Forced labour

Clergy on forced labour, byIvan Vladimirov(Soviet Russia,1919)

Forced labour,orunfree labour,is any work relation, especially inmodernorearly modernhistory, in which people are employed against their will with the threat ofdestitution,detention,orviolence,including death or other forms of extreme hardship to either themselves or members of their families.

Unfree labour includes all forms ofslavery,penal labour,and the corresponding institutions, such asdebt slavery,serfdom,corvéeandlabour camps.

Definition

Many forms of unfree labour are also covered by the termforced labour,which is defined by theInternational Labour Organization(ILO) as all involuntary work or service exacted under the menace of a penalty.

However, under theILOForced Labour Conventionof 1930, the term forced or compulsory labour does not include:

• "any work or service exacted in virtue ofcompulsory military servicelaws for work of a purely military character; "
• "any work or service which forms part of the normalcivic obligationsof the citizens of a fullyself-governingcountry; "
• "any work or service exacted from any person as a consequence of a conviction in acourt of law,provided that the said work or service is carried out under the supervision and control of apublic authorityand that the said person is not hired to orplaced at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations(requiring thatprison farmsno longer doconvict leasing) ";
• "any work or service exacted in cases of emergency, that is to say, in the event ofwar,of acalamityor threatened calamity, such asfire,flood,famine,earthquake,violent epidemicorepizootic diseases,invasion by:animal,insectorvegetable pests,and in general any circumstance that would endanger the existence or the well-being of the whole or part of the population ";

Payment for unfree labour

See also:Labour economics § Wage slavery,Labor theory of value,andProductive and unproductive labour

Convict labourers in Australia in the early 19th century

If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:

• The payment does not exceedsubsistenceor 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 travelled 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.

Modern day unfree labour

Unfree labour 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 ofKeynesiantheory was not justeconomic reconstruction(mainly in Europe and Asia) but also planning (indeveloping "Third World" nations). 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 labour 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 suggestedagribusinessenterprises, 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 byTom Brass.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.

TheInternational 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 aretrafficked.Another 2.5 million are forced to work by the state or by rebel military groups.From aninternational lawperspective, countries that allow forced labour are violatinginternational labour standardsas set forth in the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (C105), one of the fundamental conventions of the ILO.

See also:Global Slavery Index

According to theILO 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) comes from trafficked victims. At least the half of this sum (more than US$15 billion) comes from industrialised countries.

Freedom from forced labour by country (V-Dem Institute, 2021)

Trafficking

Main article:Human 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 (includingforced prostitution) or involuntary labour.

Forms of unfree labour

Illustration of Native woman panning for gold

Slavery

Main article:Slavery

The archetypal and best-known form of unfree labour ischattel 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 manyancient societies,includingancient Egypt,Babylon,Persia,ancient Greece,Rome,ancient China,the pre-modern Muslim world,as well as many societies inAfricaandthe 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 ofblack peoplein 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 asdebt slaveryor debt-bondage (although not all repayment of debts through labour constitutes unfree labour). Examples are theRepartimientosystem in theSpanish Empire,or the work ofIndigenous Australiansinnorthern Australiaon 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" orslaverywas officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labour persisted alongside the period's penal codes' forced labour. Somewhat later, theEdo period's penal laws prescribed "non-free labour" for the immediate families of executed criminals in Article 17 of theGotōke reijō(Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711Gotōke reijōwas compiled from over 600 statutes that were promulgated between 1597 and 1696.

According toKevin BalesinDisposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy(1999), there are now an estimated 27 million slaves in the world.

See also:Global Slavery Index

Blackbirding

Blackbirdinginvolves kidnapping or trickery to transport people to another country or far away from home, to work as a slave or low-paid involuntary worker. In some cases, workers were returned home after a period of time.

Serfdom

Serfdombonds labourers to the land they farm, typically in afeudalsociety. Serfs typically have no legal right to leave, change employers, or seek paid work, though depending on economic conditions many did so anyway. Unlike chattel slaves, they typically cannot be sold separately from the land, and have rights such as the military protection of the lord.

Truck system

Main article:Truck system

A truck system, in the specific sense in which the term is used bylabour historians,refers to an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment associated with small, isolated and/or rural communities, in which workers orself-employedsmall producers are paid in either: goods, a form of payment known astruck wages,or tokens,private currency( "scrip" ) or direct credit, to be used at acompany 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. asdebt 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 ofsubsistence,or by selling items to workers at inflated prices. Others argue that truck wages were a convenient way for isolated communities, such as during the early colonial settlement of North America, to operate when official currency was scarce.

By the early 20th century, truck systems were widely seen, inindustrialisedcountries, as exploitative; perhaps the most well-known example of this view was a 1947 U.S. hit song "Sixteen Tons".Many countries haveTruck Actlegislation that outlaws truck systems and requires payment in cash.

Mandatory services due to social status

Corvée

Main articles:CorvéeandSocage

Though most closely associated withMedievalEurope, governments throughout human history have imposed regular short stints of unpaid labour upon lower social classes. These might be annual obligations of a few weeks or something similarly regular that lasted for the labourer's entire working life. As the system developed in the Philippines and elsewhere, the labourer could pay an appropriate fee and be exempted from the obligation.

Vetti-chakiri

Main article:Veth (India)

A form of forced labour in which peasants and members of lower castes were required to work for free existed in India before independence. This form of labour was known by several names, includingveth,vethi,vetti-chakiriandbegar.

Penal labour

Main article:Penal labour

See also:Convicts in Australia,Katorga,andDevil's Island

Labour camps

Main article:Labour camp

See also:The Holocaust,Japanese war crimes,Slavery in Japan,Gulag,Laogai,Kwalliso,Arbeitslager,Nazi concentration camps,Forced labor of Germans after World War II,andHistory of Germany (1945–90) § Forced labour reparations

Jewish forced labourers during the Holocaust inMogilev,Belarus, July 1941.

Political prisonerseating lunch in aGulagcamp, 1955.

Another historically significant example of forced labour was that ofpolitical prisoners,people from conquered or occupied countries, members of persecuted minorities, andprisoners of war,especially during the 20th century. The best-known example of this are theconcentration campsystem run byNazi Germanyin Europe during World War II, theGulagcampsrun by theSoviet Union,and the forced labour used by the military of theEmpire of Japan,especially during thePacific War(such as theBurma Railway). Roughly 4,000,000 German POWs were used as "reparations labour" by theAlliesfor several years after the German surrender; this was permitted under the Third Geneva Convention provided they were accorded proper treatment.China'slaogai( "labour reform" ) system andNorth Korea'skwallisocamps are current examples.

About 12 million forced labourers, most of whom were Poles andSovietcitizens (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, includingDaimler,Deutsche Bank,Siemens,Volkswagen,Hoechst,Dresdner Bank,Krupp,Allianz,BASF,Bayer,BMW,andDegussa.In particular, Germany's Jewish population was subject to slave labour prior to their extermination.

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 mobilised by the Japanese army andenslavedby theKōa-inforslave labourinManchukuoand north China.The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that inJava,between 4 and 10 millionromusha(Japanese:"manual labourer" ) were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers 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%.Also, 6.87 million Koreans were forcefully put into slave labour from 1939 to 1945 in both Japan and Japanese-occupied Korea.

Kerja rodi (Heerendiensten),was the term for forced labour inIndonesiaunderDutch colonial rule.

TheKhmer Rougeattempted to turn Cambodia into aclassless societyby depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ( "New People" ) into agriculturalcommunes.The entire population was forced to become farmers inlabour camps.

Prison labour

American prisoner "chain gang"labourers, 2006. Notice the shackles on the feet of the prisoners.

Convictor prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. The forced labour of convicts has often been regarded with lack of sympathy, because of thesocial stigmaattached to people regarded as common criminals.

ThreeBritish coloniesin Australia –New South Wales,Van Diemen's LandandWestern Australia– are 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 misdemeanours to such serious offences as murder, rape and incest. A considerable number of Irish convicts were sentenced to transportation fortreasonwhile fighting againstBritish rule in Ireland.

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 Chineselaogaicamps.

Indentured and bonded labour

Main articles:Indentureandbonded labour

A more common form in modern society is indenture, orbonded 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.

Contemporary illegal forced labour

Main article:Slavery in the 21st century

While historically unfree labour was frequently sanctioned by law, in the present day most unfree labour now revolves around illegal control rather than legal ownership, as all countries have made slavery illegal.

Permitted exceptions of unfree labour

As mentioned above, there are several exceptions of unfree or forced labour recognised by theInternational Labour Organization:

Civil conscription

Main article:Civil conscription

Some countries practise forms of civil conscription for different major occupational groups or inhabitants under different denominations likecivil conscription,civil mobilization,political mobilisationetc. This obligatory service on the one hand has been implemented due to long-lastinglabour strikes,during wartime or economic crisis, to provide basic services like medical care, food supply or supply of the defence 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 theUnited Kingdom,the so-calledBevin Boys,had been conscripted for the work incoal mines.InBelgiumin 1964,inPortugaland inGreecefrom 2010 to 2014 due to the severeeconomic crisis,a system of civil mobilisation was implemented to provide public services as a national interest.

Recurring civil conscription

InSwitzerlandin most communities for all inhabitants, no matter if they are Swiss or not, it is mandatory to join the so-calledMilitia Fire Brigades,as well as the obligatory service in Swiss civil defence and protection force. Conscripts inSingaporeare providing the personnel of the country's fire service as part of thenational servicein theCivil Defence Force. InAustriaandGermanycitizens have to join acompulsory fire brigadeif avolunteer fire servicecan 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

Main articles:ConscriptionandImpressment

Beside the conscription formilitaryservices, some countries draft citizens forparamilitaryorsecurity forces,likeinternal troops,border guardsorpolice forces.While sometimes paid, conscripts are not free to decline enlistment.Draft dodgingordesertionare often met with severe punishment. Even in countries which prohibit other forms of unfree labour, conscription is generally justified as being necessary in thenational interestand therefore is one of the five exceptions to theForced Labour Convention,signed by the most countries in the world.

Mandatory community service

Community services

Community serviceis 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 realised, 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 factoobligatory community work

During theCold Warin somecommunistcountries likeCzechoslovakia,theGerman Democratic Republicor theSoviet Unionthe originally voluntary work on Saturday for the community calledSubbotnik,VoskresnikorAkce Zbecamede factoobligatory for the members of a community.

Hand and hitch-up services

In someAustrianandGermanstates it is feasible for communities to draft citizens for public services, calledhand and hitch-up services.This mandatory service is still executed to maintain the infrastructure of small communities.

International conventions

• ILO "Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29)"
• ILO "Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105)"
• ILO "Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138)"
• OHCHR "Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182)"

See also

• Coolie Trade
• Construction soldier
• Critique of work
• Debt bondage
• Exploitation
• Forced labour in Germany during World War II
• Forced labor of Germans after World War II
• Gulag
• Involuntary servitude
• Indentured servitude
• Labor army
• Labour battalion
• Labor trafficking in the United States
• List of concentration and internment camps
• NKVD labor columns
• Refusal of work
• SAP-FL,the ILOSpecial Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour
• Sexual slavery
• Shanghaiing
• Sweatshop
• Trafficking in human beings
• Trafficking of children
• Wage slavery
• Workfare
• Workhouse

References

Sources

• Allen, Theodore W. (1994).The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control.New York, NY:Verso Books.ISBN978-0-86091-480-8(cloth) --ISBN978-0-86091-660-4(paper).
• Allen, Theodore W. (1997).The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America,1997. New York, NY: Verso Books.ISBN978-1-85984-981-1(cloth) --ISBN978-1-85984-076-4(paper)
• Bales, Kevin. (1999).Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy.Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.ISBN0-520-22463-9
• Blackburn.(1997).The Making of New World Slavery From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800,London: Verso Books.ISBN978-1-85984-195-2(paper).
• Blackburn, Robin. (1988).The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848.London, England: Verso Books.ISBN978-0-86091-188-3(cloth) --ISBN978-0-86091-901-8(paper).
• Brass, Tom, Marcel Van Der Linden, and Jan Lucassen. (1993).Free and Unfree Labour.Amsterdam: International Institute for Social History.ISBN978-3-906756-87-5.
• Brass, Tom. (1999).Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates.London, England: Frank Cass Publishers.ISBN978-0-7146-4938-2(cloth) --ISBN978-0-7146-4498-1(paper)
• Brass, Tom and Marcel Van Der Linden. (1997).Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues.New York, NY:Peter Lang.ISBN978-0-8204-3424-7(cloth)
• Brass, Tom. (2011).Labour Regime Change in the Twenty-First Century: Unfreedom, Capitalism and Primitive Accumulation.Leiden: Brill.ISBN978-90-04-20247-4.
• Brass, Tom. (2017)Labour Markets, Identities, Controversies: Reviews and Essays, 1982-2016.Leiden, South Holland: Brill.ISBN978-90-04-32237-0.
• Hilton, George W. (1960).The Truck System, including a History of the British Truck Acts, 1465-1960.Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd. [reprinted byGreenwood Press,London, 1975.ISBN978-0-837-18130-1]
• Lewis, James Bryant. (2003).Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan.London, England:Routledge.ISBN0-7007-1301-8
• Guijarro Morales, A.El Síndrome de la Abuela Esclava. Pandemia del Siglo XXI(The Enslaved Grandmother Syndrome: a 21st-century Pandemic). Grupo Editorial Universitario. Granada, oct 2001.ISBN978-84-8491-124-1.
• Ruhs, Florian:Foreign Workers in the Second World War. The Ordeal of Slovenians in Germany.,in: aventinus nova Nr. 32 [29.05.2011]

International Labour Organization

• ILO Minimum Estimate of Forced Labour in the World. (2005)
• The Cost of Coercion ILO 2009
• A global alliance against forced labour
• Operational Indicators of Trafficking in Human Beings 2009ILO/SAP-FL
• Lists of indicators of Trafficking in Human Beings 2009ILO/SAP-FL
• Eradication of forced labour—General Survey concerning the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), and the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105)— ILO 2007
• Forced Labour: Definition, Indicators and Measurement 2004— ILO
• Stopping Forced Labour 2001— ILO

External links

• UN.GIFTArchived2012-12-01 at theWayback Machine— Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking
• eliminating Forced LaborArchived2016-03-04 at theWayback Machine— Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor
• Slavery in the 21st century—BBC
• Sex trade's reliance on forced labour—BBC
• China's Forced Labour Camps—Laogai Research Foundation
• The ILO Special Action Programme to combat Forced Labour (SAP-FL)
• Alleging Captive Labor, Foreign Students Walk Out of Work-Study Program at Hershey PlantDemocracy Now!,September 1, 2011.
• Migrant Workers as Non-Citizens: The Case against Citizenship as a Social Policy Concept,by Donna Baines and Nandita Sharma.Studies in Political Economy69. Autumn 2002, p. 75.
• Seafood from Slaves-Associated Pressinvestigation of the international Pacific fishing fleet, 2015–2016, winner of the 2016Pulitzer Prizefor Public Service