What are the measures likely to be taken to address rising inequality and the uneven impact of the covid 19 crisis to make labour markets fairer and more equitable.?

 The pandemic has exposed deep-rooted labour market fragilities and structural inequalities, with low-paid workers, young people, women, ethnic minorities, the self-employed and informal and fixed-term workers among the hardest hit by the crisis

The unequal impact of the Covid 19 crisis:

1. Low-paid, often low-skilled, workers were particularly affected during the initial phase of the crisis. Many of the so-called “frontline workers”, who put their health at risk, exposing themselves to the virus to ensure the continuation of essential services during lockdowns, work in sectors characterised by relatively low wages.
2. Workers in diverse forms of employment that differ from full-time wage and salary work with a permanent contract – such as self-employed workers, those on temporary, on-call or part-time contracts and informal economy workers – have been highly exposed to the job and income losses prompted by the pandemic.
3. The impact of the crisis has been particularly severe for informal economy workers, for whom staying home means losing their jobs and their livelihoods.According to ILO estimates, in 2020, 1.2 billion workers in G20 economies are in informal employment ‒
4. Young people risk, once more, being among the big losers of the current crisis. 
5. Women have borne a disproportionate burden of the economic and social costs of the COVID-19 crisis. They are heavily engaged in frontline occupations in the health and care sectors, they have suffered disproportionately from job loss and reduced hours, and they often face a heavy workload at home during lockdowns and beyond

polices Measures need to taken by Governments 

Staying safe:. Small and medium-sized enterprises will require additional support to implement workplace health and safety practices.

Adapting job retention schemes. 

• Job retention schemes may have to be adapted as some sectors have or will soon reopen while others will remain constrained in their activities. Possible measures to improve sustainability and cost-effectiveness include: 

1. requiring firms to bear part of the costs of these schemes;
2.  making support time-bound but adapted to evolving circumstances; 
3. and promoting the mobility of workers from subsidised to unsubsidised jobs, 
4. including through training while on reduced hours

Ensuring adequate income protection while providing job search assistance and support. Effective targeting of minimum-income benefits will be important as fiscal pressures mount, but governments need to ensure that those in urgent need continue to receive support

Supporting job creation. Along with supportive macroeconomic policies, temporarily scaling up time limited hiring subsidies or raising incentives to take up work by offering re-employment bonuses for jobseekers can promote job creat

Building back a better labour market

1. Enabling a rapid response to economic shocks, through a mix of counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies, adequate income support for all workers, and the capacity to rapidly expand job-retention schemes. eg. job search assistance, career guidance and training)

2. Strengthening the institutions of work with action on a number of fronts: 

 Improving working conditions. Revisiting existing regulatory frameworks to ensure equal treatment of workers regardless of their employment status and ensuring adequate working conditions for all workers should be an integral part of building back better. 

 Modernising employment services and making them more flexible. Strengthening labour market resilience requires stronger institutional capacity to scale up key measures quickly, while maintaining service quality. This implies that when a crisis hit, the policy infrastructure should already be in place and can be scaled up quickly. 

 Exercising social dialogue as an effective way to design balanced and acceptable policy responses at the sectoral and national level and shape sustainable recovery paths in the medium term. For instanceIn South Africa, a ‘Coronavirus Response Task Team’ was established at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) – the country’s national social dialogue institution composed of Government :

3. Strengthening employment and social protection systems so that they cover all workers and ensure that they focus on risk prevention as much as on helping people cope with problems when they materialise. 

4. Promoting transitions from the informal to the formal economy by a mix of policies to make work in the formal economy more attractive than in the informal economy.

 5. Promoting gender equality in the labour market. . Policy initiatives to advance gender equality in the labour market will need to be reinforced in a number of areas to:

•  a. Strengthen care leave policies and family-friendly working-time arrangements and improve access to affordable childcare services and out-of-school services; 
• b. Promote women’s entrepreneurship and participation in managerial and leadership positions;
•  c. Promote home and work environments free from violence and harassment. 

6. Achieving better employment prospects for young people requires: a. Strengthening income support during economic downturns; b. Removing structural impediments to successful school-to-work transitions; c. Tackling the additional barriers faced by young women in gaining access to good quality employment.

 7. Promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all to match changing skills needs. A particular focus should be put on strengthening digital skills, especially for people with low digital literacy to enhance opportunities to work and learn online.

“Building back better” calls for increased policy coherence, in particular between economic, employment and social policies, and a whole-of-government approach. It also calls for a whole-of-society approach that involves all stakeholders and leads to the identification and implementation of country-specific policy packages. All parts of society need to contribute to this effort with a sense of shared responsibility. In this respect, social dialogue and collective bargaining can play a key role. Building back better also requires that support reaches those most in need and that improving the situation of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in the labour market receives the highest attention to avoid a further rise in inequalities