Why Change In Business Models Can Help Migrant Workers Worldwide

 

Shifting processes to more automation is looking like a more viable solution to address migrant labour woes 

According to economists, world economies will recover slowly from the pandemic’s onslaught. But the better solution should be depend less on migrant workers and more on automated services.

 

A World Bank report further suggests that pandemic-stricken countries will experience a nine per cent slump in labour productivity after three years compared with unaffected countries. Malaysia's five per cent decline in labour productivity last year supports that conclusion.

 

The migrant labour force was worst affected by the pandemic. Many remained stuck in foreign countries, without work, food or medical facilities, when the world literally went on a long lockdown. As we fought an unknown enemy, migrant workers fended each day for their lives, with fear and depression gripping their lives.

 

Many could not send money back home, to families making survival impossible. But squeezing more output from available resources — is looking like the most ‘indispensable’ thing to be done for ‘business sustainability and economic growth’, according to Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate who further says that long-term acceleration of productivity growth depends on all this.

It has become evident that technology has been ruling the roost since the lockdown happened and work from home became the need of the hour. But a general consensus is that dependency on migrant labour should stop. Instead, businesses should plan for contingencies like the pandemic and improvise. Technology has to be inbuilt into models. This would also mean that those taken on work are up-skilled and trained well to handle new technology.

 

But bulk employment and illegal migration to countries that are labour intensive, will then be put into check. This might mean that cost of production goes up, and the cost is shifted to the customer. But the customer should not crib; at the end of the day, this is going to be for a larger gain of the economy.

 

Many world economies are also looking at shifting to online processes. All in all, the migrant worker force will have to return back home and find work. That means, countries like Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Mexico, etc that have been pumping into the labour market, will have to work harder to create employment back home.

This is a better bet for the safety and respect of the migrant workers itself, who have at many occasions, found themselves being treated as second  grade disposable citizens in a foreign land.