While focus on the effects of inequality on household indebtedness is widespread, few economists have recognized the pernicious effects of household debt on inequality. Giorgos Gouzoulis develops this connection thoroughly. In the process, he fills a vitally important gap, connecting finance to working households’ disempowerment, lagging wages, and growing insecurity", Mark Setterfield, Leo Model Professor of Economics, The New School For Social Research.

"A powerful and timely study showing how debt and financialization reshape work and weaken labour. Gouzoulis also shows how collective power can be rebuilt", Costas Lapavitsas, University of London, SOAS.

“Financialization generates spectacular wealth for the 1%, and precarity and inequality for the rest of us. But what if we could change that? What if financialization generates new opportunities for unions of tenants, debtors and workers? Read this, and get organized!”, Hannah Appel, UCLA.

“A fascinating book showing how financialized capitalism has been used to discipline labour and reinforce inequality. The solution has to come from wealth redistribution. A must-read”, Thomas Piketty, EHESS and Paris School of Economics.

“This book offers a clear, insightful, and highly readable analysis of the rise of financialization and widespread indebtedness, and how these changes are undermining workers and degrading their bargaining power”, Christopher Kollmeyer, University of Aberdeen.

Since the late 1970s, student, mortgage, and medical debt have continued to rise in line with lowered public spending and the privatization of key services by Western governments. Gouzoulis shows how working households beholden to these economic burdens are prevented from demanding better working conditions and pay.
By tracing the link between household financialization and workers’ ability to unionise and take action, Gouzoulis reveals how today’s financialized capitalism is sustained, and offers a radical plan on how unions can push back through collaboration and collective action to defend workplace democracy.

Giorgos Gouzoulis (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the School of Business & Management at Queen Mary, University of London.

1. Introduction
2. Beyond the Future of Work
3. The Indebted (Working) Class
4. Trade Unions in the Era of Financialization
5. The Debt-Forced Silencing of Strikes
6. Debt and Despair at Work
7. Organize, Resist, Abolish: Democratizing Finance and Work