What is animal labour? Do all animals work or only some? If we recognise them as workers, should they enjoy labour rights? These were some of the questions discussed at an online roundtable last weekend on May 1, the traditional day of remembrance for labour-related struggles. The “Roundtable on Animal Labour in a Multispecies Society: a social justice issue?” brought five experts in animal law and labour together in conversation in this emerging area of scholarship and advocacy “to draw attention to the condition of domesticated animals working in the human-animal society and the challenges posed by their legal, social and political status.”

When people imagine animal workers, they probably tend to picture dogs - police dogs, guide dogs, sheep dogs - and horses once used to pull carts and plough fields. But the scholarship on animal labour expands the understanding of work to include many more animals in a much broader range of contexts.

“All animals engage in labour of some kind,” said Kendra Coulter from the department of Labour Studies at Brock University in Canada, including wild animals engaged in caring for offspring and subsistence work. But the roundtable focused on the animals put to work by humans and the sites in which that occurs. Animals used in farming and laboratory research and those held captive in zoos and in aquariums, for example, are not typically considered to be performing any labour, yet their very bodies and biological processes such as reproduction add value to the capitalist system, as pointed out by Dinesh Wadiwel, a lecturer at the University of Sydney.

In such contexts, animals are often intensely instrumentalised and exploited, forced to work for humans at the expense of carrying out their own kinds of work. Dairy cows are a clear example of this; in producing value for farmers and the dairy industry, they are denied the ability to perform care work towards their calves. Being recognised as workers on a farm does not seem like it will help them in this respect, as it would not necessarily negate their legal status as property. Charlotte Blattner, a researcher at the University of Bern, noted that “the history of slavery demonstrates we can recognise someone’s labour even while they’re deemed to be property”. This is clearly not a desirable state to replicate among animals.

One comment by Jailson Rocha, a professor at the Federal University of Paraiba in Brazil, stuck in my mind: “Acts of resistance in the field of work must also be taken seriously.” What does an act of resistance among animal workers look like? I thought of a mother cow on a dairy farm fighting against having her calf taken away, a horse refusing a jump in a show-jumping competition. When animals refuse to engage in things forced upon them by humans, they are often considered to be difficult or disobedient. But reconceptualising these refusals as acts of resistance in a labour context throws up a significant ethical challenge to those humans putting the animals to work, such as how they ought to then respond to that resistance.

Some animal rights advocates have argued that animals should not be used for their labour at all, but Coulter has developed the concept of ‘humane jobs’ for animals, which she discussed in the roundtable and has published on elsewhere. In a piece for the Conversation, she writes: “I think there can be certain ethically defensible forms of work and even humane jobs for some domesticated animals, if rights and protections are in place (and enforced), and if work relationships are underscored by care, reciprocity and interspecies solidarity.”

Rights and protections could be similar to those provided to human workers, such as adequate remuneration and protection from harm in the workplace. An example of such a worker protection for animals is Finn’s Law, an amendment made to the Animal Welfare Act in 2019 to stop people from being able to claim self-defense if they injure a service animal while they are performing their duties. This amendment essentially functions as a form of labour rights for service animals.

Coulter also emphasises that work should be considered as a piece within an animal’s whole life and that their daily experiences and relationships before, during, and after work should be taken seriously. This has implications for animal workers such as how much leisure time they enjoy and what their retirement is like when they are no longer able to work. Some police dogs, for example, have been granted pensions to ensure they can be given a good quality of life in retirement.

One key question of the roundtable was: why is animal labour in a multi-species society a social justice issue? Maneesha Deckha, a law professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, noted how there is an association between animals, difficult labour and labour performed in poor conditions and certain groups of people embedded in the way we talk about those subjects. “Certain groups of people have been othered by comparing them to animals,” she said. “The logic of certain lives as worthless permeates this entire system.”

Wadiwel described industrial fisheries as significant sites of multi-species social justice issues, noting that “endemic to wild fish capture is low wage and forced labour.” At the same time, the fish are of course exploited and instrumentalised. Wadiwel argued that such industries need to be viewed through a wide lens: “We need to look at the intersection of different forms of labour and how this interacts with other problems including climate change and environmental devastation.” The harms done to the climate and environment by certain human activities of course exacerbate social injustices that can rebound upon one another; as wild fish populations are depleted, coastal communities suffer and the fish farming industry grows, creating new and worse kinds of animal suffering and exploitation.

Animal labour is a fascinating and important subject for animal advocates and others in the social justice space to engage in. Recognising that animals perform different kinds of labour in so many contexts gives us new tools to address how human use of and interaction with animals impacts their lives.

Here is a list of some further reading and resources on the subject of animal labour:

• Kendra Coulter’s website on Humane Jobs

• Coulter’s paper ‘Beyond Human to Humane: A Multispecies Analysis of Care Work, Its Repression, and Its Potential’ (free to access)

• Papers by Charlotte Blattner (free to access) covering various issues of animal labour

• Surge’s analysis of amendments to the Animal Welfare Act including Finn’s law

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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