This is a thought experiment that encourages you to think about your personal views on the appropriate level of exploitation of labour in a given context.
You are a kid and you have a little sister. Your parents leave you home alone to go to a business meeting in the city. In this corner of the IM Verse, this is not illegal.
While the parents are gone, a young woman (Anna Castillo) comes and tries to kidnap you and your brother and hand you over to the cartel as part of a massive kidnapping and ransom scheme. Anna has a long uninterrupted string of successful thefts, con artistry feats, and burglaries (often using her looks to her advantage). Recently, she’s upgraded to kidnapping and extortion.
You and your sister get lucky because your playing I Spy by the window and so you see her approach the house (on the way, she uses a tranq gun with a large magazine to shoot and knock out your dog).
Realizing there’s no phone, you and your sister set up defenses around the house and prepare to hold the fort.
Round 1:
Not realizing you’ve already seen her, Anna attempts to stealthily enter the house using a ladder she brought to access a high open window. However, you’ve laced the steel ledge with canola oil. When she gets there she struggles against the surface and trips and falls spectacularly from the height and lands into lots of sharp plants.
You: “Hello. Sorry about the unfriendly welcome, but you did try to break into the house. That’s a No No.”
Raging, Anna attempts to shoot you with the tranq gun but misses. You retaliate by dropping down a basketball. She dodged the basketball but she catches a rock and trips, landing a second time into the messy plants.
Round 2:
Realizing stealth is out, Anna destroys a panel using a window breaker and enters your living room. She is welcomed by you taking photos from atop a flight of stairs.
You: “SAY CHEESE! Thank you for letting me take these photos. The police will find them very useful for identifying you.”
She aims her tranq gun and shoots so you take cover by the railings. She sprints up the stairs. Even though you’ve stacked all the steps with sharp toys as an improvised defense line, her shoes offer her complete protection as she closes the gap. But then you deploy a large bag’s worth of rolling marbles. Anna catches the marbles and falls over spectacularly, screaming and landing very painfully into a collection of toy soldiers and trains (and dropping her gun). She stands up and makes a leaping grab for you (you manage to avoid this by luck, the merest of inches). When she reaches the top of the stairs, you throw yourself facedown.
That’s when your sister, standing in a hall, activates a baseball pitching machine set to max power (you: “Bombardiers to your station!”). Anna attempts to shield herself but she gets blasted back by the relentless fire from the baseball machine. She falls down the stairs and takes more damage, this time from a collection of brightly colored plastic jacks!
As the baseballs keep firing, she realizes she can’t attack the house from this direction and retreats, picking her gun back up.
Round 3:
Anna reloads her gun to the max and enters through yet another room (after breaking another window). She sneaks upstairs and engages you and your sister across the ballroom. The two of you improvise and put on massive life jackets (which somehow act as protection against the darts from her gun).
After lots of running around, you lead Anna into a prepares position and she takes a consecutive damage from a spectacular series of gizmos. This allows you to finally take her down. You restrain her unconscious form with skipping ropes from a cupboard (using some knots your sister learned from Girl Scouts) and at some point the police do show and arrest her.
Following her defeat and arrest, Anna Castillo is linked to all of her crimes and this threatens to generate a very lengthy prison sentence. To avoid jail, she very resentfully agrees to enter into a special deal with the government whereby she would perform “community service” and “restitution.” In addition to being forced to pay financial compensation, she must also stay at your place for three months and work as a “household servant” to the satisfaction of the owners.
Anna signs the deal and shows up. Meanwhile your parents are eager to profit from the free labour but decide to relegate the assignment of her tasks to you as a summer project. Anna really hates this but fully understands that your parents could say at any time that the deal is off and/or refuse to sign her forms at the end. Furthermore, two elite police officers stay with you for the three months to enforce the agreement.
There’s a three gray areas you can customize for the work plan.
The first customizable factor is the workload over the three months. There are chores to be done throughout the house and in the yard but you could potentially come up with lots of additional time and labor-intensive projects, some beneficial to your property, others purely frivolous. Will the assignment or work be light, medium, heavy/excessively heavy?
The second customizable factor is whether or not to extend a number of employment benefits to her like a low wage, reasonable work hours, and statutory holidays. The law says you don’t have to (she’s not an employee) but you may decide to be gracious or not.
The third customizable factor is with the family farm issue. Under the agreement she’s a “household servant” but the interpretation of that is very broad (though the current law isn’t necessarily fair according to your values). Will you take a restrictive view of “household servant” and only assign her work in the house and yard, or would you take a broad view of the term and use her for farm labour as well? There is a great deal of busywork that is needed at the farm on a daily basis but you might consider this exploitation of labour.
In reaching a decision, you may wish to consider the following issues (though you can justify your decision in any way): 1. How do you balance mercy and humane treatment with the punitive and economic dimensions of the sentence? 2. With the law as currently written, where do you personally draw the line with respect to exploitation of labour? 3. What is your objective with respect to how you manage this agreement? Is it primarily punitive or restorative? A mix of both?
Here are the labour plans (with all combinations for the customizable factors). Due to limited poll options some work settings will be blended in the vote but you can clarify in the discussion:
1. The workload over the three months will be light and/or medium/reasonable. She will work in the house and yard but not on the farm. Some employment benefits will be afforded (please specify).
2. The workload over the three months will be light and/or medium/reasonable. She will work in the house and yard but not on the farm. No employment benefits will be afforded.
3. The workload over the three months will be light and/or medium/reasonable. She will work in the house, yard and on the farm. Some employment benefits will be afforded (please specify).
4. The workload over the three months will be light and/or medium/reasonable. She will work in the house, yard and on the farm. No employment benefits will be afforded.
5. The workload over the three months will be heavy/punitively heavy. She will work in the house and yard but not on the farm. Some employment benefits will be afforded (please specify).
6. The workload over the three months will be heavy/punitively heavy. She will work in the house and yard but not on the farm. No employment benefits will be afforded.
7. The workload over the three months will be heavy/punitively heavy. She will work in the house, yard and on the farm. Some employment benefits will be afforded (please specify).
8. The workload over the three months will be heavy/punitively heavy. She will work in the house, yard and on the farm. No employment benefits will be afforded.
Please justify your decision.
After considering all factors I would choose a variation of option 5. My justification is as follows: the labour needs to be heavy because it is supposed to be a punishment in lieu of prison time. I would extend benefits such as statutory holidays and reasonable work hours though because to deny those would be spiteful but I wouldn’t pay a wage because I think that’s too closely connected with being an employee (and she’s not). Even though past arrangements have allowed the expansive interpretation of “household servant” I personally don’t think extending it to farm labor is fair play. Doing so could cross the line into unconscionable exploitation of labour.
