Wage Theft and the Struggle over the Working Day in Hospitality Work: A Typology of Unpaid Labour Time

Abstract

Drawing on Marxist political economy, this article examines wage theft in hospitality work. Through a detailed, qualitative study of workers’ experiences in London hotels, a novel typology is developed that reveals how managers extract additional unpaid labour time through wage theft. The article argues that both the legal definition and existing academic formulations of wage theft fail to encompass the full range of ways that employers extract unpaid labour time. They also overlook the systemic dimension of unpaid labour time under capitalism. The article contributes new insights into the sociological dimensions of exploitation by proposing an alternative conceptualisation of wage theft that incorporates both formal violations of the law and the more subtle, informal means by which the theft of wages is secured.

Never cross the red line? Analysing employment relations practices and the behaviour of front‐line managers in Chinese McDonald's stores

“…Moreover, FLMs have been able to conceal their practices regards wage setting. The reality is that there is no transparency over wages, with workers regularly experiencing wage theft, partly due to a weak labour inspection and no effective independent voice for workers (Cole et al, 2022; Tse, 2023).…”

Unpaid labour and territorial extraction in digital value networks

“…In Capital, Marx (1976) draws extensively on reports from the Factory Acts to explain how the prolongation and intensification of the working day are integral to the valorization process and correspond to an increase in unpaid labour‐time. As Cole et. al., (forthcoming) argue, extant analyses of wage theft, in terms of unpaid overtime and the violation of statutory rights and labour laws, neglect this systemic dimension of unpaid labour‐time in capitalist systems.…”

“…The literature on value chains as well as on the platform economy and cloudwork rarely intersects with the growing research on unpaid labour, wage theft and labour market violations (see Bernhardt et al., 2009; Fine et al., 2021; Galvin, 2016; Papadopoulos et al., 2021). Marxist political economy provides specific conceptual tools to explain how the capitalist labour process relies on unpaid labour‐time by design and therefore incentivizes managers to find ways of extracting ever more unpaid labour‐time – through contractual means or wage theft (Cole et al., forthcoming). With few exceptions (see Pulignano et al., 2021), there is a lack of academic research on the intersection of unpaid labour and digital labour platforms, especially cloudwork.…”

Mapping social protection coverage for platform workers: A comparative analysis of Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands

“…Unpaid work can be defined as any hours worked that are not paid or taken into account as work, such as waiting time, for platform delivery workers. While this is not only found among platform workers (Cole et al, 2024), it is prevalent and more visible among platform workers; this is due to the nature of their piece-rate contract, which only pays for certain specified activities, and to the algorithmic management that makes workers more liable to take on additional tasks or work longer hours for which they are not paid (Wood et al, 2019). The lack of work (or information on it) means that platform workers also often spend long periods looking for work, thus increasing their overall workload (Forde et al, 2017: 45; see also Behrendt et al (2019:23) and Berg et al (2018: 67)).…”