Animal Labour in a Post-Work Society

Labour has been associated historically with a cluster of values, including individual security, self-development and freedom, social standing and recognition, and meaning. Insofar as these values are also relevant to animals, this suggests that we should seek to include animals into the world of labour. We should recognize that animals, as well as humans, are workers, and deserve access to the security, self-development, status, community, and purpose wrapped up in the role of being a worker. The reality, however, is that work life fails to deliver many of these goods, much of the time, for many people. Moreover, given technological development, there is no necessity for everyone to be a producer, and indeed the cultural expectation that everyone should be ‘productive’ is culturally pernicious and environmentally unsustainable. As a result, we see increasing discussion of a ‘post-work’ society. This chapter explores how animals fit into the emerging debate about the post-work society. It argues that animals can in fact be major beneficiaries of, and indeed exemplars of, this shift, engaging in socially beneficial activities that do not fit standard models of wage labour and economic production. Instead of bringing animals into our current work society, this chapter explores the possibility that animals could exemplify the ethics of a post-work world—one in which the values traditionally tied to ‘productive’ work are instead realized through new conceptions of community—being, doing, and taking care together.

The Working Day

In Chapter 10 of Capital Vol. 1—‘The Working Day’—Karl Marx reveals at least one central concern within his project: namely the relationship between labour time and free time as a site of antagonism under capitalism. In this chapter I offer a perspective on the politics of animal labour that takes the working day as a main site of problematization and contestation. I argue that while a concept of a ‘working day’ is applicable to some animal labourers, a defining characteristic of most animals labour under capitalism—particularly that of animals in intensive forms of agriculture—is the reality that the working day never stops: all time is labour time for these animals. I further argue that a focus on labour time offers a different and productive base for pro-animal politics, and for alliance building. At least one curious set of resonances here are the strong demands being made by other social movements—such as environmental justice movements—to ‘slow down capitalism’ through reduced work, reduced production, and reduced consumption.

Conservation Canines

For centuries, dogs have played a key role in the lives of humans both as companions as well as working animals. In recent years, the value of dogs in environmental work has been documented in the literature—namely their ability to detect targets more efficiently than humans and equipment. However, the environmental work dogs perform in Canada has been largely understudied in terms of both the specific tasks they are responsible for, as well as their welfare within these roles. This chapter addresses those gaps through an exploration of whether conservation canines could be an example of a humane job—one that is good for people, animals, and the environment. To do so this chapter explores tangible and moral issues related to dogs’ enjoyment of and suffering within conservation work, highlighting the complexity of dogs’ work-lives related to issues of freedom and consent. Findings are presented from two main case studies: Alberta and Ontario. An ethogram was used to assess dog welfare, while semi-structured interviews and participant observations revealed further insights into dogs’ work and work-lives. Ultimately, this chapter offers a discussion regarding how the study’s findings might inform assessment of humane jobs and work-lives, offering enjoyment, control, agency, respect, and recognition for dogs in this sector and for possibilities of fostering interspecies solidarity in other areas.

Down on the Farm

This chapter challenges the strategy of seeking material improvements for animals through recognition of animals as ‘workers’ or ‘labourers’, especially as this strategy may relate to farmed animals. It argues that this strategy risks overlooking the realities of ‘agricultural exceptionalism’, whereby agricultural producers are consistently insulated from regulations seeking to advance a range of social priorities from trade to labour to animal well-being to environmental protection. In particular, this chapter notes that seeking improvements for farmed animals by casting them as ‘workers’ may have the effect of 1) whitewashing the violence and exploitation of contemporary animal-agricultural practices (taking dairy farming as a key example); and 2) whitewashing the treatment and status of human agricultural workers, who are in fact often socially and legally isolated, excluded, and debased. Having set out this critique, the chapter concludes with reflections on the application of this strategy to non-farmed animals, including a concern with strategies for animal inclusion and justice that are unable to illuminate or elevate the concerns of farmed animals. Instead, this chapter urges the adoption of theories and strategies grounded in the identification and advancement of priorities that most resonate with animals’ own priorities and the harms: for example, those related to kinship and parenthood (bonds which we know to be both highly valued and highly disrupted for agricultural and other domesticated animals), rather than to work they may perform for humans under conditions of inequality and coercion.

Alienation and Animal Labour

An analysis of alienated animal labour has much to contribute to our understanding of the systems of animal oppression under capitalism. However, the humanist model of alienated labour which dominates the current literature, drawn from Marx’s early works, is predicated on a concept of ‘species-being’ that presupposes an untenable dichotomy between humans and animals, leaving no room for animal agency or flourishing, and severely limiting the application, scope, and emancipatory potential of the alienation critique. This chapter attempts to chart a way out of this dilemma by putting forward an ‘appropriative’ rather than ‘humanist’ model of alienated animal labour that allows us to avail ourselves of the rich social and political dimensions of the alienation critique while avoiding the difficulties that attend it. The chapter begins with a general definition of alienation before surveying Marx’s account of alienated labour as well as various attempts to apply his account to animals. It then focuses in particular on the notion of species-being, which underpins Marx’s theory of alienated labour, and argues that its humanist presuppositions preclude any coherent application to animals. The chapter then puts forward an alternative appropriative model of alienated animal labour, and makes the case that this account overcomes the difficulties plaguing the humanist model, giving way to an emancipatory conception of unalienated animal labour.

Toward Humane Jobs and Work-Lives for Animals

This chapter examines the idea of animals having humane jobs. The concept of humane jobs has been proposed primarily to help conceptualize and propel good work for people which also benefits animals. Here the focus expands to interrogate whether animals can be engaged in what could be considered humane jobs and what that would involve. By building in particular on feminist political economy and care ethics, as well as the front-line efforts of people who work with animals, the chapter elucidates key preconditions and perameters for certain animals to have humane jobs, including important inclusions and exclusions. Moreover, it argues that humane jobs are not sufficient on their own, but rather that we also ought to be emphasizing animals’ work-lives. This means understanding animals not only as workers but as whole beings, and taking seriously their lives, relationships, and experiences, before and after work, on a daily basis, and over their lifetimes. The chapter is thus both inductive and generative, and offers a constellation of ethical and conceptual considerations, intended to drive further research, foster nuanced and contextualized analysis, and help inspire tangible changes in thought and political action.

Introduction

The question of animal labour has emerged as an important topic in both the academic study of human–animal relations and in public debates about the rights of animals. While the human use of animal labour has been a site of intense instrumentalization and exploitation, some people argue that (good) work can be a site of cooperation, mutual flourishing, and shared social membership between humans and animals, and that recognizing animals as ‘workers’ could have a transformative effect on our relationships with them. This introductory chapter explores some of the developments in animal ethics and animal studies that have informed this new interest in animal labour, and in particular how animal labour can be seen as overcoming the ‘welfarist–abolitionist’ dichotomy that dominates the field. It also explores some of the obvious challenges and dilemmas that animal labour raises, including questions of consent, labour rights, and the link to other social justice movements. The chapter concludes with a summary of the remaining chapters in the volume, and how each contributes to a richer understanding of the potential for animal labour to serve as a frontier of interspecies justice.

The Meaning of Animal Labour

Proponents of humane or traditional husbandry, in contrast to factory farming, often argue that maintaining meaningful relationships with animals entails working with them. Accordingly, they argue that animal liberation is misguided, since it appears to entail erasing our relationships to animals and depriving both us and them of valuable opportunities to live together. This chapter offers a critical examination of animal husbandry based on the value of labour, in particular the view that farm animals could be seen as workers, and what it entails. It then considers ways in which our relationships to domesticated species could be made meaningful, including through work, without entailing the premature killing of animals raised for food. Meaningful animal lives depend on a proper analysis of the meaning, and value, of labour, which this chapter argues is missing from labour-based defences of humane husbandry.

Animal Labour

For scholars who specialize in animal labour, those rights and institutions include the right to remuneration, safe working conditions, retirement, medical care, and collective bargaining (Cochrane 2016). These rights flow quite naturally from the concept of animal labour and help us envision more just working relations with animals, but are they sufficient to ensure work is a place of happiness and meaning for animals? In the case of human workers, we claim to prevent their exploitation by acknowledging their right to freely choose their work and the concomitant prohibition of forced labour. Does the right to self-determination form part of the emancipatory project of ‘animal labour’, too? Should animals be able to decide whether they want to work or not, or what type of work they want to do? These questions form the centre of the first part of this chapter. In the second part, the author explains how animals’ right to self-determination could be secured at work, examining different models of dissent, assent, and consent and the best way to design these to secure animals’ agency, both in theory and practice.

Good Work for Animals

This chapter explores whether there can be ‘good work’ for animals. In other words, it asks whether certain forms of work can not only be harmless, but also promote the well-being of non-human animals. It argues that in some circumstances good work for animals is possible. In so doing, it surveys four of the most common proposed elements of good work for humans—self-realization, pleasure, autonomy, and self-respect—to see if and how they might apply to animals. In so doing, it argues that good work for animals has a three-fold basis: it provides pleasure, including through affording opportunities to use and develop skills; it allows for the exercise of animals’ agency; and it provides a context in which animals can be esteemed as valuable workers and members of the communities in which they labour.