ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to redress the gap by presenting evidence covering a range of occupations marked by contingent work arrangements and where the workers involved were clearly viewed as vulnerable by contemporary observers. Since the mid-1980s, a growing body of scientific research has linked job insecurity and the growth of more precarious or contingent work arrangements themselves the product of the rise of neoliberal policies and an employer offensive against collectivism to significant adverse effects on workers safety, health and well-being in both old industrialized and developing' countries. Early writers on occupational medicine like Charles Thackrah pointed to the adverse health effects of long hours, intense work and low earnings. Anti-sweating campaigns and the like played a critical role in the introduction of social protection legislation in the period 1880-1920. Writing 60 years later Thomas Arlidge saw the amount of work, as measured both by its duration and intensity, as one of the key general conditions labour affecting work-related disease.
