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by Sorn Manawanitcharoen
Master Program in Political Economy
Chulalongkorn University

THE
‘CAN’T-LIVE-WITHOUT’
GADGET

Email
Chat and
share work
info
Games

Smartphones help break
the boundary
of where and when work
can happen.

White collar worker exploitation
It runs in the capitalists’ nature to
extract and exploit the surplus value
created by their employees as much as
possible in order to ensure their
maximized profit. The more surplus
value they appropriate, the higher
chance for them to be steps ahead of
their competitors in the market.

The surplus value is the unpaid
labor created by workers in
excess of their own labor costs.
This free of charge value will
invariably be exploited by
capitalists as long as capitalism
exists.

The patterns of white collar worker exploitation
1.Paying the wages
in form of salary
Once the wages are paid monthly
not hourly, employers expect their
workers to continue working on
the assigned jobs until finish even
it takes more than 8 hours per day to
do so. No matter how many extra
hours they work, they usually are
not entitled to overtime
since the employers will
claim that their salary
has already surpassed
the hourly wage rate.

The patterns of white collar worker exploitation
2.Manipulating the workers
to self-exploit
・Nurture the
work culture
that honor
the employees
who sacrifice
their
everything for
work.
・Motivate the workers to
willingly work harder with
salary increases and promotion.
・Take advantage from what
the workers invest on their
own to improve or
enhance their
work performance.

A survey through
systematic questionnaire,
collecting data from
random 200 white collar
workers in Bangkok who
own smartphones. The
survey was conducted from
November 4 to December
13, 2015

Generation X and Y
are also included as the
independent variables
since generations are
related to the evolution
period of technology
from analog to digital.

The findings assert that smartphones
provoke the workers’ self exploitation in 2 aspects:
・willing to work in the unpaid hours
・invest in pricey technology and
let the employers take advantage
of its benefit for free

WILLING TO WORK IN THE UNPAID HOURS
Smartphones break the limitation of where and
when the respondents work.
This offers the leeway for the surplus value
exploitation
since work can reach them anytime, which
mostly happens at unpaid labor time
beyond office hours.

74
76
77
63
5
78
48
77
59
6
76.00% 67.00%
77.00%
61.00%
5.50%
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
90.00%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
make a call e-mail share&chat internet never
The using of smartphone in work context
beyond office hours.
Gen.Y Gen.X percentage

37
33
19 30
44
28
16
20
40.50%
30.50%
17.50%
25.00%
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
45.00%
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
responsible others reluctant not
to request
request
No request/ reluctant to/ request for
OT reimbursement
Gen Y Gen X percentage

LET EMPLOYERS TAKE ADVANTAGE FOR FREE
With the high performance of connectivity, useful
applications along with their sleek designs that enable
portability, smartphones drastically help the
respondents to increase the productivity and profits
working for their capitalist companies or employers.
However, the data evidently shows that more than 90%
of employers ignore to share the expenses incurred
from the smartphones (both smartphone price and its
service fees) with the respondents.

8 14
78
97
318
20
62
97
3
13.00% 17.00%
70.00%
97.00%
3.00%
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
120.00%
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
< 10thous. < 20thous. > 20thous. themselves Com.partly
The range of smartphone prices
and the payers

36 33 31
88
12
28 29
43
84
16
32.00% 31.00%
37.00%
86.00%
14.00%
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
90.00%
100.00%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
< 500 THB < 800THB > 800 THB themselves Com.partly
The smartphone monthly expenses
and the payers

the finalized exploitation via smartphone presentation

Answer: White collar workers willingly exploit themselves by working
beyond office hours for free
in order to showcase that their advanced and pricey smartphones can
facilitate them to work wherever and whenever
to people around them especially their colleagues.
At the same time, they automatically and unsuspectingly
accept the exploitation of the surplus value they have been creating in those
unpaid hours.

48
31
2113
40 47
30.50%
35.50%
34.00%
28.00%
29.00%
30.00%
31.00%
32.00%
33.00%
34.00%
35.00%
36.00%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
>salary >1/2salary Other
Comparison between
smartphone price and salary

It can be inferred that the reason the respondents unquestionably agree
to pay a large sum of money to possess smartphones is to use them as
the indicator of their status quo in the society apart from answering
their other demands. This is in accordance with Veblen’s Conspicuous
consumption that people consume luxurious goods to reflect their
social status.

Conclusion: Apart from increasing the profits and productivity for
employers, the technologies in smartphones also help intensify the
exploitation rate by provoking white collar workers to exploit
themselves. Smartphones also present the employers the golden
opportunity to reap the benefits from what employees have
invested without sowing anything. Employers simply have to ensure
their employees work during the unpaid time as much as possible.

�ݺ�ߣ

the finalized exploitation via smartphone presentation

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the finalized exploitation via smartphone presentation