The Good Message from London – And Action Time for Abuja
Uber will begin to classify its UK-based drivers as employees, making them eligible for those benefits regular employees get. This is a good move because the whole notion that two people will be doing the same thing, and one classified as regular and another independent, for payment, seems evidently not balanced. I recall those days in the bank when I was put to manage dozens of drivers, mailmen, Head Office receptionists, etc, in the bank’s Admin unit.
Nearly all of them were on contract but they were working even harder than me. What was my qualification: a degree from a university. For most, they had OND, HND of WASC. I was not sure I was better, but my paper certificate gave me so much power over some who had been on the job before I bought my JAMB university entrance form.
Uber has announced that it was classifying all of its 70,000 U.K.-based drivers as employees, making them eligible for benefits like holidays, pensions and a minimum wage. The move comes just weeks after losing a major legal battle that saw a group of drivers designated as employees. It’s a blow to the company which has fought legal and political battles around the globe to keep its drivers classified as independent contractors rather than employees, including a recent successful campaign in California.
Capitalism sinned against humanity on the invention of those classifications. I think we need to commend the UK government for standing up for its citizens. Uber will not collapse because of paying people living wages. In short the CEO praised the move, noting “we are turning a page on driver rights”. What would happen is this: men in yachts will not receive unnecessary extra money. The retail investors in Uber certainly understand that men and women deserve to be paid living wages.
Bringing it back to Nigeria, the Nigerian Labour Congress and the government must fix that loophole: it is inhuman and degrading when people are not paid the same for equal work. We are learning that title should not matter. Yes, it is work done that matters. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, now wants to go with “Technoking of Tesla” while his CFO would be “Master of Coin”. To make it home, they filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on these new names.
Ask him, provided they are doing the same job, I do not expect their compensations to drop. The same thing should happen in Nigeria whether a role has a contract or not, embedded on it!
Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn are shaking things up. The two will stay in their roles but the company informed the Security and Exchange Commission that they’ll adopt the titles of “Technoking of Tesla” and “Master of Coin,” respectively. The Wall Street Journal reports that the monikers may have something to do with Tesla’s interest in cryptocurrency. The company said this year that it had invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin and planned to accept it as a form of currency.
I am hoping that Nigeria redesigns its labour laws as we see amalgam of technology companies become extremely dominant, distorting the ordinance of labour. Stripe, a US payment company which bought Nigeria’s Paystack is now worth $95 billion, making it America’s most valued startup.
Airbnb is valued at $123 billion and gaming start-up Roblox at $45 billion and these firms are extremely young! Flutterwave is a $1 billion pop. Across the world, they are growing. We want them to grow with men and women who make them special.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine and Africa’s Passport Pandemic
I write to join other Nigerians to ask the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria to stop saying that the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is safe. To my understanding, no one has conducted any test on that jab in Nigeria even though we assume that it is safe. The best we can do is to say that we are evaluating it considering the concerns of many countries.
As I write, more than 12 European countries have suspended the administration of this vaccine. The implication is this: there is a problem (blood clot) and that problem has to be understood and fixed. While the European Medicines Agency continues to support the vaccine, everyone is taking a cautious move going forward. Both the EMA and WHO plan to publish some research findings later in the week. If everything is fine, great. But while we wait, there is a need for caution.
As that happens, the biggest issue is on the horizon: vaccine passport for travel. That could be the real pandemic in Africa since we do not have the vaccines in abundance. Nigeria, at a population of more than 200 million likely will not vaccinate up to 20 million by June 2021. The implication is that the nation may be frozen on global travel for months if the vaccine passport takes off.
Yes, the idea that one would need a passport, before air travel, that is linked, and which authenticates that the owner has taken a Covid-19 vaccine should be a concern. If that happens, most parts of Africa will be under paralysis. We were not unduly distorted by the biological aspect of Covid-19, but could bear the economic brunt since the usual discrimination will evolve – was that passport valid, could it be trusted and which country issued? You name the reasons. The African Union needs to get ahead of this and make sure its member states are protected.
A growing number of airlines, organizations and governments are preparing for an expected summer travel surge by trying out COVID-19 travel credentials — digital “vaccination passports,” travel certificates and similar “travel wallet” tools — to help passengers navigate potentially-differing international requirements. British Airways and Ryanair are now offering to store passengers’ vaccination information to make their travel experience more efficient. In addition, “vaccine passport” apps by trusted-traveler program Clear and organizations such as Commons Project and the International Air Transport Association, are being tested in different parts of the world.
IBM has a product – Digital Health Pass – ready for customization for countries: the product is “ designed to provide organizations with a smart way to bring people back to a physical location, such as a workplace, school, stadium or airline flight. Built on IBM Blockchain technology, the solution is designed to enable organizations to verify health credentials for employees, customers and visitors entering their site based on criteria specified by the organization. Privacy is central to the solution, and the digital wallet can allow individuals to maintain control of their personal health information and share it in a way that is secured, verifiable, and trusted. Individuals can share their health pass to return to the activities and things they love, without requiring exposure of the underlying personal data used to generate the credential.”
ANNOUNCING: IBM Digital Health Pass will integrate with @salesforce Work. com to help businesses, schools and governments verify vaccine and health status in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learn more: https://t.co/tNW8zM767y. pic.twitter.com/yCMBHiZczu
— Merative (@Merative) December 18, 2020
From Cash Spraying to QR Crowdfunding – Simple Innovation [Video]
This is innovation – point your phone on the QR code and confirm that payment. In the age of Covid-19, spraying cash is a bad idea. So, let the dancer hold a “gift me here”, and if you have money to give, use your phone.
Ladies and Gentlemen, what is product innovation? It is simply fixing market frictions by combining factors of production in ways that maximize their values, resulting in exceptional cost efficiency and derivable value. It is not the sophistication of the product that matters,, but the utilization derivable when benchmarking on cost.
That signpost is purely amazing as the lady can scale her gifts rapidly. And you know what? You do not have to attend that party before you can give a gift. Simply point your phone to the signpost and you can keep gifting her!
Now, over to the Central Bank of Nigeria which banned spraying cash. Now that we have moved to QR code, do we expect a notice?
