Die Neue Zeit
6th December 2015, 03:52
Labour Legal Recognition of Presently Unremunerated Work
“All forms of work should be recognized and valued, not just paid labour. Much valuable work, such as care for relatives and voluntary work, is unpaid and uncounted. So are many labour-related tasks that people are expected to do in their own time. Meanwhile, labourist policies aim to maximize the numbers in jobs, no matter how pointless, demeaning or resource-depleting.” (Guy Standing)
In 2014, Guy Standing wrote A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens. In it, he issued a political program of 29 Articles, or demands, for improving the conditions of the newest, cross-sectoral, cross-age (from youth to midlife and beyond), and growing part of the working class that is by and large the precariat. One of the later articles called for an unconditional basic income, irrespective of legal status, as a strategy for permanently decoupling work from income. Recall that, unfortunately, under bourgeois society this scheme would result in both the monetization of social benefits through their privatization and a universally downward shift in wages. Nonetheless, that article did flow from the very first article, which called for the redefinition of work “as productive and reproductive activity.”
This redefinition of work refers to work strictly at an individual level – not to sectoral-level labour that is more susceptible to technological advance and directly or indirectly sustains the workers’ consumption bundle, and not to class-based occupations that develop society’s labour power and its capabilities. The first category of presently unremunerated activity that should be recognized as work, unpaid care work, has also been recognized by the likes of Post-Keynesians and feminists. From the first group, economists Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray argued that their employment policy would “broaden the meaning of work by recognizing certain activities as socially useful and by compensating for them” and mentioned “the many forms of community involvement which are now recognized as legitimate [employment policy] jobs”: companionship services, safety supervision, daycare provision, and others. From the second group, labour law professor Judy Fudge argued for broadening the conception of work in labour law, yet warned that any wholesale commodification of care work should not be a panacea to duly recognizing reproductive activity as work:
Feminist labour law scholars have emphasized the importance of including caring labour, whether paid or unpaid, in the domain of labour law, and they (we) are at the forefront of grappling the specific dynamics governing affective or embodied labour.
[...]
Moreover, it is important to acknowledge the economic limits to the whole-sale commodification of care labour in high-income countries. A feminist reconceptualisation of labour law requires scholars to comprehend that the relations of social reproduction are as important as employment relations (and productive relations more generally) for individual development as well as viable and sustainable societies. The conflict between the competing demands of employment and social reproduction cannot be resolved through the wholesale commodification of care.
The next traditionally unrecognized category of presently unremunerated activity that should be recognized as work is work-for-labour. Drawing from his subject matter expertise in labour economics, Standing explained:
Then there is what should be called work-for-labour, work linked to jobs that is unremunerated and unrecognized statistically or in social policy. This includes unpaid off-the-clock hours, a growing phenomenon that concerns the precariat most. People are doing more work away from formal workplaces, completing tasks that cannot be done in paid hours. And they are doing work in trying to remain “competitive” and up-to-date, networking, learning new skills, going through lengthy job application processes, and the like.
Work-for-labour also includes activities the state requires people to do if they are claiming benefits, including lengthy form-filling, regular reporting attending compulsory meetings and training sessions.
It should be noted that more of this unpaid work-for-labour is done by employed individuals, now likely more than by the unemployed.
The second article in Standing’s political program called for the reform of labour statistics, such that all forms of unremunerated work – including all voluntary work and all work-for-citizenship such as tax compliance and the perusal of legal documents – would be counted. However, labour statistics are only a small part of the broader area that is labour law. Only three subsequent articles in that political program pertain to labour law: calling for making recruitment practices brief encounters, calling for the regulation of flexible labour, and calling for the promotion of associational freedom. The first article itself appears to be more about the social recognition of all forms of unremunerated work, not about the recognition of those forms in labour law, where it matters for workers.
Therefore, to be called for is the following: the labour legal recognition of each form of presently unremunerated work by individuals, whether productive or reproductive, and the standards-based valuing of each form in labour law. Not only would labour statistics recognize and account for work-for-labour, care work, and all other forms of presently unremunerated work, but also each of those forms of work can be valued where it matters for workers. None of the articles in Standing’s political program deal with valuing each of those forms of work in labour law, including the article calling for an unconditional basic income, regardless of its other shortcomings mentioned earlier.
With all the considerations above, does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? The issuance of intermediate or threshold demands is made possible by the second part of this reform, the standards-based valuing in labour law of work-for-labour, care work, and all other forms of presently unremunerated work by individuals. That valuing may start at the regulatory level, but may be extended to the economic level; whether that extension is through commodification or not is subject to strong debate.
Does this reform enable the basic principles to be “kept consciously in view”? Every independent, class-based political action, or genuine class struggle, grows out of public policymaking struggle; every genuine class struggle is political, neither economic nor cultural. Such massive change to labour law is political, while day-to-day recognition of all forms of unremunerated work by society at large is not. Ending the exploitation and alienation of human labour in productive labour would not be possible without the proper recognition of all forms of individual work for better accounting of productive labour. At the transnational level, this demonstrates one of many insufficiencies in the existing international labour standards and the diplomacy underlying them.
REFERENCES
A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens by Guy Standing [https://books.google.ca/books?id=gSweAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover]
Can Basic Income and Job Guarantees Deliver on Their Promises? by Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray [http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/wp/wp42.html]
Commodifying Care Work: Globalization, Gender and Labour Law by Judy Fudge [https://www.upf.edu/gredtiss/_pdf/2013-LLRNConf_Fudge.pdf]
“All forms of work should be recognized and valued, not just paid labour. Much valuable work, such as care for relatives and voluntary work, is unpaid and uncounted. So are many labour-related tasks that people are expected to do in their own time. Meanwhile, labourist policies aim to maximize the numbers in jobs, no matter how pointless, demeaning or resource-depleting.” (Guy Standing)
In 2014, Guy Standing wrote A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens. In it, he issued a political program of 29 Articles, or demands, for improving the conditions of the newest, cross-sectoral, cross-age (from youth to midlife and beyond), and growing part of the working class that is by and large the precariat. One of the later articles called for an unconditional basic income, irrespective of legal status, as a strategy for permanently decoupling work from income. Recall that, unfortunately, under bourgeois society this scheme would result in both the monetization of social benefits through their privatization and a universally downward shift in wages. Nonetheless, that article did flow from the very first article, which called for the redefinition of work “as productive and reproductive activity.”
This redefinition of work refers to work strictly at an individual level – not to sectoral-level labour that is more susceptible to technological advance and directly or indirectly sustains the workers’ consumption bundle, and not to class-based occupations that develop society’s labour power and its capabilities. The first category of presently unremunerated activity that should be recognized as work, unpaid care work, has also been recognized by the likes of Post-Keynesians and feminists. From the first group, economists Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray argued that their employment policy would “broaden the meaning of work by recognizing certain activities as socially useful and by compensating for them” and mentioned “the many forms of community involvement which are now recognized as legitimate [employment policy] jobs”: companionship services, safety supervision, daycare provision, and others. From the second group, labour law professor Judy Fudge argued for broadening the conception of work in labour law, yet warned that any wholesale commodification of care work should not be a panacea to duly recognizing reproductive activity as work:
Feminist labour law scholars have emphasized the importance of including caring labour, whether paid or unpaid, in the domain of labour law, and they (we) are at the forefront of grappling the specific dynamics governing affective or embodied labour.
[...]
Moreover, it is important to acknowledge the economic limits to the whole-sale commodification of care labour in high-income countries. A feminist reconceptualisation of labour law requires scholars to comprehend that the relations of social reproduction are as important as employment relations (and productive relations more generally) for individual development as well as viable and sustainable societies. The conflict between the competing demands of employment and social reproduction cannot be resolved through the wholesale commodification of care.
The next traditionally unrecognized category of presently unremunerated activity that should be recognized as work is work-for-labour. Drawing from his subject matter expertise in labour economics, Standing explained:
Then there is what should be called work-for-labour, work linked to jobs that is unremunerated and unrecognized statistically or in social policy. This includes unpaid off-the-clock hours, a growing phenomenon that concerns the precariat most. People are doing more work away from formal workplaces, completing tasks that cannot be done in paid hours. And they are doing work in trying to remain “competitive” and up-to-date, networking, learning new skills, going through lengthy job application processes, and the like.
Work-for-labour also includes activities the state requires people to do if they are claiming benefits, including lengthy form-filling, regular reporting attending compulsory meetings and training sessions.
It should be noted that more of this unpaid work-for-labour is done by employed individuals, now likely more than by the unemployed.
The second article in Standing’s political program called for the reform of labour statistics, such that all forms of unremunerated work – including all voluntary work and all work-for-citizenship such as tax compliance and the perusal of legal documents – would be counted. However, labour statistics are only a small part of the broader area that is labour law. Only three subsequent articles in that political program pertain to labour law: calling for making recruitment practices brief encounters, calling for the regulation of flexible labour, and calling for the promotion of associational freedom. The first article itself appears to be more about the social recognition of all forms of unremunerated work, not about the recognition of those forms in labour law, where it matters for workers.
Therefore, to be called for is the following: the labour legal recognition of each form of presently unremunerated work by individuals, whether productive or reproductive, and the standards-based valuing of each form in labour law. Not only would labour statistics recognize and account for work-for-labour, care work, and all other forms of presently unremunerated work, but also each of those forms of work can be valued where it matters for workers. None of the articles in Standing’s political program deal with valuing each of those forms of work in labour law, including the article calling for an unconditional basic income, regardless of its other shortcomings mentioned earlier.
With all the considerations above, does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? The issuance of intermediate or threshold demands is made possible by the second part of this reform, the standards-based valuing in labour law of work-for-labour, care work, and all other forms of presently unremunerated work by individuals. That valuing may start at the regulatory level, but may be extended to the economic level; whether that extension is through commodification or not is subject to strong debate.
Does this reform enable the basic principles to be “kept consciously in view”? Every independent, class-based political action, or genuine class struggle, grows out of public policymaking struggle; every genuine class struggle is political, neither economic nor cultural. Such massive change to labour law is political, while day-to-day recognition of all forms of unremunerated work by society at large is not. Ending the exploitation and alienation of human labour in productive labour would not be possible without the proper recognition of all forms of individual work for better accounting of productive labour. At the transnational level, this demonstrates one of many insufficiencies in the existing international labour standards and the diplomacy underlying them.
REFERENCES
A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens by Guy Standing [https://books.google.ca/books?id=gSweAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover]
Can Basic Income and Job Guarantees Deliver on Their Promises? by Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray [http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/wp/wp42.html]
Commodifying Care Work: Globalization, Gender and Labour Law by Judy Fudge [https://www.upf.edu/gredtiss/_pdf/2013-LLRNConf_Fudge.pdf]