The Endangered Proletariat: Occupational Injury Amongst Sub-Contractors and Consultants

Abstract

This paper examines the inter-relationships between the labour process, the ideologies which support autonomous working situations, and the occupational health and safety status of self-employed workers. Empirical evidence is examined which shows that the veneer of autonomy associated with self-employment has effectively disguised the unremitting pressures on the productive capacity of workers, that many award conditions won by employee worker organisations after long drawn-out struggles have been eroded for the self-employed, and that the labour process for sub-contractors is increasingly resembling situations not seen in capitalist economies since the early industrial revolution. It will be argued that sub-contracted workers are the ‘new poor’ of the workforce in post-industrial capitalist economies in occupational health terms, and that the autonomy of self-employment is a veneer that hides the unremitting work intensification experienced by the new endangered proletariat.