Hugo Rajão

This paper addresses a possible tension between the well-being of workers who produce goods and services and the rights of those whose own well-being is dependent on these goods and services. Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows. Section I discusses the implications of the tension between the right to well-being and the well-being of workers who produce some of the necessary conditions for well-being. In Section II, I examine how to measure a good job (2.1) and the challenges of providing good jobs for everyone (2.2), based on a subjectivist conception of what constitutes a good job. In Section III, I propose a toolkit of policies to promote the goal of good jobs for all, while addressing the obstacles outlined in 2.2. Specifically: Raising base wages and reducing wage ratios (3.1); workplace democracy (3.2); democratic balanced jobs (3.3); supplying workers’ representatives outside the workplace (3.4); accelerating automation (3.5); Working-time-reduction (3.6).

It is widely claimed that UBI has the potential to contribute to the de-commodification of labor, by reducing workers’ exit costs of leaving their jobs. In this paper I argue that the housing need may challenge the effectiveness of UBI as an exit option for workers. This is due to the combination of a possible income gap between the UBI amount and lower income level offered by the labor market (according to the modest UBI amounts generally proposed in the literature), high housing prices, and some specific difficulties that housing expenditures might imply in readjusting them to the UBI amount. These difficulties include: fixed prices; contractual obligations; limited consumption alternatives; search and seek efforts; logistical costs; community ties; identity considerations; relational costs; and hurdles associated with returning to a prior living situation. Thus, when attempting to implement UBI, as an exit option for workers, the need for housing should be considered as a possible feasibility constraint.