Thread by @paulgknox

@anarchadog Don’t know abt “free adverts for communism,” but the rest is the case for a guaranteed minimum income, one of the liveliest topics in social democracy.

Precarity, fixed-term migrant labour & contract dependency underscore the importance of availability in wage-labour theory. 1/

@anarchadog 2 Classically, wages buy time as well as labour. If you’re given little or even no work to do during your contracted hours, you’ve still given value to the employer. You’ve made yourself exclusively available. You can’t work for someone else, or on your own pursuits. 2/

@anarchadog 3 The classic wage-labour formulation still holds but availability has taken a more central role as real wages stagnate or decline.

Migrant farm workers are valued not only for providing essential skills cheaply but also for being available 24/7 during their contract period. 3/

@anarchadog 4/ Prof. @basoktanya showed this in her book Tortillas and Tomatoes. Ontario growers valued temporarily resident harvesters from Mexico because they could be called to work at the moment of peak ripeness. Permanent residents would refuse such work on, say, a Sunday morning. 4/

@anarchadog @basoktanya 5 One of the criteria for determining contract dependency is whether the worker is expressly forbidden to work for anyone else, or so constrained by the terms of the contract that it would be impractical to do so. Here again, availability is accorded significant value. 5/

@anarchadog @basoktanya 6 In unpaid internships, the intern may agree to provide exclusive availability *as well as* forgo wages. I don’t think this is always true but where it is, it signifies that availability is valued by the employer and part of the supposed exchange for “exposure,” etc. 6/

@anarchadog @basoktanya 7 Freelancing is often seen as analogous to the piecework that preceded industrial wage labour. Availability was no doubt an important consideration in piecework. But in modern freelancing it can be institutionalized by such means as exclusivity clauses, retainers, ... 7/

@anarchadog @basoktanya 8 ... encroachments on the workers time via requests for supplementary work, edits, rewrites, etc.

This is quick and dirty analysis but it seems to suggest a need for greater recognition of availability as a feature of the value exchange inherent in labour under capitalism. 8/

@anarchadog @basoktanya 9 Political action could be oriented toward curbs on exclusive availability in labour-standards laws. The guaranteed minimum income could be framed not only as a support for welfare-to-work transitions but also as a way to allow everyone to lead a fruitful, flourishing life. 9/

@anarchadog @basoktanya 10 The worker’s availability might become a stronger concept in union organizing & bargaining. Monetary gains may be limited for the foreseeable future (cf Piketty ~1% global growth in 21st cent.). But an agenda that tackles conditions of life & work might gain traction. 10/10

@anarchadog @basoktanya @threadreaderapp unroll pls