On 8 October 2018 we published the BTS Round Table on the Future of Work, in which 12 experts explain recent changes to the nature of work and offer new ideas in labour policy, organising, and activism. This piece has been written in response.
In demarcating the most important changes in the nature of work in recent years, Anannya Bhattacharjee, a participant in BTS’s recent Future of Work Round Table, rightly points to the emergence of global production networks as a crucial development. Moreover, she is absolutely correct in calling attention to the fact that employment relationships in these global production networks are very often short-term, insecure, and poorly paid. “In India,” she argues, “job creation is really the creation of miserable jobs”. This is no exaggeration. Despite very high levels of economic growth since the early 2000s, more than 80% of India’s workers scramble to earn a precarious living in the informal sector. The richest 1% of the population, meanwhile, corner more than 70% of all wealth generated in the economy.
In addition to being a sharp diagnosis of the emerging world of work under capitalism in our times, Bhattacharjee’s observations also point us towards an important insight about poverty in the Global South. It is created and reproduced through global production networks.
