Working for the Brand

how corporations are destroying free speech
Josh Bornstein

Josh Bornstein asks how our major corporations have come to exercise repressive control over the lives of their employees, and explores what can be done to repair the greatest threat to democracy — the out-of-control corporation.

When you go to work, you agree to exchange your labour in exchange for your pay packet, right? Actually, you may not realise it, but you are also selling your rights to free speech and to participate in democracy. Welcome to corporate cancel culture, a burgeoning phenomenon that is routinely ignored in debates about free speech. If you work for a large company, it will not allow you to say or do anything that harms its brand — at or outside work. If you transgress and attract controversy — whether for cracking a joke, a Facebook like, or a political post on TikTok, you can be shamed, sacked, and blacklisted.

In the twenty-first century, major corporations have become the most powerful institution in the world — more powerful than many nations. That unchecked, anti-democratic power is reflected in the gaming of the political system, the weakening of governments, and the repressive control of the lives of employees. While their behaviour has deteriorated, corporations have invested heavily in ethically washed brands, claiming to be saving the planet and doing good. As Josh Bornstein argues, we would not tolerate a government that censored, controlled, and punished us in this way, so why do we meekly accept the growing authoritarianism of the companies that we work for?

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 234mm × 153mm

Extent:288pp

ISBN (13):9781761381041

RRP:$36.99

Pub date:1 Oct 2024

Rights Held: World

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Josh Bornstein

Josh Bornstein is an award-winning workplace lawyer who has represented employees and trade unions in some of Australia's most notorious disputes. He has been instrumental in cases that have blocked a government backed plot to de-unionise the waterfront, exposed sexual harassment against judges in Australia's federal and state courts and obtained record breaking compensation for intellectually disabled workers who were paid less than $1 per hour. Along the way he has cornered the market in representing sacked rabbis and women in media and journalism. He has written for most major media outlets in Australia and is a contributing author of The Wages Crisis in Australia, 2018. To try to stay sane, he surfs and listens to too much punk music.

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We publish books that matter — narrative and literary nonfiction on important topics, and the best of local, international, and translated fiction.

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