peo­ple) and ex­treme pover­ty, 13% (83.4 mil­lion peo­ple). Greater in­equal­i­ty is al­so ex­pect­ed in all the coun­tries of the re­gion, with in­creas­es of be­tween 0.5% and 6.0% in the Gi­ni in­dex.

Be­yond the is­sue of pover­ty, size­able pop­u­la­tion groups live in chron­ic con­di­tions of eco­nom­ic in­se­cu­ri­ty and are vul­ner­a­ble to the loss of labour earn­ings. Thus, ECLAC has pro­posed pro­vid­ing a ba­sic emer­gency in­come (BEI) of an amount equiv­a­lent to one pover­ty line over the course of six months to meet ba­sic needs and sus­tain house­hold con­sump­tion. This would en­tail ad­di­tion­al spend­ing of 2.1% of GDP to reach all the peo­ple who will find them­selves in sit­u­a­tions of pover­ty in 2020.

In this area, the strate­gic, long-term ob­jec­tive is the grad­ual im­ple­men­ta­tion of a uni­ver­sal ba­sic in­come, fund­ed by sus­tain­able and in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms, the Com­mis­sion adds.

The re­port re­it­er­ates that it is nec­es­sary to re­think the de­vel­op­ment mod­el and con­sol­i­date the eco­nom­ic, so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal di­men­sions of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, leav­ing no one be­hind, as the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment sets forth. Fur­ther­more, in par­al­lel to labour poli­cies, a so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tem with a rights-based ap­proach is need­ed, one that is sen­si­tive to dif­fer­ences and in­cludes uni­ver­sal, re­dis­trib­u­tive and sol­i­dar­i­ty-based poli­cies.