The effect of reducing wages of remote workers on society

Beretta, Edoardo; Desogus, Marco; Karthikeyan, Soorjith Illickal

doi:10.13133/2037-3643/18063

Back

Journal article

The effect of reducing wages of remote workers on society : a preliminary assessment

Beretta, Edoardo ORCID Facoltà di scienze economiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
Desogus, Marco University of Sassari, Italy
Karthikeyan, Soorjith Illickal Indian Institute of Management Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

2023

Published in:

PSL Quarterly Review. - 2023, vol. 76, no. 307, p. 392- 373

English Remote work has represented ‘the’ alternative to office work during the COVID-19 pandemic as it has (while enabling employees to fulfill tasks from home) prevented or broken contagion chains. Though not a new approach to work, the recent emphasis on telework has come with pleas to reduce the wages of remote workers. By means of a logical-analytical approach, the article analyzes why such policies are not only unjustifiable in terms of keeping average wages at an at least stable level, but even more if the final sales prices would not shrink accordingly and would boost the share of corporate profits to GDP. Even cutting wages and final sales could be “deflationary” first and “recessionary” then (i.e., impoverish the economy). The article preliminarily analyzes the economic impact of such proposals on countries with a large ICT sector contributing to GDP (i.e., where remote work is facilitated due to the wide diffusion of tools such as Internet connections, computer devices, etc., enabling it) and an underperforming labor market in terms of female participation.

Collections