Excess Labor in Uganda, Part I
Part I of II of a paper I'm writing as part of my application for grad school. I find this interesting, and I'm writing it in a more journalistic style than your average econ paper, so I hope you enjoy it:
Every morning I drive over what will become the Northern Bypass, a highway designed to link eastern with western Uganda while avoiding the epic traffic jams of Kampala. Every day, even Sunday, I see trucks working in the long, wide pit that will someday be paved for traffic, and I see a crew of men constructing a concrete overpass which one day my little side road will pass over. I always check the progress they have made, and in the three months since I moved here, I have seen no more than I would expect in three days from a construction crew in America. In this time they have built concrete barriers on the sides of about half the bridge, and flattened a couple-hundred yard stretch of the dirt road below.
This is most annoying to me. I am eagerly awaiting the completion of a route that will halve my morning commute, but every day I see half the work crew sitting or standing around, watching the other people who are working. Some take tea, others read a newspaper, others are just sitting and talking. It does not matter when I pass by, either—at all times, it seems, a large proportion of the workers are not working.
This is not a distinctive feature of the Northern Bypass construction project. I have noticed it also on the slow road improvement project by my office. Paul Thereoux describes the same thing in his book Dark Star Safari, and all of my friends here who I have discussed it with have offered corroborative anecdotes. Although I lack hard data, then, I hope I will be allowed for the sake of this paper to conjecture that the average Ugandan manual labourer is productive for a lower percent of the time for which he is paid than his American on European counterpart.
I have heard a variety of explanations for this. One is that Ugandan culture is not that hardworking—or, phrased more sympathetically, that Ugandans place a higher value on leisure and relaxation. They are not as stressed out, and refuse to join the rat race. To some this appears a virtue, and to others it is a primary reason why Uganda has failed to make progress combating poverty since 2000.
This cultural explanation, however, does not reconcile with either my economic training or my experience. The economist believes that people respond to incentives. Since in Uganda there is no shortage of unskilled labour, employers should be able to replace relatively unproductive workers at a low cost. Soon the employees would recognize that they must work hard in order to keep their jobs, and since jobs are scarce, productivity would quickly be restored. Moreover, although Ugandans do highly value leisure time, I know a lot of hardworking Ugandans and I do not know any Ugandan who is incapable or unwilling to work extremely hard if need be to put food on the table. The cultural explanation simply does not seem likely.
A competing explanation is that a lack of machinery in Uganda means that manual work here is much less capital-intensive, and thus much more labour-intensive. Since ditches are dug with pick-axes, not with a backhoe, it would be inhumane to expect workers not to take more frequent and longer breaks. While there is no doubt some truth to this, though, it does not explain why I observe workers taking breaks from masonry work or pouring concrete barriers, activities involving approximately the same amount of physical exertion both here in Uganda and in developed countries.
Neither the cultural explanations nor more sympathetic claims that they work extra hard between breaks very compelling. Instead, the numerous unproductive workers is directly related to labour’s most salient characteristic here: incredibly low wages.
...
Isn't that a great cliffhanger? What, pray tell, is the causal link between low wages and unproductive labor? Are workers intuitively aware of the worth of their labor, and refuse to be exploited? Do employers find it easier to pay low wages to many workers than to enforce discipline with a few?
Here's a teaser: The mechanism at work here has profound implications for the wisdom of instituting a minimum wage in Uganda.
PS - Part II will be much more hardcore econy.
Every morning I drive over what will become the Northern Bypass, a highway designed to link eastern with western Uganda while avoiding the epic traffic jams of Kampala. Every day, even Sunday, I see trucks working in the long, wide pit that will someday be paved for traffic, and I see a crew of men constructing a concrete overpass which one day my little side road will pass over. I always check the progress they have made, and in the three months since I moved here, I have seen no more than I would expect in three days from a construction crew in America. In this time they have built concrete barriers on the sides of about half the bridge, and flattened a couple-hundred yard stretch of the dirt road below.
This is most annoying to me. I am eagerly awaiting the completion of a route that will halve my morning commute, but every day I see half the work crew sitting or standing around, watching the other people who are working. Some take tea, others read a newspaper, others are just sitting and talking. It does not matter when I pass by, either—at all times, it seems, a large proportion of the workers are not working.
This is not a distinctive feature of the Northern Bypass construction project. I have noticed it also on the slow road improvement project by my office. Paul Thereoux describes the same thing in his book Dark Star Safari, and all of my friends here who I have discussed it with have offered corroborative anecdotes. Although I lack hard data, then, I hope I will be allowed for the sake of this paper to conjecture that the average Ugandan manual labourer is productive for a lower percent of the time for which he is paid than his American on European counterpart.
I have heard a variety of explanations for this. One is that Ugandan culture is not that hardworking—or, phrased more sympathetically, that Ugandans place a higher value on leisure and relaxation. They are not as stressed out, and refuse to join the rat race. To some this appears a virtue, and to others it is a primary reason why Uganda has failed to make progress combating poverty since 2000.
This cultural explanation, however, does not reconcile with either my economic training or my experience. The economist believes that people respond to incentives. Since in Uganda there is no shortage of unskilled labour, employers should be able to replace relatively unproductive workers at a low cost. Soon the employees would recognize that they must work hard in order to keep their jobs, and since jobs are scarce, productivity would quickly be restored. Moreover, although Ugandans do highly value leisure time, I know a lot of hardworking Ugandans and I do not know any Ugandan who is incapable or unwilling to work extremely hard if need be to put food on the table. The cultural explanation simply does not seem likely.
A competing explanation is that a lack of machinery in Uganda means that manual work here is much less capital-intensive, and thus much more labour-intensive. Since ditches are dug with pick-axes, not with a backhoe, it would be inhumane to expect workers not to take more frequent and longer breaks. While there is no doubt some truth to this, though, it does not explain why I observe workers taking breaks from masonry work or pouring concrete barriers, activities involving approximately the same amount of physical exertion both here in Uganda and in developed countries.
Neither the cultural explanations nor more sympathetic claims that they work extra hard between breaks very compelling. Instead, the numerous unproductive workers is directly related to labour’s most salient characteristic here: incredibly low wages.
...
Isn't that a great cliffhanger? What, pray tell, is the causal link between low wages and unproductive labor? Are workers intuitively aware of the worth of their labor, and refuse to be exploited? Do employers find it easier to pay low wages to many workers than to enforce discipline with a few?
Here's a teaser: The mechanism at work here has profound implications for the wisdom of instituting a minimum wage in Uganda.
PS - Part II will be much more hardcore econy.
posted by Nate at 3:19 AM
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