Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (The University Center for Human Values Series) Paperback – April 30, 2019

I bought this to understand the difference between the library I am employed at going from a municipal library into a llc or private library. It has perfectly provided me with the grasp of the changes and challenges of this change. Essentially I have no rights because of the union contract giving full authority to a single person who lacks experience and has a micro management issue. It even gives an example of gender norms as a male working in a pro dominantly female position now that the director is female sexism was an immediate issue. The previous male director was always fighting for anyone to do their job and he was blamed for the red tape he had to traverse resulting in programs and events never developing. I worked in municipal organizations and it requires a full break down in a submission report to request an event to review the safety of the events. Now that it’s private they do everything without any oversight and when it fails they blame me. The reason I represent the rules from before and just reciting and following them has lead to becoming an outsider. The book is a great example for how the system is authoritarian and hides behind not allowing anyone creating documentation of any kind. The book sadly does indicate that a lawsuit will force the addition of rules. I lost all my ada rights and my accommodations were taken away because it wasn’t necessary because I did my job so well. After they were removed my health deteriorated so much I was labeled incompetent. The book states what I didn’t want to do and that is taking official action or endure. Now that this is happening more and more if you are changing to a privatized infrastructure from government read this. Then buy a book on unions if you have one. My union is now a separate entity from the municipal body and I with others need to get a secretary, a leader and a legal organization. This is helpful to inform you but not to fix the change. The new library has dubbed me a incompetent, violent person who is unreliable and should be terminated which they tried. But they lacked any rules and had to use the municipal handbook and the book even mentioned that. Protected category employees are usually treated poorly and set up to fail for termination if they have any special needs. My anxiety disorder was used to paint me as violent and now I can’t advance because I had an anxiety attack so bad I fainted and was upset for getting reprimanded for being out sick to often. This book was invaluable to me because I couldn’t understand why they don’t follow eeoc guidelines. They don’t have to unless the director decides to and lawsuits are the only way. Get this book because even talking to the director requires a new approach. I have a lot of work to do just to make sure there is a union setup and a preview contract in place for 2026 just in case I am terminated for sneezing.

That is a question you hear bandied about with labor shortages everywhere in 2021: "Why don't people want to work for a living anymore?" This is a good primer on the historical and contemporary reasons why - because it sucks. Wage labor sucks. It has become clear that in an American pro-capital context, it offers no escape to a brighter future. Instead, owners and their managers seem to be doubling down on tyrannical rules for labor, like denying them bathroom breaks to the point where they are infantilized into wearing diapers on the job. Next time you hear someone express puzzlement as to why no one wants to work anymore, ask them what this country has done to make working conditions better in the last 40 years that doesn't involve demanding a worker take the huge cost of leaving if they find it too unpleasant for them (that is, if they do not have a noncompete clause). Whatever their answer may be, the widespread loathing of work proves it is not enough.Congrats on Elizabeth Anderson for being an academic that is curious about how workers who do not have tenor for life live (maybe THE academic, as evidenced by how genuinely perplexed the academics at the end of the book are in response to her writing). It is arbitrary scheduling, little time off, micromanaging to the point of voodoo, and now, if you are going to make an amendment to this book, no guarantee you are not going to get a disease with known long symptoms that could persist for years and require expensive privatized medical treatment. Among other well-known problems to working that many who have worked at "the firm" beyond in an intellectual, managerial capacity know.The American working experience is always portrayed as a temporary condition if you are thrifty enough, if you are clever enough, if you attend school in the meantime. The idea is that slavery is temporary, and soon you can be a master. But what if you have no interest in being either slave or master? That is not available in a country governed (by law from government) as default at-will employment, with a sprinkling of anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws that (in my actual experience as a worker) cannot realistically be pursued in a labor market that otherwise offers little voice for its workers., or accountability for its managers/bosses - beyond their voice of leaving the firm entirely in protest, which this book makes a good case is not enough to justify what happens within firms in the first place (it is akin to asking an Italian to leave if they don't like Benito Mussolini - a tremendous and possibly deadly cost to them, but not much cost to Il Duce).Anderson's writing is sharp and to the point, but if there is a problem with it, it is comparing these businesses rhetorically to communist dictatorships - I think this is meant to get the right and Cold Warrior left professor audience on board with her arguments, but it won't resonate with people under 40 who do not have much memory of the Cold War. It also sets up too easily to disregard Marx's writing about the relationship between capital and labor, which to this day has the fundamental truth that the capital-labor relationship is based on conflict (and in another part of the book, Anderson chides labor unions for the conflict they present to workplaces, when all they are doing is recognizing the conflict exists and pursuing it to victory). I don't think it works with a right wing audience in particular, who I suspect did not oppose communism on the grounds of liberty (at least, the everyday conservative, not the think tank one) as much as its foreign nature. You could easily make these arguments emphasizing the alienation and foreignness of the control implemented by bosses vs. continuing to breathe life into stale Cold War arguments with hysterical accusations of communism (that don't play in particular when bosses and owners do not use Marxist language to justify what they're doing).But overall, a great, succinct read. She is in the right place, paying attention to the right things. Which is more than I can say for the vast majority of college professors, focused as they are on their never-ending crisis of identity politics.