The Politics of Unpaid Labour: Sustaining and Valuing Work in a Just Economy
Valeria Pulignano (CESO - KU Leuven) and Uma Rani (ILO Geneva)
Contact e-mail: valeria.pulignano@kuleuven.be
Description of the session:
Philosopher Paul Gomberg (2018: 559) highlights how many individuals endure “unjust harm through their labour,” including inadequate compensation that denies workers a dignified livelihood. In today’s economy featuring the emergence of gig work, remote employment, and multiple and flexible job arrangements, unpaid labour has expanded beyond domestic duties and volunteerism to permeate paid employment, undermining sustainability, eroding workers' rights, and deepening inequality.
Traditionally, unpaid labour has been understood as work performed outside the market, encompassing voluntary or community work and social reproductive work. Scholars have broadened this scope, recognizing unpaid labour as endemic within paid market employment (e.g., ‘wage theft’). Recently, studies have also pointed to unpaid labour to be a systemic issue embedded within neoliberal economic structures. The flexibilization of employment, the fissuring of production systems, and employers' increasing reliance on short-term, on-demand, and insecure contracts contribute to this in-market unpaid labour. What is unpaid labour ?
Unpaid labour is time and effort spent on tasks tied to one’s work but lacking fair compensation. Although the forms and mechanisms may differ, workers often engage in unpaid labour due to employer demands (e.g., long hours, strict control over work time) or career advancement goals (e.g., internships). Thus, unpaid labour functions as a hidden subsidy to employers, compelling workers to extend their working hours without pay to meet deadlines, secure job stability, or comply with workplace norms. Growing job insecurity and unpredictability, driven by capital's recourse to unpaid labour, result in workers losing valuable job features, including pay, benefits, and pensions, and experiencing intensified work strains. Consequently, unpaid labour is a significant dimension of precarious work, inherent to capitalism. Employers utilize unpaid labour as a source of value, extending and intensifying the working day to maximize profits, while workers struggle for fair compensation for their efforts. This value loss significantly impacts workers' social and political lives.
However, with the rise of digital technologies, unpaid labour has extended to online freelance platforms, which contributes to the accumulation of capital among tech giants. In freelance work, workers theoretically might retain some ‘effort power’, which pertains to their autonomy in determining the amount of effort they invest in their work and their choices regarding 'where' and 'to whom' they sell their labour. Although freelancers, aren't typically classified as waged labour, they too perform unpaid labour as observed among traditional freelancers. However, in platform work due to competitive dynamics, there is often a blurred boundary between the two dimensions – work and free time. Unpaid labour is driven by both platform task allocation and performance monitoring and takes different forms such as unpaid tasks for building reputation, searching for tasks, bidding for projects, profile curation, dispute resolution, travelling to perform tasks, and addressing client abuse such as providing unpaid revisions for a higher rating.
This session argues that addressing unpaid labour requires rethinking precarity as a process shaped by structural power imbalances. Neoliberal policies have deregulated employment, weakened unions, and normalized exploitative practices. Tackling these dynamics involves a paradigm shift in how we value and regulate labour. By addressing unpaid labour as a political issue requiring systemic solutions, this session contributes to reimagining an economic model that values humanity, equity, and sustainability over exploitation and growth at any cost.
It will also propose some concrete strategies to address the issue of unpaid labour. First, strengthening multi-level collective bargaining by expanding agreements across sectors to include informal and precarious workers, supported by alliances between trade unions and grassroots organizations. Second, reducing working hours by implementing shorter workweeks with wage protections, enabling workers to balance paid and unpaid responsibilities while creating opportunities for formal employment. Third, enhancing government interventions by subsidizing reduced hours through tax incentives, wage supplements, and investments in public services like childcare and eldercare to alleviate unpaid labour burdens. Fourth, challenging cultural norms by launching educational campaigns to dismantle harmful narratives, such as the myth of the ‘ideal worker’, which legitimizes exploitation and reinforces gendered divisions of labour.
Session Chair: Valeria Pulignano (CESO – KU Leuven)
Session Discussant: Professor Jill Rubery (Manchester Inequality Institute - University of Manchester, UK)
Session Papers:
Damian Grimshaw (King’s College London, UK) The Politics of Unpaid Labour: Sustaining and Valuing Work in a Just Economy
Valeria Pulignano, Milena Franke and Bart Meuleman (CESO – KU Leuven) Economic Sustainability, Unpaid Labour and the Reframing of Employment in the Post-Growth Era
Uma Rani (ILO, Geneva), Valeria Pulignano (CESO – KU Leuven), Nora Gobel (ILO, Geneva), Karol Muszyński (Warsaw University, Poland) Challenging Boundaries: Exploring Pricing Strategies, and Unpaid Labour Time to Explain Earning Disparities in Online Labour Markets
