Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality

A report from the front lines of ‘dirty work’ in the United States - labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised.

A compelling investigation into the phenomenon of dirty work - labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised.‘This book will prompt a public reckoning with inequality in work by revealing how we are all implicated in the dirty work we outsource to others’ Michael J. Sandel

‘A scathing and thoughtful book about labor and principles - or, rather about when the former sabotages the latter, in the brutal industries that prop up American life’ Rebecca Solnit

‘This deeply reported and eloquently argued account is a must-read'Publishers Weekly

'A writer in the tradition of George Orwell and Martha Gellhorn, who asks us to look at the dirty work that men and women do in our name’ 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.