Challenging neoliberal justification for labor exploitation through the application of critical communication pedagogy

Abstract

This activity elucidates a critical and pragmatic means by which students and instructors can examine the practice of labor exploitation by neoliberal corporations. By employing critical communication pedagogy (CCP), instructors and students can learn about the ways that corporations actively steal wages from their employees and communicatively justify this theft through the ethic of individualism. In so doing, corporations break the social contract and inculcate employees to believe not in collectivism and social responsibility, but instead only in the logic of the free market. Thus, employees internalize the idea that earning at a level below what is desired is the fault of the individual and not the fault of the corporation. Employees learn to absolve corporations of any wrongdoing. Students and instructors will challenge this ideology and practice by employing the tenets of CCP to recognize and respond to labor exploitation.

Courses: Business and Professional Communication, Professional Speaking, Instructional Communication, Critical Studies/Critical Theory in Communication

Objectives: In this two-day activity, first, students will learn about critical communication pedagogy (CCP) and how they can apply it to respond to hegemony. Second, students will learn about the concept of labor exploitation that they may face in their future careers. Third, students will apply CCP to analyze and respond to the ways in which corporations justify labor exploitation through their communicative practices, equipping students to push back against labor exploitation in their future careers.