Expanding the possibilities for quality employment and personal development
The city-port region ecosystem needs to consolidate existing jobs, provide new employment opportunities, improve the situation of workers in the port community with worse conditions and ensure the overall quality of life as an asset for job creation.
All thriving cities have one thing in common: they offer people the opportunity to work together. [1] There is no successful city that does not allow people to thrive within it. The most prosperous cities house people with different skills and knowledge and offer those who start with less the opportunity to end with more.
At the same time, improving the quality of life has become necessary to create quality jobs. [2] There is an increasing link between the factors that promote this quality of life (air quality, health system, education, public space, mobility, culture, opportunities for socialisation) and the possibilities to attract, create and consolidate jobs, which depend on the ability of an economic system to integrate knowledge and regulate effectively. We define quality work as safe, healthy, respectful work activities with those who do them and enabling their personal development.
Labour in the logistics and port sector, which is highly dependent on external demand factors, is also affected by automation that increases productivity per worker. Recent waves of European deregulation have worsened the quality of port workers’ labour conditions.
Within Europe, the biggest threats to dockers in the past 10-20 years have come from states and from the European government, rather than from employers.
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
It is important to improve the quality and opportunities of port workers, but also of all those who are part of the distribution chain, such as seafarers, truck drivers or workers in the storage areas.
This should mean consolidating existing quality jobs by extending decent work opportunities to the entire port community. Since the port is an asset for prosperity and wealth, the remuneration of the professionals who work there should be proportional to the economic return they themselves generate through the port.
A really important theme that I think is often not examined is thinking about labor holistically at a port, not just in terms of the dock workers, but in terms of all of the workers who are dealing with the cargo, especially the truckers and warehouse workers, who often are immigrants or racialized, and would have very poor conditions.
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
The port authority must have decent working conditions and salaries for workers proportional to the economic movement they generate [...] without producing a caste of workers far from the reality of the city and the labor world.
Jorge Sharp
Mayor of Valparaíso
Infrastructure planning and investment with a high opportunity cost of public funds should be the result of a rigorous impact analysis. This analysis should measure not only the direct financial return but also the ability to create quality jobs.
There is a chance to make everybody much more aware of the real cost of these global trading networks. What are they costing your treasury, or what are they costing in terms of jobs.
Keller Easterling
Designer, writer and professor at Yale
The creation of employment opportunities must not compromise the quality of life of the people in this environment, which is necessary for the full development of citizens. If the quality of life is compromised, this will ultimately lead to a reduction in equal long-term professional opportunities. Understanding the port as a welfare factor (idea 12) is also key to the economic success of the city-port-territory ecosystem.
Key Actions
- Assess the quality and quantity of jobs potentially created and include them in cost-benefit analyses.
- Take into account the impact on the whole port community in assessments and forecasts of job creation through port infrastructure.
- Facilitate the organisation of workers in trade union structures and the mechanisms of dialogue with them.
Referencias
[1] Glaeser, E.L. (2012). Triumph of the city: how our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier. New York : Penguin Books.
[2] OECD. (2013). The competitiveness of global port‐cities: Synthesis report. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264205277‐en
Experts
Keller Easterling
Designer, writer and professor at Yale
Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations and Research Development Director of the Centre for Decent Work at the University of Sheffield
Jorge Sharp
Mayor of Valparaíso