Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don''t Talk about It)

Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governmentsand why we cant see it

One in four American workers says their workplace is a dictatorship. Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they areprivate governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.