Labour is not a commodity: The content and meaning of work in the twenty-first century

Abstract

In his valedictory lecture before the Collège de France, Alain Supiot reviews his work on the transformation of labour in the twenty-first century, highlighting the role of law and institutions in addressing the consequences of the digital revolution and environmental crisis. In his view, the moral, social and environmental bankruptcy of neoliberalism calls for us to reconsider the legal fiction of labour as a commodity and to re-establish the truly “humane labour regime” envisaged by the preamble to the ILO Constitution, recognizing both the meaning and content of work. He uses the case of scientific research to illustrate his argument.