Dirty Work

Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality

By: Eyal Press

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eBook | 3 December 2022

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A compelling investigation into the phenomenon of dirty work – labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised.

A New Statesman Book of the Year

'This book will prompt a public reckoning with inequality in work' Michael J. Sandel

'A scathing and thoughtful book about labor and principles' Rebecca Solnit

'A writer in the tradition of George Orwell and Martha Gellhorn' Corey Robin

'Confronts a series of deep and vexing moral questions... Penetrating, astutely observed, beautifully written' Patrick Radden Keefe

Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons. Undocumented immigrants who man the 'kill floors' of industrial slaughterhouses. Roustabouts who drill for oil on offshore rigs. And drone operators who kill people from thousands of miles away.

These are the essential workers we prefer not to think about. Their morally dubious, often physically violent and dangerous activity sustains modern society yet is concealed from our gaze. It is work that falls disproportionately in deprived areas, on immigrants and people of colour, and entails a less familiar set of occupational hazards – stigma, shame and moral injury.

Eyal Press reveals fundamental truths about the morality of work and the hidden costs of inequality. Striking, sophisticated and nuanced, Dirty Work will change the way you think about society.

About the Author

Eyal Press is an author and journalist based in New York. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the London Review of Books and the Nation, and his previous books include Beautiful Souls and Absolute Convictions. Press is a recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, an Andrew Carnegie fellowship, and a Cullman Centre fellowship at the New York Public Library.