It is necessary to make flexibility more flexible – 07/11/2023 – Policies and Justice

Currently we have been talking a lot about elements that involve the flexibility of work. Whether for its reflections on the most dangerous sides, such as precariousness, or in its reflection connected to the winds of time after the Covid-19 pandemic, such as the issue around hybrid work – a theme present in debates on social networks, newspaper reports or as a central object in the articulation of public policies and legislative reforms.

In fact, everything that crosses the universe of work in the last 50 years, at least, is likely to be touched and discussed in the light of flexibility, which is strongly associated with discourses in favor of freedom, autonomy, self-determination, among others.

The master key of any debate involving work has been freedom and autonomy, but, as several studies and surveys have shown, what we have called freedom has been more an element of “subordination” and degradation of life.

Starting with issues involving flexibility of time and space. The deregulation of rigid working hours, or the expansion (quite strengthened, at least for office jobs) of the possibility of working remotely, also involve the interest of many male and female workers in not having another day marked by the rigidity of the “clockwork”. “, or even with some autonomy to organize your schedule in the way that suits you best.

For some profiles, especially women (largely responsible for caring for family and relatives) and people who live far from the centers, flexibility could ideally mean better quality of time, given that it is possible to reconcile work activities with other activities. of life, as well as avoiding the time spent in chaotic traffic in big cities (time and money, it’s worth mentioning).

Still, flexibility has also been the subject of discussions about “non-specialization” or rather, the possibility of developing and learning new activities in the work process.

This discussion displaces –it does not ignore, but puts it on another level of importance– the issue of training (technical and academic) to the need for continuous learning, or even for multifunctional job vacancies, that is, the description of what is done, on a daily basis. -a-day, goes far beyond the title that the position fills.

Both in terms of time and tasks, what data on the world of work has been demonstrating is a huge trap in which flexibility tends, in the end, to serve the interests of workers much less.

Can there be more time? He can. Could there be more possibilities of not having to move around so much? He can. But along with this we have seen work intensification processes (you have to do more and more), acceleration of the pace (you have to do it in less time) and even a certain standardization (you have to follow pre-configured models , to ensure that there are no detours).

All this, although quite complex, in the name of freedom and autonomy ends up, for many people, sounding like “well, this is how it has to be”.

For this reason, to escape the pitfalls that entangle the discussion, but not stop talking about what matters (yes: flexibility matters; people want a life with more time available, dedicated to activities that are not just work , time for family and leisure), I propose that we consider the word dignity as a master key.

Dignity is a way of seeing or even changing the extent to which flexibility adds to our lives. We have more time, but does that mean it’s really free for us to do what brings us joy, or is it busy with more work?

The income we have, from this flexibility, is really necessary for us to live with what we need, or every month we have to do a “dance of the bills” to know what we want and can afford, without knowing what tomorrow will be like.

The idea of ​​dignity is basically the ability to see, in the medium and long term, the sustainability of the system. Flexibility should mean improving, developing, and not “wearing”, or even the buzzword “resilience” – which at best and at worst involves enduring the pain and suffering of the processes that flexibility has represented today.

If flexibility is imperative for better living, working, creating and innovating conditions, then it should be based on dignity. After all, there is no prosperity without dignity.

* This article was edited by journalist Giulia M. Ebohon

The editor, Michael França, asks each participant of the space “Politics and Justice” of the Sheet suggest a song to the readers. In this text, the one chosen by Tulio Custódio was “Aquarius/ Let the Sunshine in”, from The 5th Dimension.