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The Poverty of Work: Selling Servant, Slave and Temporary Labor on the Free Market

£24.99

Manufacturer: Haymarket Books

Product Information

'Perhaps no single human right is more cherished in Western capitalism than that of controlling one's own fate in the labor market. In this chilling look inside the history of employment agencies, Van Arsdale demonstrates their tendency to deny this right by selling immigrants and the unemployed into deprived and oppressive conditions.

Starting in the seventeenth century, employment agencies privatized and began selling workers into indentured servitude and other inhumane occupations. While many in England rallied against the profiteering from human labor at employment agencies, the concept crossed the Atlantic with colonialism, becoming essential to the development of the American economy, and one of the institutional forces behind slavery.

Despite this history, employment agencies were never outlawed. Instead, they flourished during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigration booms, survived three challenges in the Supreme Court, and grew into one of the most profitable contemporary industries by selling flexible, on-demand temporary workers.'

David Van Arsdale. Haymarket Books, 2018.

Product Code: 9781608468331

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