Job guarantee means creating a legally enforceable right to employment.
Tcherneva 22 [Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an American economist, of Bulgarian descent, working as associate professor of economics at Bard College. She is also a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute and expert at the Institute for New Economic Thinking; “The Job Guarantee and Economic Democracy”; Le Groupe d’études géopolitiques; Summer 2022; https://geopolitique.eu/en/articles/the-job-guarantee-and-economic-democracy-why-a-legally-enforceable-right-to-employment-is-needed-and-how-it-can-be-implemented/]//eleanor
In the face of the COVID19 pandemic and perennial economic crises, the world is reengaging in a conversation about reshaping the economy as a whole, and labor markets in particular. A recent call to democratize work has reverberated across the globe 5 , published in 45 papers in 26 languages, and supported by thousands of signatories. In it, guaranteeing the right to decent and remunerative employment was identified as a key demand and the modern Job Guarantee proposal was singled out as a cornerstone in the global environmental agenda. The Paris Accord had recognized that a green transition is not possible without ‘human rights [and] a just transition of the workforce, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities’ 6 . In the US, the Job Guarantee has been called the most crucial component of the Green New Deal resolution 7 . It is also a core recommendation by a landmark report by the International Labor Organization’s Global Commission on the Future of Work 8 , echoing an earlier recognition and recurrent demand that the right to employment is a fundamental human right.
Policy Paradigm Shift
The Job Guarantee policy aims to ensure that the internationally-recognized right to remunerative employment is legally enforceable, and that anyone seeking living-wage work can find it, whenever it is needed. But it is much more than a job creation policy. It is a structural reform that fundamentally reorients macroeconomic stabilization policy away from trickle-down economics and toward bottom-up stabilization that is based on a new social contract.