This book, which is a clarion call for social justice, highlights the urgent need for economists to widen their perspective on paid work beyond the limited scope of trading leisure time for financial gain. What is needed is a far deeper and more comprehensive grasp of the actual role that paid work plays in our lives, as both individuals and as a society. By proposing ways for economics to broaden its perspective on paid work, inspired by perspectives borrowed from other academic disciplines, this book fills a conspicuous gap in the existing literature. Written in plain English, it aims to be accessible to a broad readership.

The standard economics textbook dispenses with paid work as a necessary evil that robs us of precious leisure time so that we can access the things that money can buy. In other words, economics asserts that the paycheque is the only positive contribution of paid work, and the loss of leisure time is the only drawback. Meanwhile, other academic disciplines draw our attention to an array of both positive and negative impacts of paid work. This book stresses both the positive impacts and the negative conditions described in the literature, to highlight the importance of full employment and, conversely, the social injustices associated with employment.

Our workplaces lack fundamental health and safety measures that would greatly reduce the loss of life and debilitating work accidents we see today. With better investment in occupational health and safety measures, we could greatly reduce workplace injuries and accidents. There is also a need to regulate more successfully against deliberately negligent behaviour by employers. For example, the suppression of information about the risks of handling toxic materials. In several well-known cases covered in this book, this latter example has resulted in painful and drawn-out illnesses, followed by premature death.

The unfortunate reality of the social and economic discrimination that permeates our societies has been addressed by scholars from a range of academic disciplines, including economics. Race discrimination permeates worker's experiences in the labour market. In the US, for example, slavery no longer renders human beings into traded market goods. But slavery has its modern transfiguration, in the form of forced prison labour performed by an incarcerated population overwhelmingly over-represented by black Americans.