Friday Plenary Session Speaker

Eric Posner

Eric Posner is Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago. In 2022-2023, he served as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. His research interests antitrust law, financial regulation, and constitutional law. He has written a dozen books and more than a hundred academic articles on law and legal theory. His most recent books are How Antitrust Failed Workers (Oxford); Radical Markets (Princeton) (with Glen Weyl), which was named a best book of 2018 by The Economist; Last Resort: The Financial Crisis and the Future of Bailouts (Chicago), which was named a best book of 2018 by The Financial Times; and The Twilight of Human Rights Law (Oxford). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute.

Plenary Title: The Paradox of Invisible Work

Abstract: Certain types of work-like behavior are not treated as paid labor in the law—and thus is not taxed or given workplace protections, for example—and often is not understood to be work by ordinary people. This kind of “invisible work” is exceedingly common. It encompasses not only the traditional example of household labor, but also the work, or some of the work, of (for example) athletes, soldiers, students, artists, volunteers, religious and political leaders, data laborers, and even consumers who implicitly exchange work as well as money for products and services. The usual objection to invisible work is that is devalued. I will argue that, in fact, converting invisible work to paid work often devalues it by converting activities that are performed for higher motivations into activities that are performed for self-interest. This creates a paradox: “commodification” of invisible work so that it is subject to government administration and market forces both increases the compensation for workers and devalues the meaning of their work. Businesses exploit the resulting ambiguities to push down labor costs. Implications for employment law and antitrust law are discussed.