ABSTRACT
The argument of Sick From Work has pivoted on two distinctive claims: first, that employment is an asymmetrical relation of power, with which workers usually comply, but which also gives rise to conflict and resistance, because employers must exploit labour power and employees must conserve it; second, that workers are embodied selves, who are made useful to capital by a social process of selection, and docile by accommodating to the demands of their jobs. Internal and external approaches to the effects of occupations upon the health of the body are represented. For example, the clinician usually encounters the effects of work on health as internal diseases which require individual treatment, and may be unaware of their occupational basis. The demographic trend can be extrapolated more reliably than any other. The large generation born in the 1950s and 1960s will reach retirement age around 2020/2030. They have fewer children than their parents.
