https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour
Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence (including death), compulsion, or other forms of extreme hardship to themselves or members of their families.
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery, and related institutions (e.g. debt slavery, serfdom, corvée and labour camps). Many of these forms of work may be covered by the term forced labour, which is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as all involuntary work or service exacted under the menace of a penalty.
However, under the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930, the term forced or compulsory labour shall not include:
Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence (including death), compulsion, or other forms of extreme hardship to themselves or members of their families.
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery, and related institutions (e.g. debt slavery, serfdom, corvée and labour camps). Many of these forms of work may be covered by the term forced labour, which is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as all involuntary work or service exacted under the menace of a penalty.
However, under the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930, the term forced or compulsory labour shall not include:
- any work or service exacted in virtue of compulsory military service laws for work of a purely military character;
- any work or service which forms part of the normal civic obligations of the citizens of a fully self-governing country;
- any work or service exacted from any person as a consequence of a conviction in a court of law, provided that the said work or service is carried out under the supervision and control of a public authority and that the said person is not hired to or placed at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations (requiring that prison farms no longer do convict leasing);
- any work or service exacted in cases of emergency, that is to say, in the event of war, of a calamity or threatened calamity, such as fire, flood, famine, earthquake, violent epidemic or epizootic diseases, invasion by: animal, insect or vegetable pests, and in general any circumstance that would endanger the existence or the well-being of the whole or part of the population;
- minor communal services of a kind which, being performed by the
members of the community in the direct interest of the said community,
can therefore be considered as normal civic obligations incumbent upon
the members of the community, provided that the members of the community
or their direct representatives shall have the right to be consulted in
regard to the need for such services.
Payment for unfree labour
Convict labourers in Australia in the early 20th century.
If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:
- The payment does not exceed subsistence or barely exceeds it;
- The payment is in goods which are not desirable and/or cannot be exchanged or are difficult to exchange; or
- The payment wholly or mostly consists of cancellation of a debt or liability that was itself coerced, or belongs to someone else.
Unfree labour is often more easily instituted and enforced on migrant
workers, who have traveled far from their homelands and who are easily
identified because of their physical, ethnic, linguistic, or cultural
differences from the general population, since they are unable or
unlikely to report their conditions to the authorities.
According to the Marxian economics, under capitalism, workers never keep all of the wealth they create, as some of it goes to the profit of capitalists. By contrast with modern subjective theory of value (as used by neoclassical economists), the wages offered necessarily represent the marginal utility of the labour, and any profit (or loss) is also due to other inputs provided, such as capital, time value of money, or risk.
The present situation
Unfree
labor re-emerged as an issue in the debate about rural development
during the years following the end of the Second World War, when a
political concern of Keynesian theory was not just economic reconstruction
(mainly in Europe and Asia) but also planning (in the Third World). A
crucial aspect of the ensuing discussion concerned the extent to which
different relational forms constituted obstacles to capitalist
development, and why.
During the 1960s and 1970s unfree labor was regarded as
incompatible with capitalist accumulation, and thus an obstacle to
economic growth, an interpretation advanced by exponents of the
then-dominant semi-feudal thesis. From the 1980s onwards, however,
another and very different Marxist view emerged, arguing that evidence
from Latin America and India suggested agribusiness enterprises,
commercial farmers and rich peasants reproduced, introduced or
reintroduced unfree relations.
However, recent contributions to this debate have attempted to
exclude Marxism from the discussion. These contributions maintain that,
because Marxist theory failed to understand the centrality of unfreedom
to modern capitalism, a new explanation of this link is needed. This
claim has been questioned by Tom Brass
(2014), ‘Debating Capitalist Dynamics and Unfree Labour: A Missing
Link?’, The Journal of Development Studies, 50:4, 570–82. He argues that
many of these new characteristics are in fact no different from those
identified earlier by Marxist theory and that the exclusion of the
latter approach from the debate is thus unwarranted.
The International Labour Organization
(ILO) estimates that at least 12.3 million people are victims of forced
labour worldwide; of these, 9.8 million are exploited by private agents
and more than 2.4 million are trafficked. Other 2.5 million are forced to work by the state or by rebel military groups. From an international law perspective, countries that allow forced labor are violating international labour standards as set forth in the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (C105), one of the fundamental conventions of the ILO.
According to the ILO Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour
(SAP-FL), global profits from forced trafficked labour exploited by
private agents are estimated at US$44,3 billion per year. About 70% of
this value (US$31.6 billion) come from trafficked victims. At least the
half of this sum (more than US$15 billion) comes from industrialized
countries.
Trafficking
Trafficking is a term to define the recruiting, harbouring, obtaining
and transportation of a person by use of force, fraud, or coercion for
the purpose of subjecting them to involuntary acts, such as acts related
to commercial sexual exploitation (including forced prostitution) or involuntary labour.
Forms of Unfree Labour
According to Adam Smith,
colleges in the United States are considered a form of forced labor
since the students do not get paid to do assignments which normally do
not enhance learning and the sole purpose of which is to keep professors
employed.
Slavery
The archetypal and best-known form of unfree labour is chattel slavery, in which individual workers are legally
owned throughout their lives, and may be bought, sold or otherwise
exchanged by owners, while never or rarely receiving any personal
benefit from their labour. Slavery was common in many ancient societies, including ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia, ancient Greece, Rome, ancient Israel, ancient China, classical Arab states, as well as many societies in Africa and the Americas.
Being sold into slavery was a common fate of populations that were
conquered in wars. Perhaps the most prominent example of chattel slavery
was the enslavement of many millions of black people
in Africa, as well as their forced transportation to the Americas,
Asia, or Europe, where their status as slaves was almost always
inherited by their descendants.
The term slavery is often applied to situations which do
not meet the above definitions, but which are other, closely related
forms of unfree labour, such as debt slavery or debt-bondage (although not all repayment of debts through labour constitutes unfree labour). Examples are the Repartimiento system in the Spanish Empire, or the work of Indigenous Australians in northern Australia on sheep or cattle stations (ranches),
from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. In the latter case, workers
were rarely or never paid, and were restricted by regulations and/or
police intervention to regions around their places of work.
In late 16th century Japan, "unfree labour" or slavery was
officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labour persisted
alongside the period's penal codes' forced labour. Somewhat later, the Edo period's penal laws prescribed "non-free labour" for the immediate families of executed criminals in Article 17 of the Gotōke reijō (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711 Gotōke reijō was compiled from over 600 statutes that were promulgated between 1597 and 1696.
According to Kevin Bales, in Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (1999), there are now an estimated 27 million slaves in the world.
Truck system
A truck system, in the specific sense in which the term is used by labour historians,
refers to an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment associated
with small, isolated and/or rural communities, in which workers or self-employed small producers are paid in either: goods, a form of payment known as truck wages, or tokens, private currency ("scrip") or direct credit, to be used at a company store,
owned by their employers. A specific kind of truck system, in which
credit advances are made against future work, is known in the U.S. as debt bondage.
Many scholars have suggested that employers use such systems to
exploit workers and/or indebt them. This could occur, for example, if
employers were able to pay workers with goods which had a market value
below the level of subsistence,
or by selling items to workers at inflated prices. Others argue that
truck wages, at least in some cases, were a convenient way for isolated
communities to operate, when official currency was scarce.
By the early 20th century, truck systems were widely seen, in industrialised countries, as exploitative; perhaps the most well-known example of this view was a 1947 U.S. hit song "Sixteen Tons". Many countries have Truck Act legislation that outlaws truck systems and requires payment in cash.
Mandatory services due to social status
Corvée
Though most closely associated with Medieval
Europe, governments throughout human history have imposed regular short
stints of unpaid labor upon lower social classes. These might be
annual obligations of a few weeks or something similarly regular that
lasted for the laborer's entire working life. As the system developed
in the Philippines and elsewhere, the laborer could pay an appropriate
fee and be exempted from the obligation.
Vetti-chakiri
In Vetti-chakiri and begar lower castes have only had
obligations or duties to render free services to the upper caste
community also called as Vetti or Vetti chakiri.
Penal labour
Labour camps
Female forced laborers wearing "OST" (Ost-Arbeiter) badges are liberated from a camp near Lodz, January 1945.
Another historically significant example of forced labour was that of political prisoners, people from conquered or occupied countries, members of persecuted minorities, and prisoners of war, especially during the 20th century. The best-known example of this are the concentration camp system run by Nazi Germany in Europe during World War II, the Gulag camps run by the Soviet Union, and the forced labour used by the military of the Empire of Japan, especially during the Pacific War (such as the Burma Railway). Roughly 4,000,000 German POWs were used as "reparations labour" by the Allies
for several years after the German surrender; this was permitted under
the Third Geneva Convention provided they were accorded proper
treatment. China's Laogai ("labour reform") system and North Korea's Kwalliso camps are current examples.
About 12 million forced labourers, most of whom were Poles and Soviet citizens (Ost-Arbeiter), were employed in the German war economy inside Nazi Germany. More than 2000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Volkswagen, Hoechst, Dresdner Bank, Krupp, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, BMW, and Degussa.
In Asia, according to a joint study of historians featuring Zhifen Ju, Mark Peattie, Toru Kubo, and Mitsuyoshi Himeta, more than 10 million Chinese were mobilized by the Japanese army and enslaved by the Kōa-in for slave labour in Manchukuo and north China. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha
(Japanese: "manual laborer") were forced to work by the Japanese
military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other
Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to
Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.
The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agricultural communes. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labour camps.
Prison labour
American prisoner "chain gang" laborers, 2006. Notice the shackles on the feet of the prisoners.
Convict
or prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. The forced
labour of convicts has often been regarded with lack of sympathy,
because of the social stigma
attached to people regarded as "common criminals". In some countries
and historical periods, however, prison labour has been forced upon
people who have been victims of prejudice, convicted of political
crimes, convicted of "victimless crimes",
or people who committed theft or related offences because they lacked
any other means of subsistence—categories of people who typically call
for compassion according to current ethical ideas.
Three British colonies
in Australia—New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and Western
Australia—are three examples of the state use of convict labour.
Australia received thousands of convict labourers in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries who were given sentences for crimes ranging from
those now considered to be minor misdemeanors to such serious offences
as murder, rape and incest. A considerable number of Irish convicts
were sentenced to transportation for 'treason' while fighting for Irish
independence from British rule.
More than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australian colonies from 1788 to 1868.
Most British or Irish convicts who were sentenced to transportation,
however, completed their sentences in British jails and were not
transported at all.
It is estimated that in the last 50 years more than 50 million people have been sent to Chinese laogai camps.
Indentured and bonded labour
A more common form in modern society is indenture, or bonded labour,
under which workers sign contracts to work for a specific period of
time, for which they are paid only with accommodation and sustenance, or
these essentials in addition to limited benefits such as cancellation
of a debt, or transportation to a desired country.
Permitted exceptions of unfree labour
As mentioned above, there are several exceptions of unfree or forced labour recognized by the International Labour Organization:
Civil Conscription
Some countries practice forms of civil conscription for different
major occupational groups or inhabitants under different denominations
like civil conscription, civil mobilization, political mobilisation etc. This obligatory services on the one hand has been implemented due to long-lasting labour strikes,
during wartimes or economic crisis, to provide basic services like
medical care, food supply or supply of the defense industry. On the
other hand this service can be obligatory to provide recurring and
inevitable services to the population, like fire services, due to lack
of volunteers.
Temporary civil conscription
Between December 1943 and March 1948 young men in the United Kingdom, the so-called Bevin Boys, had been conscripted for the work in coal mines. In Belgium in 1964, in Portugal and in Greece from 2010 to 2014 due to the severe economic crisis,
a system of civil mobilization was implemented to provide public
services as a national interest. In Greece these obligatory services
have been called political mobilization and civil conscription.
Recurring civil conscription
In Switzerland in most communities for all inhabitants, no matter if they are Swiss or not, it is mandatory to join the so-called Militia Fire Brigades, as well as the obligatory service in Swiss civil defense and protection force.
Conscripts in Singapore are providing the personnel of the country's fire service as part of the national service in the Civil Defence Force.
In Austria and Germany citizens have to join a compulsory fire brigade if a volunteer fire service
can not be provided, due to lack of volunteers. In 2018 this regulation
is executed only in a handful of communities in Germany and currently
none in Austria.
Conscription for military service and security forces
Beside the conscription for military services, some countries draft citizens for paramilitary or security forces, like internal troops, border guards or police forces. While sometimes paid, conscripts are not free to decline enlistment. Draft dodging or desertion
are often met with severe punishment. Even in countries which prohibit
other forms of unfree labour, conscription is generally justified as
being necessary in the national interest and therefore it is not contrary to the exceptions of the Forced Labour Convention, signed by the most countries in the world.
Mandatory community service
Community services
Community service
is a non-paying job performed by one person or a group of people for
the benefit of their community or its institutions. Community service is
distinct from volunteering, since it is not always performed on a
voluntary basis. Although personal benefits may be realized, it may be
performed for a variety of reasons including citizenship requirements, a
substitution of criminal justice sanctions, requirements of a school or
class, and requisites for the receipt of certain benefits.
De facto obligatory community work
During the Cold War in some communist countries like Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic or the Soviet Union the originally voluntary work on Saturday for the community called Subbotnik, Voskresnik or Akce Z became de facto obligatory for the members of a community.
Hand and tension services
In some German states it is feasible for communities to draft citizens for public services, called Hand and Tension Services. This mandatory service is still executed to maintain the infrastructure of small communities.
Mandatory work to receive social benefits
In several countries recipients of social benefits are required to
work in special programs (such as usually unpaid or low-paid work) to
continue to receive social or welfare benefits. For example the workfare programm is realized in many countries.
In Australia the Work for the Dole program was implemented in 1998.
It is one means by which job seekers can satisfy what the government
calls "mutual obligation requirements". Other "mutual obligation"
measures are accredited study, part-time work, Army Reserves and
volunteer work. "Work for the Dole" continues as of 2018.
In Germany the Bürgerarbeit (German for "citizen´s work") is a similar concept, but politically discussed from time to time only.
In the United Kingdom different workfare programs like the Mandatory Work Activity were implemented by different governments.
