Over the past two years, governments worldwide have had to reckon with a global pandemic, the devastating effects of which continue to this day. Part of this reckoning has included a reconsideration, creation or fortification of social protection (SP) policies. In Egypt, efforts towards enhancing SP had already been underway amid economic restructuring plans mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a condition for a USD12 billion loan in 2016 (IMF, 2016). The agreed-upon program mandated a devaluation of the Egyptian pound, increased taxes, as well as often abrupt removals of fuel and electricity subsidies, all of which have had massive implications for the Egyptian economy and public (Gad, 2021).
Against this backdrop, this article suggests a particular route to SP through which the country could better realize its development goals, referred to as transformative SP.&nbsp;In simple terms, a transformative approach to SP is informed by the position that the theory underlying SP often instructs resulting policy directions and decisions. Rather than a myopic focus on basic socio-economic priorities, a transformative approach combines &ldquo;universalist social-welfare programmes, steeply progressive taxation, macroeconomic policies aimed at creating full employment, a large non-market public sector, significant public and/or collective ownership, and democratic decision-making&rdquo; (Fraser, 1995; quoted in Hickey, 2014, p. 333). A central feature of transformative SP, and the focus of this article, is the often-overlooked relationship between employment policies and SP policies/measures.
<h3>Employment and SP policies: Delinked or not delinked?</h3>
The &ldquo;mutually reinforcing&rdquo; (Sarfati &amp; Bonoli, 2000) relationship between employment policies and social protection is well established in the literature. Heintz and Lund (2012) have criticized the way in which the two realms of policy are commonly &ldquo;delinked&rdquo;, arguing that minimum safety schemes or grants, such as cash transfer programs, cannot adequately replace the income from wages and social benefits linked to formal employment. Indeed, active labor market programs are understood to be a crucial instrument in &ldquo;enabling the poor to engage in the labor market and depend on themselves, guaranteeing them an adequate income and gradually reducing their dependence on social safety nets&rdquo; (Roman, 2021, para. 8). At the same time, social policy is &ldquo;critical for the development of human resources and capabilities that themselves influence employment outcomes&rdquo; (Heintz &amp; Lund, 2012, p. 26):&nbsp;
Real economic resources go into producing human beings. The economic inputs include marketed goods and services (a fraction of GDP is dedicated to raising children) and non-market goods and services (such as those produced with unpaid care work). The coordination of these inputs to produce human beings takes place in numerous settings and institutional forms, including the household, public institutions, kinship networks, communities and markets (such as for food, shelter and paid care). How well these institutions do at producing quality human beings will have an impact on employment outcomes, including the ability of the economy to produce resources adequate for sustaining a high-quality welfare regime. To put it another way, social and economic policies must recognize that labour is a produced factor of production, and the quality of human resources that are developed in an economy will depend on the nature of social policies and the welfare regime. (p. 26)
<h3>Labor and SP in the Egyptian context</h3>
In the Egyptian context, research conducted by Alternative Policy Solutions in 2021 shows evidence of this lack of integration in the Egyptian government&rsquo;s approach to employment policy. Specifically, job creation is facilitated mainly through macroeconomic policies and megaprojects:&nbsp;
projects like Toshka and the Suez corridor have been strongly advertised as labor absorption projects. Yet, the public narrative has not given the same attention to structural problems like skill mismatch and limited female participation (ILO, 2017) [...] the government views employment generation as a mere byproduct of economic policy, rather than an independently sought goal. (Korashi, 2021)
Although Egypt&rsquo;s efforts towards enhancing SP are a key part of its Vision 2030 (which is based on &ldquo;universal social and health insurance programmes, social safety nets, and labour market programmes&rdquo; and &ldquo;aims to secure human capital and enhance its ability to face crises, manage risks, and resist shocks&rdquo;) (Roman 2021b, p. 133), they reflect little understanding of social and employment policies as &lsquo;mutually reinforcing&rsquo;. The quality of the job opportunities provided by the above-mentioned projects, described as less than &ldquo;decent or sustainable [...]&rdquo;, lacking protection &ldquo;through social and health insurance coverage&rdquo; (Roman, 2021a, para. 8) and not differing much in quality from the informal sector as far as job opportunities go, attests to this.
Consider, for example, one part of these efforts: the newly passed Social Insurance Law 148/2019 regulating and unifying rules related to pensions and employees&rsquo; rights. The Law has been described as an improvement compared to its predecessors, for particularly two reasons. First, the new law functions to replace all existing laws concerning SP, including pensions and employees&rsquo; rights, and streamline them into one unified code. Second, it provides for the extension of social insurance protection to new categories of employers, including informal workers.
Although it has been welcomed as an important step forward in terms of the country&rsquo;s commitment to achieving inclusive development and social justice, it exhibits a tendency intrinsic to the prevailing economic model, in which SP takes on a more conservative form, and is viewed (and therefore formulated) as &ldquo;something that is done after economic policy has created the conditions for growth...and/or something that is done to mitigate the inequalities that inevitably accompany economic development&rdquo; (Heintz &amp; Lund, 2012, p. 23). This form is the result of the delinking phenomenon described by Heintz and Lund, in which employment policy &ldquo;is not seen as a core component of social policy&rdquo; (2012, p. 3). The law&rsquo;s extension of coverage to (i.e., recognition of) informal workers is an example of what Heintz and Lund describe as social policy design adapting to a certain reality, rather than &ldquo;incorporating strategies to improve employment opportunities&rdquo; (Heintz &amp; Lund, 2012, p. 3). Rather than working towards the latter, more transformative policy option (which entails changing the nature and improving the quality of the jobs themselves, the majority of which tend to be low-paying and performed in precarious conditions, e.g., housekeeping), the new law instead aspires to simply increase the number of existing beneficiaries in the pre-existing social protection system.&nbsp;
In her study reviewing social protection experiences in four global South countries (Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan), Koehler (2011) looks at employment guarantee schemes introduced by governments to complement social transfers, the idea being that the latter do not &ldquo;per se challenge basic economic and political power relations&rdquo;, and can therefore end up alleviating rather than transforming underlying conditions of poverty: more often than not, &ldquo;the absence of decently remunerated, dignified, long-term productive employment&rdquo; (Koehler, 2011, p. 97).
The emphasis on employment schemes linked to social protection &ndash; framed as a right to decent work and introduced at minimum wage conditions &ndash; are an essential component for social transformation, with an ultimate policy blueprint including&nbsp;
approaches that create productive assets or continuous income streams for the individual, household and community concerned and which thereby constitute a process of graduation, moving social protection from a dependency mode into a modality enabling a transition into productive livelihoods, decent work and security of productive assets. (Koehler, 2011, p. 101)
India&rsquo;s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) comes close to realizing this blueprint. MGNREGA is a universal, permanent public work creation program designed to provide employment and basic income security to the rural working-age population (Antonopoulos, 2013, p. 27), as well as &ldquo;improve their livelihoods through the development of durable assets&rdquo; (Ehmke, 2016, para. 4). The employment provided by the program pays according to a defined wage schedule and is located within reasonable proximity to the worker&rsquo;s home. Applicants are entitled to unemployment allowance in the case that no employment opportunity can be arranged. Encouraging the involvement of workers in the planning, implementation and monitoring of the program, MGNREGA&rsquo;s impact on its target population since implementation has been largely positive: &ldquo;even when only some of the Act&rsquo;s provisions are in place, rights-holders have reported positive changes in their lives, such as reduced dependence on moneylenders or a reduction in distress migration&rdquo; (Ehmke, 2016, para. 10).
Ultimately, the measures announced and undertaken by the Egyptian government so far (e.g. emergency stipends of EGP500 for 3 months handed out to informal workers [African Development Bank, 2020]), are commendable in that they are designed to ensure a certain level of protection from destitution (if effective). Nevertheless, they miss the mark when it comes to fundamentally transforming the structures of inequality impacting the poor. This is partly due to the theoretical and practical separation of employment and social protection policies. Recognizing the closely interrelated nature of the two areas paves a more comprehensive and effective way towards tangible change in the existing social and economic climate.
<hr>
References​
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African Development Bank. (2020). Egypt: African development bank approves emergency relief aid to tackle food insecurity for vulnerable workers whose livelihoods are impacted by COVID-19.<a href="https://www.afdb.org/fr/news-and-events/press-releases/egypt-african-development-bank-approves-emergency-relief-aid-tackle-food-insecurity-vulnerable-workers-whose-livelihoods-are-impacted-covid-19-35832"> https://www.afdb.org/fr/news-and-events/press-releases/egypt-african-development-bank-approves-emergency-relief-aid-tackle-food-insecurity-vulnerable-workers-whose-livelihoods-are-impacted-covid-19-35832</a>
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