Despite the dramatic expansion of consumer culture from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards and the developments in retailing, advertising and credit relationships in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were a significant number of working families in Britain who were not fully free to consume as they chose. These employees were paid in truck, or in goods rather than currency. This book will explore and analyse the changing ways that truck and workplace deductions were experienced by different groups in British society, arguing that it was far more common than has previously been acknowledged. This analysis brings to light issues of class and gender; the discourse of free trade, popular politics and protest; the development of the trade union movement; and the use of the legal system as an instrument for bringing about social and legal change.

Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.

The economic restructuring that has gone on since the 1980s has produced a new economic space in which service and high tech firms are at the forefront of innovation. One of the features of the new economy is what pop geographer Joel Kotkin calls "nerdistans," or smaller cities with a substantial high tech sector, limits on growth, environmentally friendly policies and a generally well-educated population. In New Money, Nice Town, Leonard Nevarez takes a close look at how "new economy" firms in "quality of life" cities interact with local political structures, finding that they are both more liberal and more detached than their traditional counterparts. This new global economy has created communities whose politics are more democratic, but also more tenuous and unstable.