ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that industrial medicine, occupational psychology and ergonomics are the sciences that correspond to the ‘techniques of power’ for fitting labour to jobs and jobs to labour. The natural selection model is in tune with them. The more flexible labour markets of the late 1980s and the early 1990s have increased the marginality of disabled people, even at times when unemployment has been falling. The Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) Surveys were grounded in concepts borrowed from the World Health Organization International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps. A smaller proportion of disabled people have paid employment than of the ‘able-bodied’and it declines sharply as disability becomes more severe. The major difference is how many are unable to work. This is consistent with the natural selection argument. Difficulties with locomotion affected more than half the disabled adults of working age in private households in the OPCS Surveys.
