“Nobody Becomes a Criminal to Work 9 to 5”: Unpaid Labor, Stigma, and Hegemony in Addiction Treatment

Abstract

Abstract Is compulsory unpaid labor essential “therapy” or unjust exploitation? The informants of this study do not agree, but most believe the former: that the 40 hours a week they worked without pay for the Salvation Army’s multimillion-dollar thrift store enterprise was not unjustly exploitative. Yet how can such seemingly overt exploitation be justified in this way? The answer, this article argues, is stigma. This study’s 40 informants were residents of the Salvation Army’s addiction programs, where “work therapy”—compulsory unpaid labor—is the primary form of addiction “treatment.” Because people with addiction are stigmatized as unproductive and immoral, even by people who have themselves struggled with addiction, their exploitation is deemed legitimate. They need to learn the value of work and even how to work, informants argue, and so unpaid labor becomes much-needed “therapy.” This article offers new answers to longstanding sociological questions about why workers consent to their own exploitation. While scholars have identified how exploitation is both obfuscated and legitimated in the workplace, little attention has been paid to dynamics beyond the workplace. This article shows that stigma is a powerful tool of labor hegemony, wielded even by those who are themselves stigmatized.