On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, journalist and writer, Eyal Press is discussing his new book DIRTY WORK: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented attention to essential frontline workers, and the health and safety risks faced by slaughterhouse workers. Dirty Work examines a less familiar set of occupational hazards: psychological and emotional hardships such as stigma, shame, PTSD, and moral injury. These burdens disproportionately fall on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color. What kind of dirty work takes place in contemporary America? And how much of this work has an unconscious mandate from society?
Guest:
Eyal Press, Puffin Foundation Fellow at Type Media Center, and the author of Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
Web Resources:
DIRTY WORK: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
The NY Times: The Wounds of the Drone Warrior
Propublica: Secret IRS Files Reveal How Much the Ultrawealthy Gained by Shaping Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Tax Cut”
