The Indefatigable Worker: From Factory Floor to Zoom Avatar

Abstract

This contribution coins the term indefatigable worker as a lens to examine the concerted efforts by state and capital forces, since the early 20th century, to devise methods aimed to reduce mental and physical fatigue among the workforce in order to guarantee the productivity and economic health of the nation. Different interventions have targeted the worker’s body from the early 20th century factory labourer to the more fragmented workforce under neoliberal capitalism and finally to the locked-down Covid-19 Zoom participant. Interestingly, each intervention was triggered by the onset of one global economic crisis or the other but cloaked in the benevolent garb of workers’ welfare. Ostensibly putting the well-being of the worker at the heart of this seemingly technical, ideology-free regime aims to make it difficult for workers to resist attempts to help them cope with fatigue and to challenge the conditions which cause their physical and mental stress in the first place.