No Logo by: Klein, Naomi
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Name Bullies
Hardcover | 446 pages | ISBN:0-676-97130-X
Year Published:2000 – Knopf Canada | Tidewater Price: $35.95
This book is about the power of the world’s best known corporations to dramatically affect our lives. We already know that through their advertising campaigns, brand name companies can have an impact on the way we dress, what we eat, and what we buy. Naomi Klein shows us that the power and influence of the big brands including; Nike, McDonald’s, Coke, Pepsi, and the Gap, has extended to fundamentally transform the global economy, affecting our communities, our lifestyles, and the jobs and opportunities we have in Canada and across the world.
Written in a straightforward and energetic manner, Klein documents how the majority of brand name companies have laid off hundreds of thousands of people from good paying, unionized jobs that provided benefits and job security, and instead contract out to third world sweatshops where workers are abused and forced to work long hours in unsafe conditions for salaries that are well below a living wage. Meanwhile back home, the former manufacturing jobs have been replaced by McJobs in the retail sector where people are hired in part-time positions, without benefits or mobility, to earn minimum wage selling $150 running shoes that were made for $1 in China.
Despite the enormous power of these corporations, the 29-year-old author shows that many people are now participating in a resistance movement that uses every tool from boycotts to pie-throwing to challenge the hypocrisy of ‘cool’ companies who exploit and abuse.
This book is a terrific read; fast-paced and informative with shocking stories of corporate power that will make you want to read it aloud to everyone around you. Yet it is also ultimately an inspiring message about people who are mad and don’t want to take it anymore, and who are trying to wrest back a little bit of control.