Definición del modelo

The implications of this research project can be felt in various different arenas, one of those being the field of studies on domestic labor. The uneven distribution of domestic labor is well documented in the literature on gender and work more broadly. Arlie Russell Hochschild focuses her analysis on the lives of women who juggle the labor

of reproduction and market wage labor. In the Second Shift (1990), Hochschild argues that when both men and women in a domestic partnership are employed full-time, there exists roughly a month’s worth of extra labor per year that must be done around the home, and that the majority of this labor disproportionately falls onto the shoulders of women. Whether it is cleaning the house, cooking meals, or caring for sick children in the middle of the night, it is likely that the working mother will be responsible for ensuring this work is completed.

In More than a Labour of Love (1980), Meg Luxton addresses the gendered division of labor by focusing on the way fluctuations and changes in waged labor organizes the way in which work is done in the home. For example, she argues that the weekday/weekend rhythm of the wage labor system means that workers and children are only available for social reproduction on weekends. This puts pressure on the

homeworker to condense domestic chores into the weekdays so that the weekends and evenings are free for care work (Luxton 1980, p. 119). We have seen that telework holds conflicting attractions for people with children, namely that remote work can allow them more time with their children, even though they acknowledge that they cannot really concentrate on work when their kids are around.

Again, the theorists of what is known as 'autonomist Marxism'--who emphasize working class agency and struggle, and who study the wider scope of social labour-- can help us better understand how telework and domestic labor are linked. As has been argued by many of the autonomist scholars, capital does not pay for the labor of social reproduction, which includes domestic labor; it gets if for free. Telework allows for the weaving of reproductive tasks into the regular waged workday, which makes it easier for

capital to benefit from the free labor people do. Capital requires healthy citizens, for example, but a rigid work schedule can make it inconvenient for people to see a doctor, or exercise regularly. Flexible work schedules mean that people are free to do these things during the day, and so may be more likely to do these tasks (Hilbrect et al, 2008). Telework then makes it much easier for people, especially women, to attend to the free labor that capital requires.

Scholars from the autonomist Marxist tradition have made compelling arguments for the reconceptualization of domestic labor as producing value under capitalism, and thus integral to capital’s viability. Leopoldina Fortunati argues that the true secret of social reproduction under capital, the "arcana" as she calls it, is that domestic labor is productive labor but appears as a natural force. Fortunati argues, “Thus the real

difference between production and reproduction is not that of value/non-value, but that while production both is and appearsas the creation of value, reproduction is the creation of value but appears otherwise” (Fortunati 1989, p. 8). Fortunati claims that the labor of reproduction is in fact waged work; the female’s wage for domestic and emotional labor is contained within the wage paid to her male partner by the capitalist for his labor. The wage owner purchases labor power from his wife in order to reproduce his own labor power. “Capital settles two credit debts when it pays the wage,” she says (Fortunati 1989, p. 42). Selma James and Maria Rosa Dalla Costa argue that the homeworker produces a commodity like any other, but one that is unequivocally the most important to capital: the “living human being” (James and Dalla Costa 1972). The homeworker maintains the dynamic relations between members of the working family in such a way that the ruling classes can continue to extract profits from them. James and Dalla Costa posit that the

nuclear family itself is a creation of capital, as it reflects the most productive organization for the mass exploitation of labor. At the center of this dynamic is the subordination of women to men. “Capital established the family as the nuclear family and subordinated within it the woman to the man, as the person who, not directly participating in social production, does not present herself independently on the labor market” (James and Dalla Costa 1972).

According to Fortunati, labeling domestic and emotional labor as non-productive because it is non-waged is a mere technicality that perpetuates the unrestrained extraction of value from reproduction. Silvia Federici suggests that the structure of the global economy perpetuates systemic inequalities in the world by concealing the struggles of desperately poor women in developing countries from women working in the west. Overworked middle-class mothers in the developed world rely on the labor of third world poor women in order to make their own lives easier in the form of domestic labor, child care, or food services (Federici, 1999, p. 63).

Marilyn Waring makes a similar argument about the productivity of gendered labor, maintaining that the work of reproducing the human species is only without worth within an economic model built to recognize only certain types of labor. She identifies a critical point of contention in debates around the productivity of immaterial labor: work produces value whether it is waged or not. It all depends on how one decides to measure value. Growing food that is consumed by one’s own family is conventionally classified non-productive labor, but if one sells that food, then it is productive labor. “Cooking, according to economists, is ‘active labor’ when cooked food is sold and ‘economically inactive labor’ when it is not. Housework is ‘productive’ when performed by a paid

domestic servant and ‘nonproductive’ when no payment is involved” (Waring, 1990, p. 30-1).

I argue that telework is evidence of the productivity of domestic labor, and of the general importance to capital of social reproductive labor like walking the dog or going to the doctor. That these tasks can now be done during the regular workday without causing a loss in productivity from one’s job, means that capital benefits twice from telework arrangements. Not only do workers engage in activities that capital requires, but telework ensures that workers do it on their own time, and not on capital’s. Work/life balance is really just a more popular term that describes the human struggle to attend to all of the labor, both domestic and waged, essential to modern capitalism. After all, when workers attend to “life” in the work/life balance, they are attending to reproductive labor,

reproducing themselves as working subjects.

A contradiction emerges in my research though, relative to the canon of Autonomist theory. Telework is primed to benefit capital in the way described above, however, as I discovered, capital simultaneously loses the ability to extract surplus value from the social interactions of collocated workers, which are also quite valuable. Only in light of the recent telework bans are we able to hypothesize just how valuable worker interaction is to the interests of corporations. Nonetheless, capital is forced to weigh the value of flexible workers against the value of their social labor, and at least under the post-Fordist labor regime, located workplaces are going to be around for some time. Because domestic labor is unpaid and informal workplace collaboration is un- codified and unmeasured, it is very difficult to identify their value--which explains the fluctuations in popularity for telework. Working class struggle is the engine that moves

capital, as the latter is simply a mechanism that attempts to capture the radical energy of the working class and mold it into forms that are productive of surplus value, which is then extracted by the ruling class (Tronti, 1966). The working class teleworker is resistant to the rigidity of the traditional labor schedule and routine, but is also battling against isolation, alienation, and chronic overwork that comes along with telecommuting. Capital can either, allow for telework and take advantage of the domestic labor people do on their own time, or prohibit telework and own the benefits of located social labor. The working class is unsatisfied in either of these scenarios, which suggests two things: that the problem of worker contentment under modern capitalism cannot be solved through flexibility, and that the workplace is going to evolve beyond telework in order to capture the radical energy percolating within the working class at this juncture.