Vulnerability at work

However, basic anti- discrimination and associational rights aside, labour market regulation now tends to be conceptualized as a question of economic policy rather than a question of the worker rights and entitlements; there is also less recognition of the conflict interest between workers and employers and the role of power in the workplace and the employment contract. [...] Much of the disadvantage of women in the labour market can be attributed to the fact that the costs responsibilities for unpaid or ‘reproductive’ labour are unequally assumed by men and women and externalized from the costs of production and the organization of work. [...] Rather, depending on how we respond at the level of law and policy and in the design of legal institutions, we can enhance or lessen the general degree of vulnerability in the workplace and intensify or ameliorate the divisions between protected ‘insiders’ and vulnerable ‘outsiders’ in the labour force. [...] They arise from changes in the geography of production, the organization of work, the identity of workers and either 1) the lack of regulatory and policy responses to those shifts; 2) regulatory ‘lag’; or 3) policy and regulatory responses that are inadequate or uncongenial to the interests and needs of workers, often because they aim to create flexibility and reduce costs for employers. [...] It requires respect for the rule of law and the protection of a set of core legal entitlements, in particular property and contract rights, on the one hand and the absence of ‘arbitrary’ or, still worse, corrupt action on the part of the state on the other (Shihata, 1997).