15/06/2023

Call for papers

 13th Braga Meetings On Ethics and Political Philosophy

PANEL 7 /// JUSTICE IN THE WORKPLACE, DOMINATION AND BEYOND

CONVENORS: HUGO RAJÃO AND ANTÓNIO BAPTISTA 
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to hugorajao@gmail.com and alsbaptista@gmail.com

The speakers in this panel will include Íñigo González Ricoy (University of Barcelona) and Daniel Halliday (University of Melbourne).

Political philosophy has been concerned with the fair distribution of benefits within society. However, most of these benefits are produced at and via the workplace. Moreover, much of a person’s day – and of one’s active life as whole – is spent at the workplace and it is here, again, that many significant social relations are formed and maintained. Also, what happens at work has significant spill over effects on a person’s life, particularly when relations of hierarchy and domination extend their reach and encroach on workers’ private sphere, as Elizabeth Anderson (2017) has argued they frequently do. So, what happens in the workplace should be regarded as a matter of Justice as well and, therefore, as a fundamental topic of Political Philosophy that raises a host of difficult questions.

Are firms political entities? Should the workplace be exempt from the democratic principles that govern society as a whole? Should the workplace be an area of shared democratic decision-making or rather of voluntary one-to-one contracts? Does the capitalist model of enterprise fit with the ideal of a society of equals? Are there alternative models of the enterprise, including non-capitalist ones, which better satisfy the requirements of a Just Society (co-opts, wage-earned funds, co-determination, bicameral system, etc.)?

But the way the workplace is structured, the way it affects those who labor in it and the relations that are established between the various categories of workers and between these and the owners and CEOs, all of these are structurally connected with factors “external” to the workplace, namely state policy: the legal apparatus that regulates (or fails to regulate) the inner workings of enterprises and the set of rights, both individual and collective, it provides to or withholds from presently-active workers or potential workers. Domination within the workplace, but also without, in politics and society at large, depends on this legal regulation and on the power it affords (or curtails) to capital vis-à-vis labor. The degree of domination as well as the ability to resist domination are crucially dependent on these larger topics related to work and workplace conditions and rights and we seek to address these in our panel.

In light of this, this panel seeks to discuss the role and impact of workplace justice on the overall problem of Justice in a society and therefore invites contributions relating to (but no limited to) the following topics:

• Workplace democracy.
• Commodification, domination, and exploitation at the workplace.
• Exit options (Unconditional Basic Income, for instance)
• The Goods and Bads of work (income, but not only).
• Conceptions of meaningful work.
• Valuable work beyond the labor market.
• Bargaining power and labor self-control.
• Alternative models to capitalist enterprises (co-opt, co-determination, bicameral systems, wage-earned funds)
• Who owns the enterprise (corporation vs firm)?
• Firms as political entities?
• Labor and Human Rights.
• Occupational freedom.
• Working Time Regulation.
• Four-day Workweek.
• Right to Strike.
• Right to Unionize.
• Self-Employment.
• Wage Justice.
• Unemployment Rights.

If you want to apply, please submit an abstract, of 500 words along with five keywords of your paper prepared for peer review by 3rd April 2023. We will respond by 17th April 2023. All proposals must be submitted online through our website using the Abstract submission form (please, click “Submit Abstract” and fill the form).