Work from home reserved for privileged few

Working from home is not new. Until the Industrial Revolution, most economic activities took place within the household. With industrialisation, the household remained a site of production, and employers outsourced tasks to homeworkers under the putting-out system.

The problem for the employer was the lack of control. The factory emerged as the solution; workers now had to travel to the factory and clock in. Though production became spatially separated from reproduction, they were interlinked. As time became a commodity, the early struggles of factory workers were over the length of the working day.

Of course, in Africa, where 90% of workers are in the informal economy, factory work was always the exception. Though SA is comparatively more industrialised, home-based work remained widespread. Today, homebased workers are spaza shop owners, hair salon operators and outsourced textile workers. They are also crowd workers who use online platforms to connect with customers. And they are teleworkers in clerical, professional and managerial positions.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, home-based work has become pervasive. The shift enabled companies to continue to operate and workers to be paid. It also allowed for greater flexibility and more time with family. But working from home also poses risks including a return to task-based work, characterised by low and irregular income and benefits; an increased burden of paid and unpaid care work, particularly for women; and the risk of gender-based violence.

Ultimately, the ability to work from home is mediated by underlying structural conditions and the accessibility of digital technologies. Across Africa, access to mobile phones, financial services and the internet reflect broader patterns of socioeconomic inequality between and within countries.

When it comes to access to mobile banking and financial services, more SA women have access (70%) than SA men (68%). This runs counter to trends across Africa and may be due to social grants, weighted towards women, which highlights the importance of bridging the digital divide. Disparities are even larger in internet usage. In SA, 56% of the population has access to the internet. Men are 7% more likely than women to have access to the internet. However, if one looks at coverage at the household level, 11% of households have access. Though SA has higher levels of internet coverage than most countries on the continent, access to the internet is concentrated in a minority of households. Unequal access to mobile phone and internet services prevents workers from meaningfully participating in online-based remote work.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that less than 10% of SA can telework from home. It is still unclear how long the Covid-19 crisis will last. If working from home is to become a “new normal” states will have to invest resources in inclusive digital infrastructures. It will also be essential to ensure that home-based workers’ labour and social rights are protected.

Data on the scope, size and conditions of home-based work in SA is still minimal. However, if the Covid-19 crisis continues, homebased work may well become the next terrain of worker struggle. Ruth Castel-Branco, Sandiswa Mapukata and Edward Webster are researchers on the Future of Work(ers) project at Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies