wage-earning worker

It is not uncommon for overtime hours to be accepted voluntarily by wage-earning workers.

However, autonomists have a broader definition of the working class than do other Marxists: as well as wage-earning workers (both white collar and blue collar), autonomists also include in this category the unwaged (students, the unemployed, homemakers, etc.), who are traditionally deprived of any form of union representation.

Some Latin American social scientists working on the topic have suggested a two-stage process, in which the penetration of capitalism initially leads to an increase in wage-earning workers, but this is followed by a stage of the intensification of capitalism, characterised by deproletarianisation and semi-proletarianisation (Miró and Rodríguez 1982).