Labour Exploitation and Work-Based Harm

Abstract

This is a book about labour exploitation. Labour exploitation tends to emerge when workers are subject to excessive and oppressive forms of control; controls that are rooted within workplaces and beyond. A central argument of the book is that it is time to study control and exploitation from a social harm perspective. This perspective is novel in the way that it questions a crime-orientated approach to issues and problems at work. Specifically, labour exploitation may exist without evidence of a crime being committed, and, only the most extreme cases of labour exploitation are ever effectively criminalised. Correspondingly, solutions to labour exploitation are needed that acknowledge the limitations of legal baselines. These involve a re-assessment of the contemporary structures within which work and workers are produced and reproduced. The book draws heavily on evidence from workers in the food supply chain, mainly of migrant origin, to reveal the face of labour control, exploitation and harm in contemporary contexts. In addition, policies shaping work/workers are profiled from across the world, some that facilitate harm and others that prevent it. The book concludes that it is time to contemplate the plight of the world’s workers as human beings, rather than to simply engage in research aimed at maximising the efficiency and productivity of labour. To this end, the dilemma is not about how to produce good and better workers, but how to produce good and better work.