Involuntary servitude or involuntary slavery.

[shockey80]

Is a United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that persons will to benefit another, under some form of coercion other than the workers financial needs.

If you are forced to work without pay, that is a form of slavery.

[shockey80]

1. If you can't recognize when you are a slave, how can you ever be free.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Yeah, technically, maybe, but don't let that trivialize what went on in the cotton fields and...

slave auctions.

There is no equivalence between now and then.

[shockey80]

4. I am not comparing anything, you are.

You don't get it. Many Americans don't get it and that's why we are slowly losing everything.

[brooklynite]

3. You're not forced to work; you can quit at any time.

[CozyMystery]

17. Which is being forced, btw. Extortion.

[brooklynite]

24. Please elaborate

I enter into a contract with you to do work for pay. If I don't uphold my part of the bargain, you don't have to pay me and you can replace me with someone who will do the work. If you don't hold up your part of the bargain, I don't have to work for you and I can replace you with an employer who will pay what I think I deserve.

[Clash City Rocker]

5. They may reach a point where people refuse to take those jobs

Would you willingly take a job that occasionally pays nothing, but if you quit, you might get in legal trouble? Me neither.

[jberryhill]

6. They can quit

That’s why the OP is wrong.

[shockey80]

8. They can quit? Really, what if they have a child with a rare disease?

Just quit, lose your health insurance and watch your child die. Some Federal workers are older, they have health issues. Just quit and stop taking your meds and fucking die.

Some can quit, some cannot.

[jberryhill]

10. You fail to understand what involuntary servitude is

The fact that quitting would have consequences is true of everyone with a job, whether they are getting paid bi-weekly, monthly or at any other scheduled interval.

To say that they are slaves because they "can't quit" requires that the "employer" in that scenario be able to exercise some form of compulsion to prevent them from quitting.

Words have meaning.

[EffieBlack]

15. Slavery is based on the ownership of humans, not on whether they work for pay

Some slaves did no work at all, but were still property. Some people work for no wages, but aren't slaves.

What a stupid, offensive argument.

[rsdsharp]

32. Enlisted personnel in the Coast Guard can't quit

during the term of their enlistment. They are being forced to work without pay.

[EffieBlack]

19. They are not property. Therefore they are not slaves.

Go learn some history.

[Ms. Toad]

31. Both involuntary servitude and slavery

Share the characteristic that the person to whom you are beholdened (or are owned by) controls your ability to quit (or be set free).

In the situations you describe, it is not the federal government controlling your ability to leave.

My daughter has health care expenses in excess of $200,000 every year. If she changes jobs, because of her lack of skills, it would be 6 months, are least, before she could get insurance at a new place of employment. She hates her job, and would love to quit, but can't because of her health care needs. Her employer did not create those needs, and is not holding her in involuntary servitude because it is not preventing her from quitting even though my daughter's health care needs prevent her, from a practical persoective, from walking off the job.

[cwydro]

13. This guy is determined to keep digging.

One thread apparently wasn’t enough for him.

[JI7]

7. they are free to leave the job

[shockey80]

9. Yes, they are free to leave and then die from a lack of health insurance.

[jberryhill]

11. Is that a circumstance somehow unique to these federal workers?

That statement is true of many people in private sector jobs who are getting paid, so perhaps we need to understand your personal definition of involuntary servitude.

Let's take what you are saying here:

They are slaves because if they quit their jobs, they will lose health insurance.

Okay, but how does whether or not they are getting paid change that? If they were collecting a bi-weekly paycheck, it would still be true that if they quit they would lose health insurance.

[cwydro]

12. Dude, put down the shovel.

No one agrees with your desperate attempt to compare the unpaid federal workers with the abhorrent institution of slavery.

It’s offensive. Just stop.

[EffieBlack]

14. Oh, please. Give it a rest.

You were wrong and offensive when you floated this in post over the weekend. Starting a second thread on this doesn't change anything.

Why are you so obsessed with pushing this ridiculous argument at people who clearly aren't buying it? What"s your point abnd what's your purpose?

[shockey80]

18. You are all wrong.

People are being forced to work without pay and if they quit they could die or someone in their family would die. They have no freedom,
no choice, that's a form of slavery.

[EffieBlack]

21. Slavery is based on ownership of human beings, not on whether they are paid for their work

Someone offered to shovel my snow for me yesterday. He said that when he was done, I could pay him whatever I wanted. If I had decided not to pay him anything, that would not have made him my slave, even if he'd have trouble feeding his family or affording health insurance if no one paid him for his labor.

As I said, go learn some history. In the meantime, stop trying to lecture people about something you clearly don't understand. You are making a complete fool of yourself.

[tammywammy]

27. How is that different than any other job? n/t

[Maeve]

16. Which is what this lawsuit alleges

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/14/compelled-work-without-pay-federal-employees-sue-trump-violating-th-amendment/?utm_term=.1c8e0a300add

[shockey80]

20. I guess some people agree with me.

[EffieBlack]

22. Some people agree with Trump and some people agree that the Earth is flat

Doesn't make them right. It just means that they're not alone in their ignorance.

[cwydro]

28. Thank you.

I find it odd this guy is so stuck on this ridiculous and offensive premise.

[Maeve]

23. The term you're looking for is wage slavery

Here's a history of it and the concept, beginning in Roman times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

However, by conflating 'wage slavery' with 'chattel slavery' (the latter being what 'slavery' means in most uses), the argument quickly goes off the rails, as you may have noted.

I agree that many people are stuck at jobs they are unable to quit because there is no real safety net for them and they risk falling into abject poverty and homelessness. If I had not had health insurance in 2017 (thank you, Mr Obama and Ms Pelosi!), we could have lost our house to medical bills; I sympathize. However, it is not worth offending our natural allies by using terms they find objectionable, so here I will let it rest.

[EffieBlack]

26. As Wikipedia notes, "wage slavery" is a made up term used to draw an analogy between

"slavery" and "wage labor."

There is really no such thing as "wage slavery." Slavery is a distinct thing. Wage labor is something very different. "Wage slavery" is not a thing.

But you're correct that the "federal workers are slaves" argument is offensive. The obsessive insistence on harping on it despite this being pointed out raises other questions.

[Maeve]

29. I agree with you as well, for the most part

As I noted, chattel slavery is what is currently meant by 'slavery'. Still, the term "wage slavery" has been around for a long time and even noted by Frederick Douglass in 1886

Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.

https://archive.org/stream/threeaddresseson00dougrich/threeaddresseson00dougrich_djvu.txt

I have no objection to finding another term for the 21st century. There is, however, some need for a term to cover the difference between a living wage that allows one to move between jobs and the situation so many are in that keeps them locked into one role for fear of absolute poverty.

On the issue of seeing that all who labor are treated well, we are on the same side. I seek only a way forward.

[Recursion]

25. If you can quit, you're not in slavery

Though, come to think of it, the office that processes resignations is closed, so...

[Doreen]

30. Well, from the looks of this conversation

the dictionary better come up with a new official word that describes what looks and feels like being a slave, hostage, prisoner, underpaid , few choices given and none of them good, go from just surviving to pretty damn close to not at all, and all of those are controlled by a source other than yourself.

I do not consider having to make a choice to possibly put oneself into what could very well become permanent poverty a choice at all.

Forced choice?

[shockey80]

34. You get it.

[loyalsister]

33. This argument reminds me of another bad analogy

I know a Libertarian who claims taxes are violence. Leaving or losing a job is not physically punishable by legally sanctioned owners any more than the IRS has enforcers who beat and kill in the interest of collecting taxes.