The deputy director of the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics (LSE), Kirsten Sehnbruch He assured that in Chile, there is a poor quality of employment and that the measures to increase the minimum wage are “a patch.”
“It is not enough for people to participate in the labor market. I know that occupancy rates are still lower than they were before the pandemic. That also has to do with the economic context and with that cost of living crisis in particular. There is an issue of participation. “That does not guarantee that they have a good job that serves to live,” she said in conversation with Al Pan Pan with Mirna Schindler.
“There are other characteristics of employment in Chile that have not improved. For example, employment stability,” she added.
Due to these problems, “the segment of workers who have poor quality of employment, in many cases, are workers who are not covered by minimum wage legislation. That is an absolutely fundamental point. And the other thing is that they are workers who are going permanent. Simply move from one informal or other poor quality job to the next. So, income alone is not enough for you. You have to have a stable income, with predictable hours. Not working one week for 80 hours and the next day, the following week, not having a job.”
“You have to have continuity not only in your employment, but also in your income streams. So, of course, these measures that are being discussed about increasing the minimum wage, They are all patch measurements in the background. We must think about the labor market from a much more holistic perspective. Support workers, for example, to train themselves, establish social policies or public policies that support them in this process,” added the expert.
In that sense, he added that “to join the labor market, from the perspective of a middle segment of the labor market, it has to be worth it. And that means earning a worthwhile salary, but also working continuously. These are conditions that allow them, for example, to reconsider their family obligations with those at work. So there is a change in attitude that is noticeable internationally and the employment rate has dropped in many countries. As a result of the pandemic, as a result of a change in attitude towards work, employment, this is happening everywhere in the world.”
“Labor and social policy, and public policy, is very slow to react to these phenomena,” he concluded.
