Work and exploitation in Ethiopia and beyond

This chapter examines the political economy of labour in Ethiopia from a recent historical perspective, with the aim of describing the changing world of work as it appears to Ethiopian toilers. It does so by centering on the contested process of surplus generation and appropriation across economic sectors and geographical spaces. The chapter argues that harsh exploitation is engendering unsustainable imbalances and repressive practices. Ethiopian workers are not merely exploited, but often super-exploited: meaning that incomes, and therefore generally consumption, of workers are reduced beyond the limit of what is required for upkeep and reproduction. The mode of insertion of the Ethiopian economy - as a provider of cheap labour - within global value chains is the key factor in explaining this. For wages as low as in Ethiopia to prevail, facilitating processes are required. Two such processes are identified. First, the chapter discusses subsidisation of wage labour in exporting sectors by means of transfers from workers engaged in other sectors and geographical spaces. Second, it discusses the repressive practices that are required to underpin such a labour regime. But repression only constitutes one side of the equation, and the chapter also discusses the manifold examples of the growing resistance that Ethiopian workers engage in. It is asserted that although the massive political convulsions that have occurred in Ethiopia in the last few years are partly conditioned by the imbalances inherent in the landscape of exploitation, the outcomes have offered no resolution to the tensions. It is argued that a fundamental restructuring and transformation of the Ethiopian economy and its exploitative relationship with the global economy is required to do so.