1. Who are Vulnerable Workers? Available to Purchase

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.