A SERIES of reports released in the first quarter of this year revealed what we already know - essential workers in Ireland continue to be exploited.
Increasingly, workers, post-pandemic, in hotels, restaurants, healthcare, education and retail are tired of working for low pay and in lousy conditions.
We appear to be reaching a critical juncture where the future of work is up for grabs - the status quo is no longer working.
Recent data from the Central Bank shows the wealthiest 10% of Irish households are more than five times as rich as those in the poorer half of households and hold almost half of the total net wealth in the country (€518 billion).
The figures show an increase in the percentage of people experiencing deprivation in 2023. This includes being unable to experience two or more of 11 basic deprivation items - such as being unable to keep their house adequately warm, unable to have a family get-together once a month for drinks or a meal, and unable to afford new clothes or a warm waterproof coat.
Almost one in five (17.3%) people were experiencing enforced deprivation (up from 16.6% in 2022 and 13.7% in 2021. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to widen these inequalities even further.
Meanwhile, workers in the gig economy continue to be forced into bogus self-employment after hopes of a breakthrough at European level to protect their rights were torpedoed recently.
We see these workers regularly on our streets, cycling through all weathers, across cobbles and over potholes, dodging car-spray from SUVs grinding forward in rush-hour traffic on Cork streets.
These are the gig economy - working on platforms such a Deliveroo or JustEat. Often migrants, they are usually classified as self-employed and not entitled to the minimum wage along with protections under the law that employed workers have.
In 2022, there were an estimated 28 million people in this category in the EU, and this is expected to rise to 45 million in 2025.
The latest Food Insecurity Survey from Barnardos and Aldi reports that the past 12 months has seen household finances “increasingly stretched to the point of breaking”.
Many parents are cutting back on their own food, borrowing money for food, relying on food banks, and cutting back on spending on other household activities, including clothing, household bills, medical costs and children’s activities, in order to ensure their children have enough to eat.
The global financial crisis of 2008 followed by the Covid-19 pandemic - both of which necessitated massive government action - demonstrated the intrinsic myth of the free market and its ability when left to itself to self-regulate.
Marjorie Kelly, in Wealth Supremacy (2023), describes how, with the flick of a pen, governments demonstrated how collective power was there to tackle financial collapse, climate change, pandemics, and unemployment.
“The neoliberal agenda of limited government, tax cuts, and deregulation seemed like a zombie,” wrote Kelly. “Conservatives cling to their agenda of tax cuts and limited government because, as the parties of wealth, they’re animated by wealth’s greatest fear: that their wealth will be taken.”
Kelly suggests that, with chaos mounting, more are realising that solutions commensurate with the scale of the challenge mean system change. She describes a new form of economy, or ‘democratic economy’, that in its fundamental design aims to meet the essential needs of all of us.
A key element is the need to respond to the voices and concerns of regular people and share prosperity with regard to race, gender, national origin or wealth.
“At the core of a democratic economy is the common good, in keeping with the founding aim of democracy in politics,” wrote Kelly.
A small group in Cork city with a miniscule budget, Cork Healthy Cities, is leading the charge in terms of listening to the voices of communities and giving them an equal place at the decision-making table.
At the recent launch of their book, Commitment, Collaboration And Community, to celebrate ten years as a Healthy City, we heard that the brand is about real people rather than lobbyists and growth.
Rather than glossing over and ignoring deprivation, inadequacies in supports are identified and solutions collectively considered by community leaders on an equal footing with city council, health services and academia.
American politician and activist, Bernie Sanders in his new book It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism, suggests if we want a new era of change to benefit everyone, rather than widening inequality, we need to start preparing now.
“We have the power to shape a future that puts the benefits of social, political and technological progress to work for the working class. The challenge now is to see the power.”
If technological progress like robots and artificial intelligence are to benefit all citizens and not just replace workers with computers, Sanders suggests robust measures need to be instituted now.
Measures to be considered include: anti-trust regulation and prosecution to ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of AI; taxing robots that replace humans; a shortened and more flexible working week; and giving workers more control - including positions in the corporate boardroom and an ownership stake in the companies that employ them.
As the free market is shown up to be a lie, and economic models crumble under the false premise of exponential economic growth being possible within the constraints of functioning ecosystems, a new model of doing business is needed that respects all workers, and the biosphere that contains them.
In his book, Future Public Health, (2012), Phil Hanlon, a public health physician who spent his working life addressing the health and wellbeing of the people of Glasgow, argues that in our current efforts to promote the health and wellbeing of populations, we tend to focus too much on science (the true) at the expense of the beautiful (aesthetics) and the good (ethics).
Science is, of course, critical. But science and reason will not be enough if we are to engage with the climate crisis and with all those other problems that impact on health and wellbeing in the profit-centred and unequal world we live in today.
Cork Healthy Cities is leading the way by listening and responding to the needs of all its citizens.
As other cities, including the capital, wrestle with the dual needs of presenting a global ‘brand’ that projects a city that is young, vibrant, squeaky clean and open for business, very often the stark and much harsher reality for many of its citizens is airbrushed away.
Instead of focusing entirely on profit and growth, it is now abundantly clear that if we are to limit the harms of climate change and promote health, wellbeing and human flourishing, we need broad- based movements that are grounded in science but with the capacity to engage individuals at the level of the beautiful and the good.
Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork.
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