Wage-earners voluntarily accept to work under the control, and for the account of, firms run by entrepreneurs1; they do not decide what, how and how much, they must produce; wage-earners are not responsible for the consequences of their activities when they comply with entrepreneurs' orders12; inside the firm, wage-earners are subordinates. Outside the firm, wage-earners freely choose the way they spend their wages in the markets for commodities and services. Such is the 'stylised fact' which characterises (...) the wage relationship in our economies. Any theory of the wage relationship should account for this 'stylised fact' by deriving it from a consistent set of assumptions and propositions. Three main propositions are advocated in this paper: Mainstream economists conceive the 'wage' as being the price of a commodity ('labour power' or 'human labour') determined by a market – as for any other commodity and service. As a consequence, the wage relationship is thought of as an exchange relation ruled by equivalence; this view cannot be derived from the usual basic assumptions without violating the very logic of mainstream theory. Following this logic: either the wage relationship should be thought of as a relation between human beings having such different conditions that it cannot be interpreted as an exchange ruled by equivalence or 'human labour' is not to be found within the commodity space. In any case, the 'stylised fact' mentioned above is not accounted for by mainstream theory. 'Wage' is the name of the payment entrepreneurs give to other people with the view to making them participate in production under their control and for their account; wage payment is neither a purchase nor a sale – it just allows wage-earners to enter the market and spend in order to acquire the commodities they desire Wage-earners are, economically speaking, a means used by entrepreneurs for their own ends; exploitation (Fleurbaey's M-exploitation) is inherent in the wage relationship. Propositions 2 and 3 do not fit general equilibrium theory (inspired by Walras and rationalised by Arrow- Debreu); they do not fit modern mainstream theory either. They have no room in the theory of prices of production (inspired by Ricardo and rationalised by Sraffa). Moreover, they are not compatible with Marx's theory of labour power. An alternative approach is needed to satisfy them. Paving the way for that alternative theory requires us to show that 'human labour' cannot belong to the commodity space from the very point of view of mainstream theory; a sharp incompatibility between assumptions and conclusions would follow, and justify resorting to an alternative approach. This is our first step. A second step is to effectively resort to a monetary analysis – the alternative approach to real analysis, according to Schumpeter in his History of economic analysis. In a nutshell, we have to discard the commodity space postulate, and to think of economic relations as money mediation. Instead of a commodity space, we presuppose money to be a unit of account ($) combined with a means of payment. Instead of a permutation of goods and services exchanged amongst people, economic relations are payments. Individuals are no longer endowments and preferences, but accounts into which payments write down quantities of $. Conditions of people may differ according to the form of money circulation – this view allows us to deal with different types of economic relations; for what matters here, the wage relationship involves a specific form of circulation not reducible to that of exchange. The final step is to suggest that exploitation is inherent in the wage relationship; such exploitation has nothing to do with justice, since there is no norm whatsoever for the level of wage; it is also quite different from the exploitation Marx thought he had unveiled. This exploitation is simply due to the special situation of wage-earners vis-a-vis the market, which a specific form of circulation makes clear. 1 'Entrepreneur' here means, following Coase, 'the person or persons who, in a competitive system, take the place of the price mechanism in the direction of resources' (Coase, 1937, p. 388). 2 David Ellerman distinguishes between factual/de facto and legal or de jure responsibility. What I mean here is economic responsibility only. Another way at looking at it may use David Ellerman's propositions. The 'Invisible Judge' market gives the entrepreneur the property of raw material and labour – and also of the finished product sold in the market. The market gives nothing to the wage-earner inside the firm; outside the firm it gives her the property of consumption of goods she acquires out of her wage. Inside the firm, the wage-earner is not economically responsible. Arguing that if she kills someone, the wage- earner is responsible has nothing to do with the 'Invisible Judge'! (shrink)

In this chapter, Rosa Luxemburg examines the basic structure of wage labor. For Luxemburg, wage labor is a condition for the systemic, economical exploitation of one free human being by another. Luxemburg analyzes the capitalists’ thinking about wages, their interest in extending the workday and in lowering the pay, and the conflict of interest between the worker and the owner of capital. She also discusses the role of trade unions in keeping not only the real wages (...) but also the social wages above the level of mere sustenance for the individual worker. (shrink)

:This paper argues that capitalist social relations do not presuppose wage-labour. The paper defends a functional definition of the capitalist relations of production, in terms of what Marx calls the ’subsumption of labour by capital’. I argue that there are at least four modes of subsumption, one transitional to and one transitional from the capitalist mode of production. Unlike the capitalist mode of production, capitalist relations of production are compatible with the absence of a labour market, and even with (...) the absence of workplace authority relations. The ambit of capitalist domination is therefore broader than typically thought. (shrink)

Once we shift the intension of the concept of wage-labour from juridical attributes of negative ownership and contractual freedom to the actual performance of capital-positing labour, the extension of the concept – the cases that fall under it – changes as well. Once the concept of wage-labour is intensively re-defined as capital-positing labour, it becomes evident that the history and the geographical scope of wage-labour have not been well understood. This shift in the intension of the concept (...) of wage-labour also disjoins the association between capitalism and freedom. (shrink)

In the face of a technological revolution which massively reduces the quantity of work demanded, there are the following alternatives: 1) Either a smaller and smaller core of full-time workers monopolizes the interesting jobs and marginalizes the majority of the population, with the unions degenerating into corporatism elitist and conservative organizations; or, 2) wage labor is redistributed in such a way that all people can work less; work then ceases to be the central focus of life and the (...) main source of identity. To survive, then, the union movement must transform itself so as to encompass the totality of human expectations (mainly cultural, non-economic, ecological), and no longer just expectations related to wage-labor. (shrink)

Various human groups, from food foragers to inner-city urban Americans, have used widespread sharing of resources through kin networks as a means of buffering themselves against fluctuations in resource availability in their environments. This paper addresses the effects of progressive incorporation into a wage-labor economy on the benefits of traditional kin networks for two social classes in urban South India. Predictions regarding the effects of kin network wealth, education, and size on child and spouse characteristics and methods of (...) financing marriages are tested using various regression techniques. Despite the rapid growth of participation in a wage-labor economy, it is found that kin network characteristics still have an important impact on investment behavior among families in Bangalore in both social classes. Network wealth is found to have a positive effect on child and spouse characteristics, and large networks are found to act as significant drains on family resources. However, the results for education are broadly consistent with an interpretation of increasing family autonomy as parents’ education has a far stronger influence on child and spouse characteristics across categories than network education does. Finally, professional-class parents are found to prefer financing marriages using formal mechanisms such as savings and bank loans while working-class parents preferentially finance marriages using credit from relatives and friends. (shrink)

Social scientists agree that women are generally more religious than men, but disagree about whether the differences are universal or contingent on social context. This study uses General Social Survey data to explore differences in religiosity between, as well as among, women and men by level of individual earned income. Extending previous research, I focus on high earners with other groups included for comparison. Predicted probabilities based upon fully interacted models provide four key findings: There are no significant gender differences (...) among high earners; high-earning women are less religious than low-earning women; high-earning men are more religious than low-earning men; and differences among women and among men at different earnings levels are just as large as average differences between women and men. Further analyses demonstrate that the relationship between gender, earnings, and religiosity varies by race. The findings demonstrate the utility of intersectional approaches for understanding gender differences in religiosity. Beyond the implications specific to the gender differences in religiosity literature, this study also indicates that religion is an important, yet often underemphasized, aspect of our intersectional selves. (shrink)

This essay explores the meaning of diasporic practice as it has been applied within the contemporary Black Atlantic context. The general focus of this topic has been visible or performative practices that have broad audiences, ranging from diasporic members to the sociopolitically included or the privileged citizen. Moreover, the objects or products of diasporic practice are largely understood to be aesthetic; the literature has highlighted music, dance, art, and religion, for instance. In this essay I argue that a taken-for-granted prerequisite (...) of a hierarchized viewing audience misses passing moments of negotiation that occur in silence or within disciplined exchanges among persons who we identify as diasporic. These practices build community in very powerful ways but may not leave lasting traces or archives; they have to do with fleeting displays of affect such as rage, shame, joy, etc. The ethnographic focus is African immigrant women's constrained work schedules in Lisbon and the ways their labour-time textures the types of community – building practices in which they engage on a daily basis. I address how gendered configurations of migrant labour-time -a condition for governmentality – influence the diasporic process by which a form of racial identification is assumed in the context of Portugal. (shrink)

This paper will explore both the ways in which the practices of self-care, specifically related to mental health, have emerged as responses to the increasingly precarious status of life after the economic shocks of the Global Financial Crisis, whilst also looking to the work of Silvia Federici and Kathi Weeks to propose models for immanent critique of these practices. Although it cannot be taken as a pure origin, post-GFC mental health discourse has increasingly seen mental health discussed as a form (...) of resilience to precarity. Furthermore, practices of self-care, and psychological forms of treatment such as cognitive behavioural therapy have become vehicles for the intensification of personal resilience in the face of systemic crisis. If self-care involves an inward looking and depoliticised subject, surely political emancipation lies elsewhere. The possibility of some alternative to our present state of affairs, where self-care increasingly appears as a form of ‘voluntary servitude,’ that is to say, a form of self-subjugation with serious political risks, must surely be taken as a continual project for those engaged in critical inquiry. Then again, to suggest that those engaging in self-care are simply reproducing neoliberal subjectivity would surely miss the ways in which such forms of self-preservation might appear as unavoidable for the individuals in question. Through an engagement with their work—and one that draws parallels between their strategic critiques of reproductive labour broadly speaking, and the more specific area of mental illness and neoliberal governmentality—the question of the “necessity” of self-care will be brought into alignment with the possibilities of its practicality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:All You That Labor: Religion and Ethics in the Living Wage Movement by C. Melissa SnarrSarah A. NeeleyAll You That Labor: Religion and Ethics in the Living Wage Movement C. Melissa Snarr New York: New York University Press, 2011. 205pp. $49.00Melissa Snarr’s All You That Labor offers an ethical and sociological analysis of the role of religious and feminist organizations in the living (...) wage movement, both of which have been previously overlooked. Snarr not only brings religion [End Page 194] into the conversation but also effectively demonstrates that religious activism has played a significant role in the US living wage movement since its conception in Baltimore. Although Snarr is an activist in the movement, her academic rigor comes through as her research weaves the stories and experiences of other activists with the rich religious traditions of Walter Rauschenbusch, John Ryan, and Martin Luther King Jr. She argues that religious leaders are well equipped to provide leadership and change the conversation on the topic since they are versed in ethical arguments and challenging ideologies. Religious activists, as Snarr aptly shows, have brought attention to the issues of race and gender oppression in wage discrimination, which is significant since Snarr provides statistical evidence that persons of color and women are significantly underpaid in the United States.One of the many strengths of the book is Snarr’s unique perspective on the topic. She provides arguments that are both sociological and ethical. The work beautifully combines the two disciplines to offer a well-balanced history of the movement, analysis of key issues, and critique of society. Furthermore, the feminist work is written by an insider, one of the activists in the movement, without neglecting research or critique. At no point does Snarr oversimplify the issues related to the movement. She offers a complex view of multiple poverties and does not allow the living wage movement to be reduced to economic discourse. Spiritual, emotional, physical, and political poverties receive equal attention alongside monetary poverty with the statement that “most people in poverty experience the intersection of multiple poverties simultaneously” (23). The argument and ethical imperative is clear: systems of oppression are widespread and attempt to destroy on multiple fronts, and religious activism is well suited to provide the multidimensional, holistic response needed to adequately confront economic oppression of groups with a long history at the margins.Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of Snarr’s book is that it is a work in feminist ethics that pays equal attention to women and people of color. An entire chapter on wage discrimination is expected from a white feminist; however, there is an equally detailed chapter on racial discrimination before the chapter on gender justice. The chapter on race argues that the movement itself provides an example for racial justice because it is one of the most racially diverse social action movements. The chapter on gender provides complexity to the systems of sexism as Snarr argues that the movement furthers gender oppression through unpaid or underpaid activist positions filled by women. What is not clear is how the issues of sexism and racism are related in the larger system of economic oppression.Snarr provides example after example of approaches and actions that were effective, although some only to a small extent, and the book concludes with an invitation for the reader to join the movement with a vision for future [End Page 195] justice. Snarr’s book is a timely academic account of the living wage problem and an ethical call for action when the economic future, especially for the United States poor, remains uncertain and worker justice is beginning to receive attention.Sarah A. NeeleyIliff School of Theology/University of DenverCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The question of whether protective labor legislation is beneficial to female workers has triggered much debate among feminist scholars. Like proponents of laissez-faire, some feminist scholars and activists have argued that such legislation harms the economic interests of women by lowering their wages and diminishing their employment prospects on the free labor market. This article reexamines the arguments made by opponents of protective labor legislation in the light of the historical development of the welfare state in Britain (...) and France. It is shown that the case against gender-specific protective labor legislation does not hold on empirical grounds. A strong body of evidence shows that protective labor legislation historically brought increasing economic returns and expanded opportunities to women in both countries. This has important implications for contemporary debates about the relationship between protective labor legislation and gender discrimination in the European Community, the International Labor Organization, and developing countries. (shrink)

This article integrates theory and concepts from the business and society, business ethics, and labor relations literatures to offer a conceptualization of labor union social responsibility that includes activities geared toward three primary objectives: economic equity, workplace democracy, and social justice. Economic, workplace, and social labor union stakeholders are identified, likely issues are highlighted, and the implications of labor union social responsibility for labor union strategy are discussed. It is noted that, given the breadth of (...) labor unions in a global work environment, labor union social responsibility also has implications for NGOs, corporations, and how corporate social responsibility is viewed going forward. This article concludes by noting that the nexus of labor relations and corporate social responsibility warrants more attention in management and labor relations literatures. (shrink)

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends (...) that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns. ☆ Apart from a few changes and some abridgment, this essay is the first chapter of my forthcoming book Vite da servi. Figure del lavoro salariato dalla giurisprudenza naturale all’economia politica (Servants’ Lives: Figures of Paid Labour from Natural Law to Political Economy). I am much indebted to Matthew Armistead for translating it, and to Marco Geuna and Gabriella Silvestrini for commenting on an earlier draft. (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 nineteenth century a group of “labor republicans” argued that the system of wage-labor should be replaced by a system of cooperative production. This system of cooperative production would realize republican liberty in economic, not just political, life. Today, neo-republicans argue that the republican theory of liberty only requires a universal basic income. A non-dominated ability to exit is sufficient to guarantee free labor. This essay reconstructs the more radical, labor republican view and defends (...) it against the prevailing the neo-republican one. It argues that neorepublicanism lacks an adequate conception of structural domination, which leaves it without theoretical resources to address certain forms of economic domination. The concept of structural domination allows us to comprehend the coherence of the nineteenth century, labor republican view and identify its relevance to modern labor markets. Labor republicanism takes us beyond a universal basic income to a concern with control over productive assets and workplace organization. As such, it shows us how the republican theory of liberty can support an argument for the transformation of work, not just the escape from it. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century a group of “labor republicans” argued that the system of wage-labor should be replaced by a system of cooperative production. This system of cooperative production would realize republican liberty in economic, not just political, life. Today, neo-republicans argue that the republican theory of liberty only requires a universal basic income. A non-dominated ability to exit is sufficient to guarantee free labor. This essay reconstructs the more radical, labor republican view and defends (...) it against the prevailing the neo-republican one. It argues that neorepublicanism lacks an adequate conception of structural domination, which leaves it without theoretical resources to address certain forms of economic domination. The concept of structural domination allows us to comprehend the coherence of the nineteenth century, labor republican view and identify its relevance to modern labor markets. Labor republicanism takes us beyond a universal basic income to a concern with control over productive assets and workplace organization. As such, it shows us how the republican theory of liberty can support an argument for the transformation of work, not just the escape from it. (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)

Because organic certification standards institutionalized a product-based rather than process-based definition, certified organic produce can be grown on large-scale industrial monocrop farms. Besides toxicity of inputs, these farms operate in much the same way as conventional production. Scholars emphasize the fact that labor rights have been left out of certification criteria, and because of that, organic farms reproduce the same labor relations as conventional. Empirical studies of organic farm labor, however, rely primarily on the perspective of farmers. (...) In this study, I ask the farmworkers themselves how harvesting on organic farms compares to conventional, and found that working in organic negatively impacts farmworker livelihoods. Qualitative interviews with 36 strawberry harvesters in Oxnard, California reveal that farmworkers make more money in conventional strawberry production because of the interaction between wage structure and size of the berry. Conventional strawberries are larger and therefore fewer of them fill up a box. Farmworkers routinely pick more boxes in conventional than in organic, thus earning more, since under the piece rate system, farmworkers are paid per box. With short-term economic survival rather than long-term occupational health concerns in mind, strawberry harvesters would rather work on conventional farms because “la fresa orgánica es más chiquita”. (shrink)

Alex Gourevitch’s From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth is a valuable contribution to republican historiography: in reconstructing the ideas of the 19th century American labour republicans, this work significantly expands and enriches our appreciation of the classical republican tradition. While the labour republicans are convincingly shown to have made important contributions to that tradition, stronger claims that they fundamentally transformed republicanism are less persuasive.

There are two opposing views concerning intuitive cases of wage exploitation. The first denies that they are cases of exploitation at all. It is based on the nonworseness claim: there is nothing wrong with a discretionary mutually beneficial employment relationship. The second is the reasonable view: some employment relationships can be exploitative even if employers have no duty towards their employees. This article argues that the reasonable view does not completely defeat defences of wage exploitation, because these do (...) not rely solely on the nonworseness claim. They also rely on the idea, popularised by Alan Wertheimer, that exploitation is a form of disequilibrium price occurring in defective markets. The article then proceeds to criticise Wertheimer’s account through neoclassical, new institutional, and Austrian economics. It concludes that considerations for economic efficiency are irrelevant to assessing intuitions regarding exploitation. (shrink)

Income inequality in democratic societies with market economies is sizable and growing. One reason for this growth can be traced to unequal forms of compensation that employers pay workers. Democratic societies have tackled this problem by enforcing a wage standard that all workers are paid regardless of education, skills, or contribution. This raises a novel question: Should there be equal pay for all workers? To answer it, we need to investigate some factors that are relevant to the unequal conditions (...) of power and authority in which wage offers are made. By clarifying these, we can determine whether wage inequality is morally permissible. If not, then a case might be made to pay all workers the same regardless of education, skills, or contribution. Even if it is permissible, another question worth considering is whether there are limits to how much inequality is acceptable. The argument here proceeds along the following lines. First, I summarize the economic and non-economic factors that determine the value of wages in labor markets. Second, I examine a particular problem that concerns whether the conditions of wage labor are coercive because they restrict alternatives or otherwise include threats to the welfare of workers. If there is coercion, we have good reasons to establish a standard that improve these conditions. Finally, I claim that establishing this standard requires increasing the value of low-wage work. Doing so will not only expand alternatives that are available to these workers, it will also diminish the potential threat to their welfare. (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 article endeavors to establish the moral force behind the worker’s claim to a compensatory wage in return for the labor burdens she endures. The apparent incompatibility between compensation and voluntary losses suggests that the only reason for providing a compensatory wage is the need to entice a valued service. In response, the article considers and rejects attempts to ground the compensatory wage on duress, mutual trade, and desert. Instead, it argues that the worker is not (...) responsible for her loss of well-being because she would not have incurred it in the absence of the employer’s promise to compensate. Key Words: compensatory wage • contributory wage • detrimental reliance • desert • labor burdens • promises • responsibility. (shrink)

The Wage Setting Process In this paper I will defend a conception of fairness in labor markets. I will argue that we should take a procedural approach to the evaluation of fairness in markets. The procedural approach defended here goes beyond the traditional procedural view that requires only the absence of force and fraud. But it avoids the pitfalls of the other classical conception of fairness in the market: the idea of a just wage or just price. (...) Fairness in markets is analogous to fairness in the democratic process. I will start with a discussion and critique of Joseph Heath’s stimulating discussion of fairness in labor markets. Though I agree in part with his assessment of the just wage tradition, I will argue that there is room for thinking about fairness in markets. I will then lay out a conception of fairness that is based on the analogy with democracy. The procedural idea of equal power can be given an interpretation both in perfectly competitive markets and in imperfectly competitive markets. I will show how this approach has implications for conceiving of how firms ought to be organized and for defining a fair process of wage setting in the essentially highly imperfect conditions of the labor market. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to investigate the potential that the labour and subjective theory of value in the agricultural context may have for the interpretation of Matthew 20:1–16. This investigation highlighted the divergence in wages between workers, the exuberant remuneration strategy of the landowner, his generosity, the indignation of the labourers hired first and the landowner’s reluctance to reimburse them. I argued that the classic labour theory of value provides an explanation of why the indignant labourers were angry (...) and felt unjustly treated. However, it fails to account for the divergence in remuneration more appropriately addressed by subjective theory of value that focuses on the use value of goods and marginal utility. Finally, the agrarian theory provides perspective on the unwillingness of the landowner to reimburse the indignant labourers and the mystery of meaningful labour in agriculture that serves as a metaphor for the kingdom of heaven.Contribution: In the article, labour and subjective theory of value were introduced from an agrarian perspective to enlighten the hermeneutics of the parable. (shrink)

It is said we live in a second Gilded Age, which makes our understanding of the first all the more relevant. Rosanne Currarino’sThe Labor Question in Americamakes the bold claim that, far from being a period of defeat for the Left, the original Gilded Age saw an expansion of democratic citizenship. A group of economists, social reformers and labour organisers transformed our understanding of political participation from the earlier, producerist to a more modern, consumerist ideal of social inclusion and (...) collective agency. However, on her own telling, Currarino’s ‘expansion’ comes across more as a ‘substitution’. Some workers gained in wages what they lost in control of the means of production. Though Currarino fairly identifies the utopian aspirations underlying the demand for higher levels of consumption, her narrative relies on an overly rigid distinction between production and consumption, missing out on the way in which consumption came to be defined in ways that assumed the workplace would be a site of submission. Finally,The Labor Questionfails to include, as parts of its narrative, the extraordinary violence that marked struggles over the labour question. In this context, the shift from ‘producerist’ emphases on worker control to ‘consumerist’ views of economic citizenship look more like an ideological displacement than they do a progressive expansion of democracy. (shrink)

The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but 'cogs' in this system - but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a 'system'. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, (...) however, that they cannot leave room for moral responsibility, and maybe even human flourishing. Drawing on detailed empirical case studies, Lisa Herzog analyses the nature of organizations from a normative perspective: their rule-bound character, the ways in which they deal with divided knowledge, and organizational cultures and their relation to morality. The volume examines how individual agency and organizational structures would have to mesh to avoid common moral pitfalls and develops the notion of 'transformational agency', which refers to a critical, creative way of engaging with one's organizational role while remaining committed to basic moral norms. The volume goes on to explore the political and institutional changes that would be required to re-embed organizations into a just society. Whether we submit to 'the system' or try to reclaim it, Herzog argues, is a question of eminent political importance in our globalized world. (shrink)

Demosthenes' client Euxitheos is attempting to defend his claim to citizenship, and finds himself obliged to counteract the prejudice raised by his opponent Euboulides from the fact that his mother works, and has worked, in menial wage labour. The implication is that no citizen woman would sink so low; therefore, she is no citizen, and so neither is he. His response is defensive: he acknowledges that such labour is a source of prejudice , but argues that people often find (...) themselves obliged to undertake such demeaning work through poverty, which is deserving of the jury's sympathy, and in any case has no bearing on questions of citizenship . He does not challenge the assumptions behind the prejudice, suggesting that he expects the jury to share them, and this might encourage us to extrapolate from the passage to a set of common values held by Athenian citizens, namely that paid work by women is degrading, embarrassing and only acceptable as a temporary expedient under the compulsion of poverty. If we then align these attitudes with the implications elsewhere in the orators that women led lives of seclusion, usually confined indoors and largely separated from the exterior male world, we might be inclined to conclude that the labour of women was also confined to the oikos and almost entirely distinct from the labour of males, not least in having little or no monetary aspect, a point which the usual view of the economic capacity of Athenian women appears to confirm. (shrink)

Is the minimum wage ethically justifiable? In this chapter, we attempt to answer this question from an order-ethical perspective. To this end, we develop two simple game theoretical models for different types of labour markets and derive policy implications from an order-ethical viewpoint. Our investigation yields a twofold conclusion. Firstly, order ethicists should prefer a tax-funded wage subsidy over minimum wages, if they assume that labour markets are perfectly competitive. Secondly, order ethics suggests that the minimum wage (...) can be ethically justified if employers have monopsony power in the wage setting process. As it turns out, then, order ethics neither favours nor disfavours the minimum wage. Rather, it implies conditions under which this form of labour market regulation is justified and, hence, allows empirical science to play a great role in answering the ethical questions that arise in the context of the minimum wage debate. This illustrates one of order ethics’ strengths, viz. the fact that it tends to de-ideologize the debate about ethical issues. (shrink)

The ongoing controversy about sweatshop labor has mainly focused on economic, on the one, and ethical aspects, on the other side. While proponents of sweatshop labor have argued that low wages would attract foreign investments, would create new workplace opportunities and thus improve economic welfare in less-developed countries, opponents of sweatshop labor argue that such treatment of laborers would violate their dignity, and they prompt western buyers to stop this kind of exploitation. However, the arguments in this (...) debate are not new. As we will show, they can be traced back to the early “sweatshop” debate between social reformers and classical liberals in the 19th century. Interestingly, the 19th century debate identified sweatshop labor not as an industrial system but as a social phenomenon which becomes more likely when several social preconditions are fulfilled. It will be shown that the social preconditions identified in this debate determine working conditions till today and can be used to identify industries were sweatshop labor is more likely than in others—even in western countries. (shrink)

The New South Wales union movement embraced the principles of heritage and conservationism in the 1970s through the imposing of “green bans” – a strategy wherein union members refused to work on construction projects that were a threat to the state’s natural or built environment. Led by radicals like Builders Labourers’ Federation leader Jack Mundey, the green bans were seen in several sectors as a departure from the traditional “Old Left” priorities of securing workers’ wages and conditions. Rather than a (...) hard shift towards radicalism, this article proposes that the green bans were instead reflective of an already existing conservationist tradition in the New South Wales union movement. This reinterpretation is predicated on a content analysis of extant historical material such as contemporaneous news articles, personal memoirs, transcripts of political speeches and archival documents related to the policing of left-wing activism in the 1960s and 1970s. The results show that an existing tradition of engagement with a broad spectrum of social issues in the New South Wales union movement predates the emergence of the New Left, including the commitment to environmental justice principles that underpinned the green bans. (shrink)

Collective bargaining is the main vehicle for labour worldwide to negotiate wages, benefits, retirement policies, training and other terms of working with management in both the public and private sectors. Labour economists have long been active in modelling the relations between collective bargaining agreements, labour markets and social welfare conditions. This book presents a theoretical model of unions which offers a unified treatment of the centralisation of bargaining, the credibility of labour contracts, the unionisation of labour markets and the relative (...) bargaining power of the union. Tapio Palokangas develops the microfoundations of bargaining and examines collective bargaining interacting with public policy, investment and growth, and international trade and specialisation. In conclusion Professor Palokangas challenges the commonly held view that collective bargaining has a negative impact on economics welfare, and argues that with the existence of market failure, collective bargaining can be welfare enhancing. (shrink)

Indonesia’s weak labor movement transformed local wage councils from institutions of wage restraint into institutions that delivered generous wage increases. This article argues that the arrival of direct elections created an opportunity for unions to leverage elections to alter the balance of power on the wage councils. Activating that leverage required increased contentiousness and coordination among unions. As unions mobilized around wages, conflict with capital intensified and produced disruptive protests that led incumbents to side with (...) workers. Unions also developed innovative tactics to sustain momentum in nonelection years. As unions turned the wage councils in their favor, employers fought back by shifting the scale of the conflict to the national level; the result was the recentralization of wage setting and more modest increases. In a global context of ever weakening organized labor, the Indonesian case shows how weak unions can gain power by mobilizing politically at the local level. (shrink)

There is asbestos under the eaves of my house, outside my bedroom and bathroom. Imagine I want to remove it. I know there is a danger with asbestos removal causing asbestosis and mesothelioma. I do...