slave labor

noun

1. persons, especially a large group, performing labor under duress or threats, as prisoners in a concentration camp; a labor force of slaves or slavelike prisoners.
2. labor done by such a labor force.
3. any coerced or poorly remunerated work:

   Data entry at that salary is slave labor.

Other Words From

• slave-labor adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of slave labor¹

First recorded in 1810–20

Example Sentences

Some even worried that a new civil war might be brewing over the issue of wage rather than slave labor.

From Nautilus

The truth we're shown during his address—of citizens being shipped off to the fields as forced slave labor or gunned down for resisting—is a non-revelation given the series' touchstones.

From Ars Technica

The rhetoric of a “natural inclination” toward a certain type of work was used to justify slave labor while conveniently eliding the fact that the entire economy of the South would collapse without it.

From Vox

This was strikingly fast growth, and yet Louisiana was only the third-largest importer of slave labor in the 1830s.

From Time

Rather than deploy the policies of mass extermination and slave labor used in Eastern Europe, he courted them using propaganda and incentives.

From Time

This borderline slave labor cannot be blamed on any one person; it's systemic.

From The Daily Beast

Soviet communism in the age of Stalin was ruthlessly devoted to constructing a gigantic slave-labor system in the prison camps.

From The Daily Beast

This is my country too, it was built largely on free black—slave—labor.

From The Daily Beast

Well, I hoped never to eat a supper procured by slave-labor.

From Project Gutenberg

When, later on, slave labor gave way before serf labor, the social relations were again modified to correspond.

From Project Gutenberg

Resolutions were also passed to encourage Southern manufacturers to employ slave labor in their factories.

From Project Gutenberg

You can never clear up a wild country like that without slave-labor, depend upon it.

From Project Gutenberg

Free labor will produce all these things, and everything you have to-day has been produced by free labor, nothing by slave labor.

From Project Gutenberg