It's impossible to exploit someone voluntarily

 I keep seeing memes on reddit about "worker exploitation" being the reason why billionaires made their money. But what, exactly, do the posters mean by "worker exploitation?" What, exactly, is exploitation in the first place? My mother is an employment lawyer who has spent her entire career dealing with worker-business relationships, and not once in her case law (that she's told me) have I heard of actual exploitation. 

I'm not talking about minimum wage factory workers or janitors. If you think being paid minimum wage or just above it to work on an assembly line is exploitation, then you obviously have not understood the depths to which humanity can go when it comes to forced labor. Example: slavery of any kind is worker exploitation. Being forced to work grueling jobs without being paid and most likely without being fed properly without your consent is exploitation. Not voluntarily working at a factory for minimum wage. 

By continuing to work at your job in modern America, you are complicit. You can terminate your employment at any point. Homelessness is, by far, the worst that can happen to you if you do quit your job. 

And there are a million things worse than homelessness in America. I'm talking gulag. I'm talking being a woman, who has just given birth, who is forced to work the fields at a collective farm with her placenta still hanging out, dragging behind her. (This actually happened in communist China.) I'm talking working under the whip. That's worker exploitation. You may argue that there are sweatshops in developing countries; those are the workers who are being exploited! Well, no, not technically, as they are still being paid. While they may not be paid much compared to modern American standards, they are still earning money. They are being compensated for their work. And I do believe that, under most modern governments, companies are not allowed to force labor or compliance. The ones that do are the exception, not the rule, and they are actively being eliminated by many different organizations, both government and otherwise.

Voluntary work for pay, no matter how small compared to our standards, is not exploitation, but rather a trade that benefits both sides. Real exploitation happens when a worker is forced to do something against their will without being compensated in any real way. Think gulags and work camps. One company that comes to mind that has actually exploited workers is Mitsubishi. During WWII, Mitsubishi used forced American prisoner of war labor in their supply chains. So I'm not saying that companies never exploit their workers. I'm just saying that calling minimum wage to do a difficult job voluntarily "exploitation" only makes sense when we consider our modern American privilege. The next time you hear someone call a billionaire a villain for "exploiting" their workers, check your privilege. You don't know what real worker exploitation feels like.