{"product_id":"the-dignity-gap-brian-iselin-9798258842978","title":"The Dignity Gap: How the global economy performs the protection of workers - and why the workers are still not protected","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTHE DIGNITY GAP\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eHow the global economy performs the protection of workers - and why the workers are still not protected.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1880, a Manchester mill owner campaigned for child protection laws and employed children in his own factory. He was not a hypocrite. He was an early operator of a machinery the global economy has been refining ever since: the machinery that allows institutions to perform the protection of workers without providing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwo hundred years later, the standards are the best they have ever been. More people are in forced labour than at any point since records began.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Dignity Gap\u003c\/i\u003e is an account of how that became possible - and why it persists. It traces the long arc from the cotton mills of Lancashire to the rubble of Rana Plaza, from the drafting rooms of the UN Guiding Principles to the boardrooms where supply-chain audits are commissioned, filed, and forgotten. Along the way it names what most accounts of corporate human rights leave unnamed: that the audit industry, the certification logo, the ESG report and the due diligence statement are not failed attempts at protection. They are successful instruments of something else.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe argument is simple and uncomfortable. Most corporate human rights programmes are not designed to produce results. They are designed to produce evidence of effort. That is not a moral failure of the people who run them. It is a rational response to an incentive structure that rewards the appearance of compliance more reliably than the substance of it. Until that structure changes - until the cost of performing protection genuinely exceeds the cost of providing it - the gap between stated values and operational reality will continue to widen, however many regulations are passed, however many disclosures are filed, however many logos are printed on the back of the box.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on two decades inside the system - as investigator, policy adviser, and consultant to the corporations the book describes - Brian Iselin shows how the gap is built, who builds it, who profits from it, and what it would take to close it. He writes with the civilisational sweep of \u003ci\u003eSapiens\u003c\/i\u003e and the institutional clarity of \u003ci\u003eBullshit Jobs\u003c\/i\u003e, but the subject is more urgent than either: the machinery by which the modern economy has learned to look away.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor activists, journalists, policy professionals, and the workers in NGOs and unions and frontline organisations who have long suspected that the compliance industry is not on their side - \u003ci\u003eThe Dignity Gap\u003c\/i\u003e is the diagnosis the field has been waiting for.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe standards are not the problem. The performance of the standards is the problem.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the book that names it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Brian Iselin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798258842978\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/25\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 320\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.85lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d","brand":"Brian Iselin","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48801451606271,"sku":"9798258842978","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-dignity-gap-brian-iselin-9798258842978","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}