A01=Matthew Cole
Adam Tooze
Author_Matthew Cole
Automation
Capital
capitalism
Category=JHBL
Category=KCF
Category=KCP
Category=KCY
Crashed
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exploitation
finance
financial crisis
Karl Marx
labour
mariana mazzucato
Marxism
Paul Mason
political economy
Postcapitalism
Varoufakis
wage
wages
work
Product details
- ISBN 9781804295663
- Weight: 280g
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 26 May 2026
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Unpaid upends conventional wisdom about how we value work, exposing wage theft as one of capitalism's enduring open secrets. From unpaid overtime and under-the-table jobs to algorithmic exploitation, there are as many ways to steal wages as there are to pay them. But what if wage theft isn't a bug but a feature of capitalism itself?
Across the world, millions of workers exhaust themselves in billions of hours of free labour. As app-based gig work becomes increasingly common, exploitation grows more sophisticated and harder to detect.
It doesn't have to be this way. Blending personal stories with a fresh, accessible take, Unpaid traces the long history of wage theft and reveals how employers continue to get away with it. Matthew Cole shows that wage theft is not just about broken laws but about the nature of property itself. He makes a powerful case for our collective right to reassert our labour-power.
Across the world, millions of workers exhaust themselves in billions of hours of free labour. As app-based gig work becomes increasingly common, exploitation grows more sophisticated and harder to detect.
It doesn't have to be this way. Blending personal stories with a fresh, accessible take, Unpaid traces the long history of wage theft and reveals how employers continue to get away with it. Matthew Cole shows that wage theft is not just about broken laws but about the nature of property itself. He makes a powerful case for our collective right to reassert our labour-power.
Matthew Cole is an Assistant Professor of Technology, Work and Employment at the University of Sussex and a life-long trade unionist. His research revolves around the political economy of work and technology, with a particular focus on wage theft. His writing has been published in Jacobin, Novara, Vice, OpenDemocracy, the Independent, Salvage, and in various academic journals.
