Ben Schneiders’s recently released book, Hard Labour: Wage Theft in the Age of Inequality, is labeled “a dispiriting story of the concentration of power and wealth.” While true enough, it’s also an undersell. Hard Labour is the first honest mainstream depiction of how big capital steals billions from ordinary Australians on a daily basis, aided by conspirators including weirdo ideologues, parliamentary representatives, and henchmen in corrupt mega-unions.

As an investigative journalist for the Age specializing in industrial reporting, Schneiders has form on the topic. Over the last decade, he’s broken countless news stories about some of the largest dodgy employers and wage-theft scandals in Australia. And on top of this, he’s among the minority of Australians who have taken unprotected industrial action in defiance of the nation’s draconian workplace relations system. Schneiders isn’t just an old school journalist who’s done the hard yards digging up the dirt. He’s also a journalist who has stopped pretending that “we’re all in this together.” It’s a neat combination that makes Hard Labour thought-provoking reading for unionists and leftists nationwide.