The Poverty of Work: Selling Servant, Slave and Temporary Labor on the Free Market (Studies in Critical Social Sciences)

This chilling look inside the history of employment agencies in the U.S. argues that they should have been abolished with slavery, or at the very least, put under tight government control. Today, left largely unregulated, employment agencies generate astonishing revenue by selling flexible, on-demand temporary workers. In the process millions are trapped in a cycle of unemployment, despair, and poverty.

David Van Arsdale, Ph.D. (2004), Syracuse University, is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Onondaga Community College. His research commonly addresses issues of work and culture, economy and development, and race and ethnicity.