2020 (1st half) Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment

Abstract

When I proposed this 2020 annual research volume to the Labor and Employment Relations Association almost two years ago, the title of the introduction chapter (which hasn’t changed) seemed completely banal to me. As I actually write the introduction to the volume in early April 2020, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. The world is changing more rapidly each day than I have ever expe-rienced in my lifetime. Because of this, it is becoming difficult to imagine what work and employment will be like beyond 2020.As of the time of writing, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases world-wide is approaching 2 million, and the number of deaths has surpassed 125,000. The pandemic is affecting at least 210 countries and territories. In an attempt to “flatten the curve” and avoid overwhelming healthcare systems, many countries have closed their borders and declared states of emergency. Many governments have ordered all nonessential businesses to cease in-person operations and have closed schools indefinitely. Labor-market statistics capturing the early effects of COVID-19 estimate that more than 20 million jobs may have been lost in the United States (more jobs lost than during the entire Great Recession) and that my own country (Canada) experienced the single biggest negative one-month shock to hours worked since 1976 (as far back as we have comparable data). I am sure the shock is similar for many other countries. It is unclear how long the physical distancing measures and de facto shutdown of the worldwide economy will last. And, even once governments slowly start to lift restrictions, it is unlikely we will see a return to normalcy in the near future.Which does bring forth the question: Is a return to normalcy what we really want anyway? It goes without saying, of course, that we would all like to see people stop dying from the virus and once again enjoy in-person celebrations with family and visits with friends. But do we wish to return to the way we have been organizing the economy over the past four decades or more? Do we want to simply fall back on pre-crisis approaches to governing work and employment? Are we comfortable with the reality that many of our essential workers are also among the lowest-paid in our societies? As the communitarian political philos-opher Michael Sandel recently opined in the New York Times, now is the time to “ask a basic question that we have evaded over these last decades: What do we owe one another as citizens?”