1. Who are Vulnerable Workers?
| Pages | 3-8 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055103 |
| Published date | 01 May 1987 |
| Date | 01 May 1987 |
| Author | Patricia Leighton,Richard W. Painter |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
1.
Who are Vulnerable
Workers?
by Patricia Leighton and Richard W. Painter
Introduction
In recent years, various groups of workers have become causes célèbres through
being identified by both academics and the media as vulnerable in some way or
another. The spectre of child labour in family enterprises causing the children involved
to miss school or fall asleep over their books, of homeworkers earning a pittance
from boring, repetitive work, of major accidents or the onset of diseases at the
workplace, as well as job losses on a massive scale, all indicate that the 1980s have
brought or confirmed insecurity and other hardships for vast numbers of workers
in the UK. For the purposes of this special edition of Employee Relations, vulnerability
connotes disadvantage in the labour market more serious than that derived from
simply being atypical or marginal.
Our aim is to explore aspects of this phenomenon. It is not possible to provide an
exhaustive analysis of the causes of vulnerability, let alone solutions to it. Rather,
our objective, by using a predominantly legal focus, is to note the differing forms
of vulnerability, to identify the law's role in, and contribution to, growing vulnerability,
and to evaluate the likelihood of new legal and other responses to the problems posed
by vulnerability at work.
Labour Market Changes
There has been growing recognition, both here and in other industrial and developing
societies, that the pace of change in the labour market is threatening a crisis in the
traditional labour law structures[1]. A combination of factors, for example, the
widespread adoption of management employment policies stressing the commercial
advantages of using increasing numbers of "peripheral" workers, such as part-time
and casual staff, the growth in self-employment and small business units[2], the
weakening of trade unions and traditional collective bargaining[3], and higher levels
of unemployment have contributed to the crisis. Commentators in countries near
to home such as Italy, France and Sweden and further away in South America are
recognising that legal protections devised for the typical, full-time and generally male
worker are inappropriate or neglectful of the growing ranks of atypical workers.
Organisations and agencies such as the International Labour Office and the European
Community have undertaken a series of research projects to monitor these trends.
The problems are compounded by the attraction to governments of the practice of
increasing use of peripheral workers. Governments note their relative cheapness and
flexibility, all adding to the competitiveness of enterprises. Many governments, but
perhaps most of all the UK government since 1979, have adopted flexible work policies
to increase efficiency in the public as well as the private sector; hence, the growth
in privatisation and subcontracting[4], and the steady reduction in labour law rights,
3
To continue reading
Request your trial