Even in school. Remember those group projects where the teacher assigned the groups to force kids to mingle or whatever? But one kid just ends up doing all the work anyway because the others didn't give a fuck? That was me—I was the one kid who did all the work.

That was me for all of school. Then in my 4th year of uni I had a week where I had like 5 major assignments due all at the same time, and I decided I would be "that guy" on one of my group projects in order to give myself time to get the other stuff done. It was very deliberate and targeted, not at all like those people who just genuinely slack at everything. I knew what I was doing and I knew what I was inflicting on the other group members and I felt bad, but I still did it. It worked perfectly, and what I learned is that someone always arises to fill the power vacuum. If it isn't you, it will be someone else. You just need to know whether or not you are okay with entrusting your grade to that person.

I had one group project for an arts and media class, where I feared, that I'd be the one who'd have to do all the work alone. It got assigned on the one day when I was sick and when I came in the next day, every group and task was assigned and I was left to team up with that one guy that everyone didn't want in their team, as everyone knew he'd do nothing.

On that day I managed to plan out the project with him and assign all task (while silently trying to keep the scope in a way, that I should be able to do everything alone, if he failed his tasks). I knew he was a huge Star Trek fan, so keeping that as the theme for the project and making a small Star Trek "parody" helped to keep him on board. But after that first day? As expected - nothing. He didn't talk to me, didn't do any tasks, basically ignored me. So I made some small changes and had to complete the project alone.

In the end, I even did the presentation alone, as my team mate was missing some classes as usual. The teacher came to me, said he knew I did almost everything alone and was impressed by the scope of what I still managed to complete.

Grades in these classes worked like this: You get a score between 0 and 15 points. 15 is best, 0 is worst. You failed the class, when your average rating was lower than 5 points at the end. The teacher said, that this project would be 14 points for each of us, but *hint* *hint* that I was free to distribute the points between us, as I saw fitting for the worke done. I had to distribute all 28 points between us and *hint* *hint* if I were to assign more than 15 points to a person those were valid, but capped at 15 for the calculation of the final grade.

Guess who got 28 points for this project.

IMHO a fair way to grade group projects, as long as you're keeping an eye on the discussion on why/how to distribute points, so that it yields fair results.

I'm sorry to hear that unpaid labor is legal where you are. That's called "slavery" in my book.