Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical detail on the financial costs of speaking out. To address this, we present findings from a novel empirical (...) study surveying whistleblowers. We demonstrate how whistleblowers who leave their role as a result of speaking out can lose both the financial and temporal resources necessary to redevelop their livelihoods post-disclosure. We also show how associated costs involving significant legal and health expenditure can rise. Based on these insights, our first contribution is to present a new conceptual framing of post-disclosure experiences, drawing on feminist theory, that emphasizes the bodily vulnerability of whistleblowers and their families. Our second contribution repositions whistleblowing as a form of labour defending against precarity, which involves new expenses, takes significant time, and often must be carried out with depleted income. Bringing forth the intersubjective aspect of the whistleblowing experience, our study shows how both the post-disclosure survival of whistleblowers, and their capacity to speak, depend on institutional supports or, in their absence, on personal networks. By reconceptualizing post-disclosure experiences in this way—as material, embodied and intersubjective—practical implications for whistleblower advocacy and policy emerge, alongside contributions to theoretical debates. Reversing typical formulations in business ethics, we turn extant debates on the ethical duty of employees to speak up against wrongdoing on their heads. We argue instead for a responsibility to protect whistleblowers exposed to vulnerability, a duty owed by those upon whose behalf they speak. (shrink)

Labour issues in global supply chains have been a thorny problem for both buyer firms and their suppliers. Research initially focused mostly on the bilateral relationship between buyer firms and suppliers, looking at arm’s-length and close collaboration modes, and the associated mechanisms of coercion and cooperation. Yet continuing problems in the global supply chain suggest that neither governance type offers a comprehensive solution to the problem. This study investigates collaborative governance, an alternative governance type that is driven by buyer (...) firms setting up a coalition with competitor firms to increase leverage and address the supplier and/or host country-specific labour issues. Based on interviews with managers involved in the establishment and management of such coalitions and supplier firms in the garment industry, we examine the rationale behind collaborative governance and discuss its opportunities and challenges in addressing labour issues in global supply chains. (shrink)

Traditional western conceptions of pain have commonly associated pain with the inability to communicate and with the absence of the self. Thus pain, it seems, must be avoided, since it is to blame for alienating the body from subjectivity and the self from others. Recent work on pain, however, has began to challenge these assumptions, mainly by discerning between different kinds of pain and by pointing out how some forms of pain might even constitute a crucial element in the production (...) of subjectivity. This article deals with the specific form of pain that is labour pain. Pain in labour has been investigated in medicine and lately, copiously, within the social sciences. Analyses from a more philosophical perspective are still very much missing, however, and in developing such analyses, de Beauvoir’s ideas on subjectivity as inherently embodied, as situated, and as profoundly ambiguous when authentically lived, appear to be of significant use. (shrink)

Certification of banana plantations is widely used as a device for protecting and improving socio-economic conditions of wageworkers, including their incomes, working conditions and—increasingly—voice [related to labour relations and workplace representation]. However, to date, evidence about the effectiveness of certification in these domains is scarce. We collected detailed field data on (1) economic benefits for improving household income, (2) social benefits for labour practices, and (3) the voice of wageworkers focusing on identity and identification issues amongst wageworkers at (...) Fairtrade certified banana plantations and comparable, non-certified plantations in the Dominican Republic. We used different types of regression models to identify significant relationships. Econometrical analysis of survey results complemented by field observations and outcomes from in-depth stakeholder interviews indicate that the impact of Fairtrade certification on wageworkers’ economic benefits is rather limited. However, the impact on the voice of wageworkers (job satisfaction, sense of ownership, trust), is more evident. On Fairtrade certified plantations workers are more satisfied with the course of life and better represented. Thus while the additional value of Fairtrade certification on primary wages seems limited, Fairtrade has relevant positive effects on the labour force, particularly by delivering in-kind benefits, offering a sense of job-security, improving voice and enabling private savings. Benefits of (Fairtrade) certification, but also other interventions with a similar purpose, might therefore not be discerned in terms of economic benefits such as wages or basic labour conditions that are under direct control of (inter)national law, but they should be identified in terms of social benefits and improved norms of conduct for wageworker engagement. (shrink)

The UK-based deliberations that led up to the legalisation of two new ‘mitochondrial donation’ techniques in 2015, and which continued after that time as regulatory details were determined, featured a division of advisory labour that is common when decisions are made about new technologies. An expert panel was convened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, charged with assessing the scientific and technical aspects of these techniques. Meanwhile, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics addressed the ethical issues. While this division (...) of labour was undertaken in the name of thoroughness, I argue here that it can have the unintended consequence that hybrid questions that simultaneously involve ethical and technical aspects—especially questions about where to set evidential thresholds for the acceptance of new technology—do not receive enough attention. (shrink)

The paper examines some of the processes of the closely knit relationship between Google’s ideologies of neutrality and objectivity and global market dominance. Neutrality construction comprises an important element sustaining the company’s economic position and is reflected in constant updates, estimates and changes to utility and relevance of search results. Providing a purely technical solution to these issues proves to be increasingly difficult without a human hand in steering algorithmic solutions. Search relevance fluctuates and shifts through continuous tinkering and tweaking (...) of the search algorithm. The company also uses third parties to hire human raters for performing quality assessments of algorithmic updates and adaptations in linguistically and culturally diverse global markets. The adaptation process contradicts the technical foundations of the company and calculations based on the initial Page Rank algorithm. Annual market reports, Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines, and reports from media specialising in search engine optimisation business are analysed. The Search Quality Rating Guidelines document provides a rare glimpse into the internal architecture of search algorithms and the notions of utility and relevance which are presented and structured as neutral and objective. Intertwined layers of ideology, hidden labour of human raters, advertising revenues, market dominance and control are discussed throughout the paper. (shrink)

Develops a critique of the concept of the attention economy from the perspectives of labour, time, and power.

This article offers an overview of Marx’s textual legacy on the subject of the multiplied value-positing powers of skilled labour, and undertakes a critical reconstruction of the history of the subsequent controversies over the so-called ‘skilled-labour problem’. Critical examination of the different Marxist responses to the objections put forward by critics shows that they have failed to develop a solution that is consistent with the foundations of Marx’s value-theory. Thus, the article finally offers an alternative solution grounded in (...) the Marxian analysis of the determinations of value as laid out in Capital. (shrink)

This paper argues that the vast inequalities in access to migration opportunities and treatment of migrants constitute a structural injustice, and that although states are clearly the most powerful agents in migration injustices, individuals also bear a personal responsibility to ameliorate these injustices. The argument builds on Young's theory of structural injustice and critically applies it to labour migration. The paper argues that wealthy migrants and citizens who benefit from migrant labour have a responsibility to contribute towards ameliorating (...) migration injustice on account of their position of privilege, whereas disadvantaged migrants have a responsibility due to their interest in changing their situation. It then considers how people might discharge such an obligation through collective political action, pointing in particular to non‐governmental organizations, labour unions, and local government. Finally, the paper addresses the objections that positing personal responsibility for labour migration is overly demanding and that the current labour migration regime is meritocratic and fair. The article concludes by showing how this sort of stance can be seen as interest‐driven by privileged groups and argues for the role of disruptive politics in overcoming it. (shrink)

I articulate a classical-Marxist theory of technical change in the capitalist labour process, highlighting two contradictions. The management contradiction is the conflict managers experience between coordination (to increase efficiency) and discipline (to ensure valorisation). The workforce contradiction is the tension workers experience between productive socialisation and alienation. I submit that both contradictions were substantially muted from the earliest stages of capitalism through the Fordist stage but have become intensified in the postfordist period. Under postfordism, the basis of efficiency is (...) economies of scope and flexibility, and thus there is a real efficiency advantage to empowering workers, via both multiskilling and employee involvement in problem-solving and decision-making. Postfordist capitalism has thus initiated an intensification of the management and workforce contradictions. In response, capitalist management is increasingly impeding the growth of the productive forces by failing to empower workers. (shrink)

Libertarians frequently complain that when a government taxes some of its citizens in order to help others, it is forcing them to behave altruistically. And obviously, we are meant to think, that use of force is morally objectionable. But what exactly makes taxation objectionable? One answer that many libertarians supply is that forcing some people to benefit others is wrong because it involves forced labour. The underlying thought seems to be that there is something morally troubling about making some (...) people work for others. In this article I scrutinize this thought. After describing two different kinds of taxation, I show how the libertarian argument about taxes depends on a distinction between posing a threat to other people and failing to help them. This brings us to the moral bedrock of the argument that taxation is forced labour, namely the idea that no one has a right to force you to do something unless you pose a threat to other people. The bulk of my article is devoted to showing that this idea cannot deliver the conclusion that libertarians want because it conflicts with other things that libertarians believe; and once you give up on that idea, it turns out that taxation to benefit others is not necessarily wrong by libertarian standards.Export citation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the relationship and the interaction between institutions, policy and the labour market in the light of the ideas of the first generation of institutional economists, who, in contrast to neoclassicals, conceived of the economy as a nexus of institutions, underlining, therefore, the significant role of institutional and non-market factors in the functioning of an economic system. They also criticised those who define (economic) welfare only in terms of efficiency and satisfaction of consumer interests; institutionalists (...) instead focus on issues related to justice, human self-development and labourers' welfare. In addition, early institutionalists paid considerable attention to the institutional framework of the labour market. In particular, the first generation of institutional economists highlighted the importance of institutions and other non-market parameters in determining the level of wages and employment (e.g. the role of the bargaining power of workers and employers). Furthermore, they made substantial contributions towards the field of labour policy and they were pioneers in the formulation of economic and social policy. Specifically, various modern institutions and labour market policies, such as unemployment benefits, industrial training and active employment policies, were implemented in the US, during the first decades of the 20th century, after the recommendation of the institutional labour economists. Therefore, their ideas, besides being interesting from a historical point of view, may also be useful in today's analysis of workers' problems and the functioning of modern labour markets. (shrink)

Forty years ago Amartya Sen delivered his Tanner Lecture, 'Equality of What?', in which he introduced to the world a novel approach to the idea of equality by way of the notion of 'basic capability' as 'a morally relevant dimension'. We can now see with hindsight that Sen's argument - that we should focus upon equality of basic capabilities ('a person being able to do certain basic things') - launched what has become an academic armada now proceeding under the flag (...) of 'the capability approach'. While that flag has ventured far and wide and engaged many area of inquiry, this volume of essays is the first to explore how the capability approach (the CA) might shed light upon labour law. Three dimensions of the CA's potential for illuminating labour law are examined. Part I enquires into the nature of the basic relationship between CA and labour law - do they share common ground or disagree about what is important? Can the CA provide a normative 'foundation' for labour law? Part II goes further by examining the relationship of the CA and other well-established perspectives on labour law, including economics, history, critical theory, restorative justice, and human rights. Part III examines the possible relevance of the CA to a range of specific labour law issues, such as freedom of association, age discrimination in the workplace, trade, employment policy, and sweatshop goods. (shrink)

An ever more aggressive anti-migration propaganda war is being waged by the majority of British media, where migration in any form is consistently portrayed on the basis of forming and consolidating a response to a security threat. While tens of thousands of migrant workers are exchanging their sweated labour for meagre wages in the 3-D jobs — dirty, dangerous and degrading — in Britain's food-processing, electronic manufacturing, catering, cleaning and hospitality industries outside any mechanism of labour protection, Britain (...) today is still declining to at least ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families in effect since last year. In the post-Morecambe debate on migration and demand for regularizing gangmasters, policing and immigration raids are seen as the quick cure for migrant labour exploitation. The argument sounds as if the only way to get rid of employers’ violation of minimum labour rights is to get rid of migrant workers. Britain has forgotten to ask — who are the migrant workers? They are the ones who sweep British roads, clean British supermarkets and serve you food in restaurants in every high street. They are the ones who sew the clothes you wear, put together your microwaves and process the British salads that you have on your dinner table everyday. Migrant workers are people you don't meet everyday but upon whom you depend. To find out about the chain of exploitation in which migrant workers live and the impact of British immigration controls that are fundamental to their lives, I lived undercover among the Chinese workers from whom I learnt a great deal. (shrink)

Carlo Benetti and Jean Cartelier's Marchands, salariat et capitalistes (1980) may be seen as a French attempt to develop a radical "monetary" paradigm, designed to counter the dominant neoclassical model. In this article, we argue that while the monetary approach is necessary for an epistemological break from orthodoxy, it is insufficient for the development of a genuinely heterodox paradigm. The problem is its conceptual limitation to a form of "monetary purism". This approach is limited by a form of "monetary purism" (...) and this limitation makes it incapable of attributing any theoretical status either to the labour force or to the wage-labour nexus. (shrink)

For Marx, capitalism’s division of labour between mental and mate-rial labour is the condition of possibility for the creation of its alien, out of control, and contradictory effects. This paper will analyze the proletarian class, the capitalist class, and the world market qua ef-fects of the division of labour. The division of labour conceptualized fundamentally as a dynamic division between activity and passivity informs the analysis of these contradictory effects. This conceptual-ization of the division of (...) class='Hi'>labour provides the framework for under-standing the striving toward activity and self-determination, de-scribed by Marx, of that which falls on the side of material labour. (shrink)

Purpose Underlying much recent development in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) is a dependence on the labour of precarious crowdworkers via platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. These platforms have been widely critiqued for their exploitative labour relations, and over recent years, there have been various efforts by academic researchers to develop interventions aimed at improving labour conditions. The aim of this paper is to explore US-based crowdworkers’ views on two proposed interventions: a browser plugin that (...) detects automated quality control “Gold Question” (GQ) checks and a proposal for a crowdworker co-operative. Design/methodology/approach The authors interviewed 20 US-based crowdworkers and undertook a thematic analysis of collected data. Findings The findings indicate that US-based crowdworkers tend to have negative and mixed feelings about the GQ detector, but were more enthusiastic about the crowdworker co-operative. Originality/value Drawing on theories of precarious labour, this study suggests an explanation for the findings based on US-based workers’ objective and subjective experiences of precarity. The authors argue that for US-based crowdworkers “constructive” interventions such as a crowdworker co-operative have more potential to improve labour conditions. (shrink)

‘Labour republicanism’ harnesses the ideal of freedom as nondomination to explain and challenge the injustices marring current workplace relations. Central to its challenge is a call for institutionalizing worker voice, with some also calling for workplace democratization and reorganizing capitalist enterprises along cooperative lines. Labour republicanism, in turn, has been criticized, most notably by the ‘commercial republican’ Robert S. Taylor. Taylor contends that contrary to its intentions, labour republicanism, or, more particularly, ‘radical labour republicanism’, would perpetuate (...) domination by undermining freedom of occupational choice; enabling tyrannical workplace majority rule; concentrating too much power in state agents; and encouraging revolutionary violence and violent reaction from capitalist interests. To counter workplace domination, we should not institutionalize worker voice, but instead augment workers’ exit options through instituting a market-friendly property-owning democracy. This paper argues that Taylor errs in his claims against radical labour republicanism on account of distorting its implications for occupational choice and obscuring how freedom-as-nondomination preserving principles are built into its conception of democratic workplaces and the cooperative economy. He also errs in thinking property-owning democracy would not itself be vulnerable to violent reaction from capitalist interests. (shrink)

Labour migration from low- to high-income states displays striking patterns of occupational segregation. Occupational segregation in labour migration generates what I call the distributive–relational dilemma : on the one hand, labour migration can promote global distributive equality; on the other hand, labour migration can create or exacerbate relational inequalities within the receiving society. This conflict between distributive and relational equality can be attenuated to some degree, but it is difficult to eliminate entirely. Faced with the distributive–relational (...) dilemma, relational egalitarians might conclude that they should support immigration restrictions to reduce domestic relational inequalities. In this paper, I argue that relational egalitarians should resist this conclusion. First, I argue that restricting immigration to protect domestic relational equality fails as a justification for exclusion, because it involves members of receiving societies treating their own hostility towards immigrant workers as a reason for their exclusion. Second, I argue that excluding would-be immigrants in order to maintain domestic relational equality reproduces inegalitarian social hierarchies at the global level, because it reinforces a global regime of migration governance that expresses racialised inequalities in social status. These arguments suggest that relational egalitarians have the theoretical resources that they need to resist the conclusion that they should support restrictive immigration policies in response to the distributive–relational dilemma. (shrink)

This article explores Marx’s contention that the achievement of full personhood and, not just consequently, but simultaneously, of genuine intersubjectivity depends upon the attainment of recognition for one’s place in the social division of labour, recognition which is systematically denied to some individuals and groups of individuals through the capitalist organization of production and exchange. This reading is then employed in a critique of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition which, it is argued, cannot account for the systematic obstacles faced (...) by some struggles for recognition. (shrink)

Labour, for capitalist critique, is not just slavery analogised; it is slavery materialised and expanded. Across the Marxist terrain, class struggle is presupposed by the struggle not to be a slave: the struggle of ‘the worker’ combats a slavery simultaneously more complex, because it is more mediated, and implicitly more emancipatory, because it materialises what has been called ‘objective possibility’. In this article, I track symptoms of the sublation of slavery by labour in the telling of ‘new (...) class='Hi'>labour history’ and counter with ‘objective impossibility’ as a more open and efficacious diagnostic for the slave’s political position. Though the sentences of United States labour history are alive with promises of solidarity, the field also remains an unstable landmine of antagonism, death, failure, limit. I argue that this labour history, despite its gestures towards the problem ‘race’, is grammatically caught in a web of desires that Sylvia Wynter names ‘the hegemony of the labour conceptual frame (i.e., the frame of the struggle against capitalism)’. The labour conceptual frame is hegemonic because the relation between race and class already presupposes a latent Marxist orientation to subjects, objects, consciousness, and history that renders perfect the slave’s objective impossibility and culminates, at the nexus of race and class, in an uncritical conversion of labour’s objective possibility into pure, unmediated possibility. This article tracks how the black worker remains stubbornly impossible throughout this theoretical convergence, bending the apparatus of labour history, the purchase of Marxist theory, and the salience of class-first politics through the excess of blackness to labour. (shrink)

This article uses Foucault’s lecture courses to illuminate his reading of Marx’s Capital in Discipline and Punish. Foucault finds in Marx’s account of cooperation a precedent for his own approach to power. In turn, Foucault helps us rethink the concepts of productive force and labour power in Marx. Foucault is shown to be particularly interested in one of Marx’s major themes in Capital, parts III–IV: the subsumption of labour under capital. In Discipline and Punish and The Punitive Society, (...) Foucault offers a genealogy of the forms of labour power ( Arbeitskraft) and productive force ( Produktivkraft). One of his central problems is to understand how labour power is converted in productive force and how, prior to that, productive subjects who can properly bear and dispose of their labour power are formed. Foucault’s reading of Capital resonates with those currents of Marx interpretation today that seek to repoliticize the concept of productive force and to offer a materialist account of subject formation. (shrink)

As Bhaskar (1989:1) argues, we need to take philosophy seriously because it underwrites both what constitutes science and knowledge and which political practices are deemed legitimate. At present, the field of educational research internationally is witnessing a pragmatist trend, whereby practical education research is carried out without reference to ontological and epistemological concerns. For David Reynolds, a leading UK school effectiveness academic, '[p]recisely because we did not waste time on philosophical discussion or on values debates, we made rapid progress' (1998:20). (...) Equally, for Teddlie, '[t]he orientation of many in the US is to do rather than to reflect […] In reality many practitioners are currently interested in what could work at their school […rather…] than in ruminations about social inequalities associated with different socioeconomic classes' (Teddlie and Reynolds 2000:27). The purpose of this chapter is not only to reclaim critical realist social philosophy for educational research, but also to reclaim reality from the positivist and statistical methodology that underpins School Effectiveness Research (SER) and to make clear the difference that realism makes by virtue of its critical explanatory power in unmasking the ideological nature of SER and its adoption by New Labour. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate on automation and justice by discussing two under-represented concerns: labour justice and equality. Since automation involves both winners and losers, and given that there is no ‘end of work’ on the horizon, it is argued that most normative views on the subject – i.e. the ‘allocative’ view of basic income, and the ‘desirability’ views of post-work and workist ethics – do not provide many resources with which to address unjustly unequal divisions of (...) class='Hi'>labour involved in technological innovation. This article problematises these common responses reframing the problem from the perspective of labour justice. While the allocative view assumes that labour justice follows ‘spontaneously’ from income redistribution, the desirability views are chiefly interested in either defining or contesting the meanings of work for individuals, overlooking the interdependent nature of work and concerns of equality other than autonomy. Two conceptions of labour justice are thus applied to the problem: Paul Gomberg’s contributive justice, and Iris Young’s democratic division of labour. Instead of deciding between them, the normative core of ‘contributive parity’ is suggested as a critical standard for assessing unequal labour structures, and for envisaging a future in which technology can be an ally in making social cooperation fair. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of “counterculture of dignity” that Honneth mentions in his The Working Sovereign: Labour and Democratic Citizenship as a way to obtain recognition in the context of work: what kinds of actions can be activated by such cultures? Some groups (e.g. minorities and women) can be in a position in which it is extremely difficult to make effective claims for recognition. It is suggested that the involvement of workers in the knowledge of the processes of (...) work might be a strategy: usually, the management deliberately hides the real processes and procedures from workers and society. Furthermore, the point is raised that recent technologies, especially ICTs and AI, if used within the capitalist exclusive orientation to profit, tend to increase the level of segregation of workers from the processes, creating an even more oppressive environment. (shrink)

Since the launch of applications such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, generative artificial intelligence has been controversial as a tool for creating artwork. While some have presented longtermist worries about these technologies as harbingers of fully automated futures to come, more pressing is the impact of generative AI on creative labour in the present. Already, business leaders have begun replacing human artistic labour with AI-generated images. In response, the artistic community has launched a protest movement, which argues (...) that AI image generation is a kind of theft. This paper analyzes, substantiates, and critiques these arguments, concluding that AI image generators involve an unethical kind of labour theft. If correct, many other AI applications also rely upon theft. (shrink)

Child Labour in Kashmiri Society: A Socio-human Rights Study The Constitution of India guarantees fundamental rights and the full freedom to enjoy childhood. In spite of that millions of children are being put to arduous work for short and narrow gains. By 1989, the standards concerning children were brought together in a single legal instrument agreed to by the international community. It unambiguously spelt out the rights to which every child is entitled, regardless of place of birth, descent, sex, (...) religion, or social origin. A number of aspects, such as gender, family background, cultural acceptance, issues of health and recreation, the legal aspect and so on, have been covered. The life worlds of working children, legal protection to children from exploitation and the human rights perspective of child labour is the main focus of this article. (shrink)

Animals do a wide range of work in our society, but they are rarely recognized as workers or accorded any labour rights, and their working conditions are often oppressive and exploitative. Drawing on law, ethics, and labour studies, the essays in this volume explore the potential and dangers of animal labour.

This chapter studies the inclusion of labour provisions in EU trade agreements. The chapter assesses the current mechanisms of enforcement of such standards present in most of the EU free trade agreements (FTAs). It also introduces how labour standards are dealt with multilaterally in the International Labour Organization and in the World Trade Organization. Sections V and VI look at the recent change in the global posture of the European Union with regard to the enforcement of (...) class='Hi'>labour standards in its FTAs. There are already some signs in the law that the European Union will change its posture about the enforcement of labour standards. (shrink)

This study examines the intersection of individual life-histories, organisational histories and societal histories and reveals how religion, in several different expressions, serves to provide a connection between justice for workers and justice for the environment in the work of trade unionists. The trade union movement is generally seen as secular, and thus in our life-history interviews finding religion as a backdrop to labour activists’ formation was unexpected. Religion becomes manifest in various ways, partly through experiences in the present or (...) at formative periods in unionists’ lives, but also through its cultural embeddedness in language and collective memory. In this way it serves to provide subtle influences on beliefs, concepts of social justice and daily action. (shrink)

This study uses the longitudinal data from the Building a New Life in Australia survey to examine the relationships between human capital and labour market participation and employment status among recently arrived/approved humanitarian migrants. We find that the likelihood of participating in the labour force is higher for those who had pre-immigration paid job experience, completed study/job training and have better job searching knowledge/skills in Australia and possess higher proficiency in spoken English. We find that the chance of (...) getting a paid job is negatively related to having better pre-immigration education, but it is positively related to having unpaid work experience and job searching skills in Australia, and better health. We also explore the ethical implications of the findings. (shrink)

While contemporary debates about agrarian transformations that include topics like the persistence of family farms, agrarian capital accumulation, and simple reproduction squeeze remain vibrant, discussions about the increasingly significant role of migrant wage labour, which further complicates these processes, remain limited. In this paper, we argue that the process of capitalist accumulation in some sections of the agrarian and food system sectors in southern China is able to proceed despite recurring pressures — especially labour shortages in the rural (...) economy caused by domestic rural–urban migration — because of the availability of migrant workers from neighbouring countries such as Myanmar. This development dynamic can be better understood through the lens of interrelated connections between land and labour and production and social reproduction across China and Myanmar. We highlighted the role of two land-related labour flows in the agrarian transformation in southern China–Myanmar regions. We argue that various social classes and groups across China and Myanmar are tied to land, wage work and capital accumulation and, in turn, their productive and social reproductive tasks are directly and indirectly linked to one another. If we are to understand agrarian transformation in settings like this, then methodologically, we will have to adopt an interconnected approach in order to bring the pieces of the puzzle together. (shrink)

The global segmentation of production and distribution has resulted in highly complex global value chains where vertical and horizontal dynamics are equally important in determining working conditions and providing points of leverage for labour. Borrowing notions of multi-level governance, we propose an analytical framework for describing and explaining success and failure of labour agency when attempting to improve working conditions along GVCs. Our starting point is that the high complexity of GVCs and the absence of a global overarching (...) authority have been balanced by the emergence of governance mechanisms of different forms and at different levels. An assessment of these mechanisms, which emphasize process over institutions, reveals how different types of interactions and interdependencies along GVCs impact on labour’s use of power. We argue that, in order to fully situate labour agency within governance debates, any future research agenda needs to be driven by micro-level bottom-up approaches. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: We draw on empirical data and theorising that focuses on the relationship between the state, public policy and knowledge in the construction and configuration of school leadership under New Labour from 1997. Specifically we show how a school leadership policy network comprises people in different locations who operate as policy entrepreneurs in shaping policy.

Calls to expand temporary work programmes come from two directions. First, as global justice advocates observe, every year thousands of poor migrants cross borders in search of better opportunities, often in the form of improved employment opportunities. As a result, international organizations now lobby in favour of expanding ‘guest-work’ opportunities, that is, opportunities for citizens of poorer countries to migrate temporarily to wealthier countries to fill labour shortages. Second, temporary work programmes permit domestic governments to respond to two internal, (...) contradictory political pressures: (1) to fill labour shortages and (2) to do so without increasing rates of permanent migration. Temporary work programmes permit governments to appear ‘tough’ on migration, while responding to employer pressure to locate workers willing to work in low-skilled, poorly remunerated positions. The coincidence of national self-interest and global justice generates a strong case in favour of expanding guest-work. We evaluate the moral benefits and burdens of expanding guest-work opportunities, and conclude that although there are benefits to be gleaned from the perspective of global wealth redistribution, at present, temporary work programmes are generally unjust. We will argue that just temporary work programmes, in time, permit temporary workers to attain citizenship. This spells the end of traditional temporary work programmes, which require that workers return to their home country in time; instead, what is temporary is the employment obligation that must be fulfilled as a requirement to access citizenship. As long as this requirement is met, we endorse guest-work programmes as a tool to respond to global inequality. (shrink)

The article examines the interconnection between Lukács' analysis of labour as teleological positing in his late social ontology and his interpretation of Hegel's philosophy. It argues that Lukács' reading of Hegel's Logic, particularly his emphasis on the doctrine of essence, prioritizes the goal and cognitive aspects of subjectivity in his analysis of labour. By reconstructing the core aspects of Lukács' analysis of labour, the article highlights how this ontological priority of teleological positing stems from the modality of (...) categorial relations in the doctrine of essence to which Lukács is committed. In doing so, it draws attention to both methodological inconsistencies in his analysis of labour and its crucial insights, while stressing the absence of a more speculative−dialectical presentation that could frame labour in more dynamic terms. The article thus underscores the great importance of the late Lukács' unfinished social ontology for debates on the dialectical method and critical theory. (shrink)

In this article, I maintain that the social process of labour commodification, through which the individual capability to uphold a decent welfare is bound to participation in the labour market, poses a problem of justice from the republican prospective on freedom as non-domination. I first discuss the reasons we might hold that capitalism brings a form of systemic domination by virtue of one of its intrinsic features: unequal access to the means of production. Then, I argue for a (...) minimum de-commodification of labour power as a criterion of justice, adding that it should be conceived as a cosmopolitan proviso because states unfairly suffer from their limited economic capacity to neutralize capitalist systemic domination. Lastly, I compare the normative account of global justice that I am proposing in this article with sufficientarianism, with the capability approach, and with Thomas Pogge’s ‘Global Resources Dividend’. (shrink)

This essay offers a new reading of Marx's chapter on ‘the working day’ in Capital Volume One by exploring the textual theme of night-time work. Even as Marx emphasises how the lengthening workday enables the super-exploitation of producers’ wage labour, his depictions of nocturnal experiences highlight more forcefully the destruction of workers’ reproductive resources, capacities and relationships. Night comes to represent the contracted time, condensed space, petrified relational bonds and thwarted desires for human reproduction in a free, fulsome sense (...) that includes reinvigorating oneself, caring for others and enjoying experiences apart from work or care. Night's role as a privileged signifier and catalyst of these changes comes through in key passages about women, children and vampires, and in theoretically meaningful variances between Marx's German paraphrasing of English sources and those original texts, which replace Marx's phrases in English translations of Capital. Contemplating Marx's ambivalent reflections on legal-political action to limit workday hours, I argue for making struggles over social reproduction in a capacious sense central to working-class politics today. I demonstrate the power of this Marxian analytic by considering the compression of social-reproductive time among today's microworkers, who fuel the digital economy by performing platform-based ‘tasks’ at all hours for very low wages. (shrink)

This paper analyzes why modern labor—despite being productive, specialized, and socially necessary—often feels devoid of meaning. Using the framework of Judgemental Philosophy, we argue that the collapse of resonance within contemporary work structures disables the possibility of judgemental meaning. While work may still be constructible (task-defined) and coherent (logically organized), it increasingly fails to return meaning to the subject. This breakdown of resonance, we claim, is the structural reason why work becomes alienating, even when materially compensated. We propose a model (...) for restoring resonance in labor systems as a precondition for ethical and psychological well-being. (shrink)

The alienation of labour is both classical and contemporary. In its classical form, it speaks to the potential dehumanisation of workers in capitalist societies. In its contemporary form, it manifests itself in the disenfranchisement of the individual because of changes in organised global workplaces. Over the years, Africa’s labour transition from traditional spirituality to contemporary organised global workplaces has fuelled new forms of public labour alienation. Civil servants, in some African countries, experience labour alienation reminiscent of (...) work under capitalism. This is in contradiction to the pre-colonial and traditional view of work as a vocation. Zimbabwe is undergoing negative economic, social, and political growth that has resulted in the alienation of civil servants. The government reneges on its public role of providing space for individual growth and well-being in preference for ‘public capitalism’ and cultural alienation. The potential for an effective public service lies in changing the work culture. Contribution: This article interrogates the impacts of the work culture within the public service in Zimbabwe in an attempt to proffer a return to the African traditional spirituality of work that was founded on the principles of ubuntu. It recognises the traditional symbiotic relationship between being and doing among the indigenous African communities as the panacea for the continent’s human capital development. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed the rise of digital platforms that allow economic agents to arrange ever more fine-grained contracts. This article zooms in on labour-based platforms that permit the hire of labour in a just-in-time fashion (and are part of the broader trend towards on-demand work). Its principal contribution comes in three parts. First, exposing the frequently overlooked diversity of labour-based platforms, the article proposes to distinguish platform companies, which directly sell services and then purchase the (...) class='Hi'>labour needed to provide them, and broker platforms, which act merely as intermediaries. Second, it examines how platforms of each type pose distinct threats to labour justice, thereby extending Daniel Halliday's (2021) analysis. Drawing on empirical studies of the experiences of platform workers, it identifies a power imbalance as the root cause of these threats across all platforms. Finally, the article assesses three strategies to counter these threats: introducing stricter regulation, turning platforms into worker-run co-ops, and improving outside job opportunities. In exploring how each strategy could be implemented for specific platforms, it makes the case for always discussing labour-based platforms with one eye to their specific structural features and the other eye to the broader labour market. (shrink)

Vocational education and training (VET) finds itself in an ever-deepening crisis – both in Flanders and internationally. Attendance is dwindling, labour market shortages persist, and VET is increasingly viewed as an unattractive educational path. Dominant responses frame this as an economic issue. Yet, these instrumental perspectives rarely consider what is educational about vocational labour itself. While critiques exist, few address concrete vocational practices as educational environments in their own right. This article engages with the work of Oskar Negt (...) and Alexander Kluge – particularly Geschichte und Eigensinn (1981) – to explore how vocational labour practices can function as sites of education. Drawing on their concept of Eigensinn [obstinacy], it argues for a shift in how we understand labour as educational. Using Flemish youth work as an example of a vocational labour environment, this article shows show how everyday labour practices can express forms of resistance, transformation, and suspension that are educationally significant. This reveals that obstinacy is not only possible but already occurs in everyday labour practice. Ultimately, this article calls for VET research to take such obstinate practices seriously as essential and everyday expressions of people living together in new and educational ways. By attending to this obstinacy in research, we can develop more concrete and critical understandings of vocational labour as spaces where individuals learn how to live and move together, here and now. (shrink)

The practice of early modern natural history depended on the collective collecting activities of a great variety of people. Among them, artisans played a major role in acquiring and distributing knowledge about the natural world and they contributed significantly to the scholarly labour in natural history. This distributed labour was both acknowledged by contemporaries as well as hidden from sight, reflecting the period′s dominant norms for class and gender. By combining an interpretation of the visual representation of (...) class='Hi'>labour in European insect studies with an examination of written sources about natural history practices from about 1680 to 1810, this article decodes the often‐codified frontispieces and other more symbolic illustrations to offer new insights into the labour of natural history. Those who identified as scholars and artisans (or both) conceptualised their own intellectual and practical engagement with natural history within the semantic field of work. Some seemed to have even envisioned a new social role for academics as well as artisans. This article analyses the diversity of the “productive forces” in insect studies as they changed over time and it reconstructs what I will call the social imaginaries of participation. (shrink)

This paper theorises and exemplifies the place of audience labour in the propagation of Discourse and discourses. Audience labour is simply the work of people engaged in mediation processes as they gather themselves into groups defined by specific media events (sport, music, news, movies and so on). It compares the environments and practices of the mass media era and those of the current era to show that the most economically valuable work in media is done by audiences, and (...) that that work is becoming more direct in its orientation and effects, even as it gets cheaper for advertisers and more immersive for audience members. A social media view of audience labour shows up the intensely intimate nature of personal commodification: feelings, attitudes, opinions, outrages, general states of mind and being are all grist for the digital economy mill. Outrage systems are especially profitable. They provide grounds for what I call ‘discourse industrial sectors’, or, those groups of people making a living and sometimes a fortune fighting on one side or another of the so-called culture wars. I argue for a conception of rhetorical purpose as a guide for analysing current media environments that depend on social media. (shrink)

After Marx, dissenting economics almost always used 'the labour theory' as a theory of value. This paper develops a modern treatment of the alternative labour theory of property that is essentially the property theoretic application of the juridical principle of responsibility: impute legal responsibility in accordance with who was in fact responsible. To understand descriptively how assets and liabilities are appropriated in normal production, a 'fundamental myth' needs to be cleared away, and then the market mechanism of appropriation (...) can be understood. On the normative side, neoclassical theory represents marginal productivity theory as showing that (a metaphorical version of) the imputation principle is satisfied ('people get what they produce') in competitive enterprises. Since that shows the moral commitment of neoclassical economics to the imputation principle, the labour theory of property is presented here as the actual non-metaphorical application of the imputation principle to property appropriation. The property-theoretic analysis at the firm level shows how the neoclassical (and much heterodox) analysis in terms of 'distributive shares' wholly misframed the basic questions. Finally, the paper shows how the imputation principle (modernised labour theory of property) is systematically violated in the present wage labour system of renting persons. The paper can be seen as taking up the recent challenge posed by Donald Katzner for a dialogue between neoclassical and heterodox microeconomics. (shrink)

In the philosophical works of the Athenian elite, wage-labour was scorned for being incompatible with personal freedom and the practice of virtue. This line of thinking, however, economic historians recently exposed as idiosyncratic, since wage-labour in Athens has been shown to be extensive and potentially a source of high prestige. Considering the importance of specialization (tekhnê) in labour, this article focusses on the social status of a category that is usually overlooked—namely, those wage-labourers who would be deemed (...) unspecialized. Through a close examination of popular literature, it is argued that the attitudes of elite and non-elite Athenians partially converged, since the latter looked with disdain not upon wage-labour in general but upon unspecialized wage-labour in particular. (shrink)

The concept of abolition of labour ( Aufhebung der Arbeit) appeared in some of Marx’s posthumously published works. Few of his notable successors highlighted this concept as key to opposing the Fordist stage of capitalism. Marcuse viewed this stage as a new peak in the repression of imagination and free instincts, bound to ‘the performance principle’. However, the rise of neo-liberalism presents unforeseen challenges to the criticism of labour. While the Keynesian welfare state is collapsing, its universal services (...) are commodified and inequality rates are skyrocketing – some factors of the abolition of labour are surprisingly uplifted. This article will examine the evolution of some factors of abolition of labour that thrive with the spread of neo-liberalism and the erosion of other vital factors; we will elucidate the diminishing role of Marcuse’s performance principle, unravel the reality principle replacing it and discuss the relevance of the concept ‘abolition of labour’ today. (shrink)