A job is better than no job

On Monday evening I was at the launch of SITA's new report examining the potential creation of social value in the waste and resources industry. I haven't yet had a chance to read the report fully so will save that for another post.

At the event Caroline Jackson, the former MEP who was Rapporteur for the revised Waste Framework Directive, raised concerns that the sort of jobs being created at the low end of the industry (i.e. work on picking lines at recycling facilities) were essentially demeaning and that the unemployed should instead be given a 'hand up' (she was of course light on detail as to how this could be achieved).

I was pleasantly surprised by the robust response from Colin Crooks of the London Community Resource Network. He essentially made the extremely valid point that a job is better than no job. He has apparently worked with people in some of the most deprived and hard to reach communities in the UK and felt that they would be crying out for any kind of work which could help them reintegrate into society.

This reminded me of the sort of argument that used to be made by Paul Krugman when he was an economist (and not just a polemicist) when he pointed out that poor working conditions in the developing world may appear abhorrent compared to Western practices, but provided the workers with an important escape route from the far harsher conditions of rural poverty. I agree.

This topic is also becoming relevant in the ongoing debate about recylcate exports. There are increasing calls, both in the UK and at European level, for restrictions to be placed on recyclate exports (supposedly to protect European resources, I suspect though that that the same people would be against China restricting trade in rare earths). At a basic level, this is nonsense as the gains from trade benefit both the importing and exporting economies. Forcing European recyclate exporters to instead find domestic destinations for their material will only serve to raise costs to waste producers across the economy. (And would lead to less recycling overall if there is insufficient EU capacity to deal with all the material.)

The proponents of restrictions sometimes use examples of lower environmental and employment standards in the developing world as an unfair source of competitive advantage for overseas manufacturers and reprocessors. This  may seem reasonable at first glance, but (as above) the imposition of Western-style employment standards would perversely have the effect of reducing employment in those poorer economies and leave workers worse off by condemning them to a life of grinding rural poverty.

As workers in developing countries become richer, they will demand better working conditions and higher welfare standards. This may prove to be too slow a process for some commentators, but better times for the poor would take even longer to arrive if artificially high standards were imposed too soon.