Ai-jen Poo is a leading labor activist and the founder of National Domestic Workers Alliance. The Alliance works to bring dignity and fairness to the growing numbers of workers who provide care and clean our homes, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of color. Ray Suarez sat down with Ai-jen at the 2019 Skoll World Forum to talk about the future of work in the age of automation and a new kind of support infrastructure she calls “Universal Family Care”.
We’ve excerpted that conversation in this video and you’ll find some of our favorite sections highlighted below. If you’d like to hear that conversation in its entirety, click on the SoundCloud link below and you can read the complete transcript of the unedited conversation here.
There’s been a lot of talk in the United States about the future of work, and so much is unknown about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on the American workforce. One thing that we do know for sure is that these jobs of caring for our children and our parents are jobs that are here to stay. These are jobs that are only going to be increasingly important as the aging population in the United States grows exponentially.
Advances in health care and technology have allowed us to live longer than we ever imagined possible. An average of 20 years longer than when we first put our safety net into place. We’ve essentially added another generation onto our lifespans, but we’re completely not set up to support that extension of life. The thing that people forget is that aging is actually living. It’s longer to learn, to love, to connect, to teach, but we’re not set up to support that, to support a dignified quality of life for the growing older population.
I think it’s one of the biggest opportunities of generations to update our culture, and our norms, and our policies, and our systems to support life in the 21st century. It’s compared to natural disasters like people often call it the silver tsunami, or the age wave, but it’s actually a huge moment of opportunity that can enrich us.
I think of myself as a problem solver and an optimist, a disciplined optimist. As somebody who’s part of a social movement, of domestic workers, of women who go to work every day and their job is to uphold the dignity of our elders. Their job is to nurture the potential of children. They cannot do their work if they don’t love and care, and there is something so profound about being immersed in that work.
That workforce teaches us so much about what kind of society we need to create, about what matters most and how we design our policies and our politics in a way that reflects our values and what truly matters most.
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