Covid-19: how the health crisis is exposing the omnipresence and mundanity of unfree labour in our economies

Charline Sempéré - Doctoral Researcher, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI)

What is for certain, is that the crisis has underscored the exploitation of many workers around the world, particularly the ones fulfilling essential activities for the functioning and the reproduction of our societies. Far be it from me to complain about this new spotlight nor about the much-needed condemnation of labour abuses and the additional pressure on workers stemming from the current crisis, rather I thought it timely and important to reiterate and clarify certain points. This is not new and this is not exceptional. Yes, exploitation is happening in our economies and not just in times of crisis. No, it does not only touch women working in the streets nor migrants in the crop fields. Rather, it is a phenomenon which is much more common and mundane than we think it is despite the narratives advancing individualised criminal logics or mistaking glorified heroic sacrifices for exploitative employment relationships. These are misleading as they direct our attention away from the embeddedness and everyday characteristic of this issue in our capitalist economic system. 

Many researchers have expressed and demonstrated this in lengthy and convincing terms (see also here and here). Forms of work including exploitative labour forms are to be situated on a spectrum of labour relations ranging from slavery like conditions or forced labour, to what, we consider ‘free’, stable and fulfilling employment. A multitude of factors, cultural, social, economic and political, explain an individuals’ position on this continuum. Additionally, in the same way the pandemic has not affected us all equally, exploitation is also discriminatory. Vulnerability to labour unfreedoms disproportionately affects people along the lines of gender, citizenship, race, class among other social markers. Therefore, exploitation, as an everyday process of capitalism, takes various forms and degree. It is the rule rather than the exception, from unpaid reproductive work of women, poor workers in abattoirs or garment factories, to nurses and cashiers struggling to make ends meet. Finally and importantly, this crisis has also highlighted that the most vital functions of society are affected by issues of exploitation. The extent of this phenomenon, in addition to causing immense suffering, affects our capacity to sustain social bonds in society and our own social reproduction.

The question I next ask, following this renewed spotlight on the extent and the mundane aspect of the phenomenon of exploitation affecting a multitude of workers all the way to the very foundational social tissue of our society: what are we to do about it? Is this renewed increased awareness going to initiate the change we need to address this issue?  

My fear is that the toiling of certain workers is somewhat taken for a given and is, to a certain extent, no longer surprising. Indeed we hear and read about labour unfreedoms, devaluation and exploitation often, if not daily, ‘and the repetition appears endless, irremediable’ (Butler, 2009, p.13). In the same way Judith Butler explains that we, as a society, make a distinction between people whose bodies and lives are grievable and those whose death is not valued, maybe, unconsciously, we assume that the exploitation of certain workers’ bodies are not grievable? Or that their resources are endless and their exploitation inevitable? This renders the denunciation of their exploitation challenging because the collective conscience is used to this narrative and to the fatalistic plight of certain groups of the population. As harsh as those words might seem I think they are worth considering and they generate a question we need to ask ourselves. Do we think the actual distribution of grieving and value attributed to labour bodies is viable and human?  As this crisis highlights and creates more awareness of what is ‘essential’ for the society’s reproduction and well-being we ought to rethink the value we attribute to labour activities, in a radically more caring, sustainable, inclusive and equal way and break out from our lethargy.