“Great Resignation” and technological revolution: because the debate on Citizenship Income is not just a political bagatella, but a topic that requires a profound philosophical analysis
Already severely tested by the blow of Covid-19, theUS economy has to face the phenomenon of “Great resignation” (Great Resignation or Big Quit, as the overseas press calls it): beyond eight million workers they left their respective jobs during the summer, an all-time record for the last twenty years.
The problem triggered by these mass resignations is twofold: on the one hand it is not easy to replace those who leave with workers with similar skills, but above all it is the symptom of a much deeper malaise than you might think. Certainly the US labor market is radically different from the European one, especially as regards the fluidity of careers. However, the fact that 28% of those who have decided to leave their posts cannot leave their posts indifferent. without having a concrete alternative.
PROFESSIONAL STRESS IN THE TIME OF COVID
How to explain this phenomenon? The most frequent cause is the burnout, a condition of chronic stress caused by the work context, with particular regard to the impact it can have on one’s own mental health. Moreover, the latter is a topic on which, it should be remembered, numerous awareness campaigns and encouragement to talk about it publicly without shame have recently been developed. Certainly a worthwhile cultural operation, which has attracted greater attention from public opinion.
The shock of COVID-19 has certainly contributed and the various lockdowns, which have also turned the daily lives of millions of workers upside down, have made it possible to reconsider consolidated habits such as the home-office routine, with all the difficulties in terms of work-life balance which had been discussed for years, but between smart-working forced and one sociability increasingly mutilated they have become parts of the common lexicon.
40% of resignations indicate burnout as a reason for their choice. The investigation “The great resignation update” also sees 34% of the farewells attributed to organizational changes and 20% for lack of flexibility, little consideration in the company and / or discrimination. A serious discomfort and, moreover, transversal to different sectors: the most affected is that of accommodation and catering, but closely followed by retail trade, wholesale trade, health care, education, professional and business services and finally manufacturing.
THE SKILLS MISMATCH PROBLEM
Replacement, as we said, is not easy at all and the problem does not concern “only” the main Western economy. The “Skills mismatch”, or rather the gap between the professional skills needed by companies and those available on the market, is also photographed by the research of Talents Venture, in collaboration with PHYD, the platform based on artificial intelligence with which Adecco provides support in the intersection between supply and demand for professional skills.
The upheaval imposed by the pandemic and by the fast technological innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution causes companies to struggle to find the most suitable job profiles for their needs, which is only possible in about one case out of three (36%). This gap is wider in some specific sectors: it rises to 59% for graduates in Electronic Engineering and to 51% for those who trained in Industrial Engineering.
The most difficult profiles to find are those able to deal with data management: starting from the roles of data protection at the data governance up to even those of cybersecurity to conclude with expert profiles of Artificial Intelligence and computer programming. The skills most sought after by companies concern the so-called areas STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), in which women are still in a clear minority (39%), despite various attempts to intervene on gender-gap.
FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS
The impetuous progress of technological development certainly brings many advantages, but also some ethical problems. Among these, the consideration on the role of human resources, which certainly must try to keep up with the times thanks to continuous training, but which in the long term will be increasingly replaced byArtificial intelligence, which evolving represents an alternative not only cheaper, but often also more effective, at least for some functions.
For this reason, it is necessary to take into consideration a future in which the dignity and social role of the person is no longer tied in two ways to his professional occupation. This implies, among other things, that in the lasting debate on Citizenship Income we have to level up. If it is right to carefully deal with problems of application, distortions and abuses by the usual “crafty”, the theme must also be seen in its enormous philosophical scope. From the name chosen for this new welfare tool, there is the seed of a real one cultural revolution, because our society is instead founded on work.
THE MEETING POINT BETWEEN MARXISM AND CAPITALISM
The centrality of work is written in unequivocal terms in the opening of the Italian Constitution, but it is also an element shared by otherwise opposing worldviews. Marxism and capitalism are extremes that touch on the very theme of work: if Karl Marx he called for “workers all over the world, unite”, for the Scottish philosopher Walter Smith, considered the father of capitalist thought, well-being and happiness would have sprung from the coexistence of so many selfishnesses, held together by that empathy that he saw as an intrinsic characteristic of man. And of capitalism as a model of society.
IF THE WORK DEFINES THE IDENTITY
Although from different points of view, work becomes the tool for defining and affirming one’s identity, a concept that is also found in ethics Calvinist and even, albeit in a perverse form, in Nazism. The infamous written “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes you free) it was a mocking snatch at the title of a story Lorenz Diefenbach, who in 1873 wrote about gamblers and scammers discovering the way to virtue through hard work. With different variations, they also dealt with the theme Sigmund Freud, Herbert Marcuse And Max Weber and, much more modestly, in fact, we also deal with it every day, when we introduce ourselves saying “I’m a journalist”: whatever your profession, the lexical choice is certainly not irrelevant, since perhaps it would be more correct to say “I do the journalist”. There is no certainty of tomorrow.
Yet it is a fact that we are defined by what we do every day, for most of the hours at our disposal, and also regardless of the economic return and the standard of living that suits us. We are our job, like it or not, and that is also why we struggle to find an agreement on the Basic income: far from being “only” an identity theme of the Five Star Movement, it is probably the only true revolutionary idea of our time.
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