{"product":{"product_id":"0691176515","title":"Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (The University Center for Human Values Series, 44)","price":"28.68","image_url":"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31qJ+61Br5L._SL500_.jpg","url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691176515"},"comments":[{"body":"Its called private government I believe (see [this book](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515)). Turn over large functions of the government and social programs to companies and suddenly your rights are gone.","subreddit_name":"stupidpol","author":"parens-p"},{"body":"[*Private Government* by Elizabeth Anderson](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515) was a pretty good contemporary read, though it's more of a criticism of the lack of workplace democracy than advocacy for workplace democracy itself.","subreddit_name":"CapitalismVSocialism","author":"memeshroud"},{"body":"Yep:\r\n\r\n[https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515)","subreddit_name":"politics","author":"SpecialistPassenger"},{"body":"AHHH.  These days I often forget about CU!  [Matt Stoller](https://newrepublic.com/article/143595/return-monopoly-amazon-rise-business-tycoon-white-house-democrats-return-party-trust-busting-roots) has also opened my eyes to a similar type of silencing no one seems to want to deal with as well!\r\n\r\n[This book](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515/) and a lot of Anderson's work, now that I know about it, has really cemented my view that those on the free speech side are just unable to view the world through any useful range.  \r\n\r\nDo you happen to listen to This American Life?  A little while back they had a story on a small time Republican who unwillingly ran up against the NRA machine.. fucking terrifying: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/637/words-you-cant-say\r\n\r\nAlso, the most recent episode documents how much of a game people like Rubin's TPUSA are promoting radicalization of campuses and thought of youth.  They treat it as a battle to win against progressive thoughts.  Fucking crazy.  https://www.thisamericanlife.org/645/my-effing-first-amendment.","subreddit_name":"samharris","author":"CursoryComb"},{"body":"What about private governments?\r\n\r\n[https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515)","subreddit_name":"politics","author":"SpecialistPassenger"},{"body":"Nope:\r\n\r\n[https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515)","subreddit_name":"politics","author":"SpecialistPassenger"},{"body":"Some excerpts from Elizabeth Anderson's [*Private Government*](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-Center/dp/0691176515):\r\n\r\n\r\n\u0026gt; [...] Aggregate statistics are hard to come by, because complaints\r\nabout employer abuse and oppressive working conditions\r\nare so diverse, and crossindustry\r\nsurveys on qualitative\r\nissues are expensive and rare. Moreover, academic research on\r\nlabor is marginalized and underfunded, as workers themselves\r\nare. Here are some indications.\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;**Among restaurant workers,\r\n90 percent report being subject to sexual harassment.**^^19 Between\r\n2007 and 2012, the Department of Labor conducted\r\nmore than 1,500 investigations of garment factories in Southern\r\nCalifornia, discovering labor violations, including **“sweatshoplike\r\nconditions,” 93 percent of the time.**^^20 A recent study of\r\nworkers in the poultry industry found that the “vast majority”\r\nwere not allowed adequate bathroom breaks. Many are\r\nforced to wear diapers. Employers threaten to fire workers\r\nwho complain, indicating that their free speech as well as their\r\nbasic physiological needs and dignity are infringed by their employer.\r\n^^21 This is just one part of **a long and continuing struggle\r\nby workers in the United States to gain the right to use the\r\nbathroom at work**— a right workers in other rich countries have\r\nlong taken for granted.^^22\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;A recent study, based on a survey of managers and employees,\r\nestimates that **about seven million workers have been pressured\r\nby their bosses to favor some political candidate or issue,\r\nby threats of job loss, wage cuts, or plant closure.**^^23 OSHA relies\r\non employers to report the millions of cases of worker injuries\r\nand thousands of deaths suffered by workers each year. [...] a Government Accounting Office\r\nstudy found that **67 percent of occupational health practitioners\r\nobserved “worker fear of disciplinary action for reporting an\r\ninjury or illness.”**^^24 Both workers’ safety and their freedom of\r\nspeech are thereby compromised by dictatorship at work. The\r\nsame report also finds that more than **onethird\r\nof occupational\r\nhealth practitioners were pressured by employers to underdiagnose\r\nand undertreat worker injuries so as to avoid reporting\r\nrequirements** (as minor injuries do not have to be reported to\r\nOSHA).^^25\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Employers unilaterally determine work schedules, with no\r\nemployee input for half of all early career employees. The results—\r\nincluding unpredictable schedules (41 percent of workers), fluctuating\r\nand short-notice on-call\r\nand split-shift\r\nwork (where\r\nemployees are sent home and called back the same day)— wreak\r\nhavoc with the private lives of workers: they can’t arrange child\r\ncare, can’t clear their schedules to take college classes or take on\r\na second job needed to cover necessary expenses, and are left\r\nwith unpaid junk time on their hands in the middle of the day,\r\noften hours from home, and with no opportunity to spend it with\r\nfriends and family.^^26\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Walmart, which employs nearly 1 percent of the U.S. labor\r\nforce (1.4 million workers), is notorious for assigning unreliable\r\nschedules to workers. Yet, it is telling that OURWalmart, a\r\nnon-union workers’ organization dedicated to improving working\r\nconditions at Walmart, stands for Organization United for\r\nRespect: members are concerned not simply with wages and\r\nhours, but with being treated respectfully. **A leading complaint\r\nof Walmart workers is rude and abusive managers, who scream\r\nat and harass them to get them to work harder.** This abusiveness\r\nmay be due to the fact that **lower-level\r\nmanagers themselves are assigned work goals without any consideration of what it takes\r\nto meet them**, and are constantly harassed by upper management\r\nfor not working hard enough.^^27\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;This doesn’t even describe the very bottom of America’s\r\nwage labor system. That is occupied by immigrants, both with\r\nvisas for low-wage\r\nwork and undocumented. Often the former\r\nare forced by their employers to stay past their visa expiration,\r\nbecause those same employers have confiscated their passports\r\nand threatened them with arrest or worse. One U.S. State Department\r\ninvestigation found that **“30 percent of migrant laborers\r\nsurveyed in one California community were victims of\r\nlabor trafficking and 55 percent were victims of labor abuse.”**^^28\r\nGiven that there are many million migrant and/or undocumented\r\nworkers in the United States, it is reasonable to suppose\r\nthat the number of victims range from the hundreds of\r\nthousands to a few million. **Abuses include fraud, being forced\r\nto work without pay, rape and sexual harassment, beatings,\r\ntorture, confinement to the workplace and to squalid housing\r\nfor which extortionate rent is charged, exhausting hours, isolation,\r\nreligious compulsion, and psychological manipulation\r\nand intimidation.**^^29 Affected industries include “hotel services,\r\nhospitality, sales crews, agriculture, manufacturing, janitorial\r\nservices, construction, health and elder care, and domestic service.”\r\n^^30 Oh, and also restaurants.^^31 This list of industries, which\r\ncollectively employ tens of millions of workers, is telling. Cutting\r\nacross diverse sectors of the economy, it indicates not only\r\nwhere vulnerable immigrants, but where U.S. citizens working\r\nin the same places, are liable to suffer serious assaults in their\r\nautonomy, standing, and esteem.\r\n\r\n\u0026gt; [...] Wage theft is pervasive among\r\nlow-wage\r\nconstruction, restaurant, garment, nursing home,\r\nagriculture, and poultry workers, and affects many middleclass\r\nworkers as well.^^36 **One estimate from a business- funded\r\nthink tank indicated an annual wage theft tab at $19 billion in\r\n2004. Another\r\nestimate puts the tab at $50 billion in 2014, affecting two thirds\r\nof workers in low-wage\r\nindustries, costing them nearly 15 percent\r\nof their total earnings.** This is more than three times the\r\namount of all other thefts in the United States.^^38\r\n\r\n\r\nBuT iNEquAliTY UndEr cApITaLiSm ISn'T a pRObLeM","subreddit_name":"neoliberal","author":"Susanoo-no-Mikoto"}]}