[giraffe_lady]

It's meant in the sense of "coerced into working." Eg if you don't have a viable alternative to working, did you choose work freely? Everyone using this comparison from that time period knows it's an extreme metaphor and is using it at least partially for the shock value of the comparison, to jar people into seeing the everyday pressures in a different way.

They aren't comparing the conditions of slavery to the conditions of wage labor, just that the force that compels a proletarian worker to work is on the same continuum with the force that compels a slave to work.

[_jal]

Adding to this, there are employers who do what they can to ramp up the coercive aspect. This happens mainly in low-wage jobs where there is lots of usually low-quality labor. The usual dynamic is to seek out job hunters with family or other commitments to employ, and then constantly threaten them with all the people who apply. Make them feel trapped and precarious by threatening their ability to feed kids, and that can go a long way.

Obviously, the legal system no longer supports outright slavery outside of prison, and the tactics and conditions are consequently less severe than historic chattel slavery in the US.

But the opposite conclusion - that all labor is voluntary - has to use a specific sense of the word 'voluntary', more similar to the IRS definition than the picking-from-a-menu sense.

[matkoniecz]

> It's meant in the sense of "coerced into working."

In case of slavery one is forced to work (and that is basically the best case).

With enough stuff like company scrip, company stores, ensuring that laws outlaw being homeless and deliberate breaking of relationship allowing people to escape you can get situation undistinguishable from slavery.

But just "if I will be fired then I am instantly homeless" is still markedly better than "my owner can force me to work to death in a mine".

And forces even horrible employees to be better option than begging friends/family/strangers for help. Slave owners have no need even for such bare minimum. To say nothing about less pathological cases where employees at least sort-of compete for workers.

[tstrimple]

I suspect calling it slavery is more shocking today than it would have been at the time when slavery was still an acceptable practice in major countries. Certainly people have a more visceral reaction to the term in general today than at that time.