This book argues that it is time to define, and in the process identify solutions to, the problems of labour exploitation and work-based harm. The book is clear that extant legal frameworks are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the successful completion of this task. Put simply, there is a tendency to look at exploitation and harm through a criminological lens. This is fine in so far as it tends to identify extreme forms of coercive exploitation and abuse. However, there are highly complex sets of employment relationships and experiences between the extremes of slavery, on the one hand, and decent work on the other. In order to define and solve the problem of labour exploitation, and the associated issue of work-based harm, one needs to step into this grey area and provoke debate over what is and what is not acceptable. Crucially, such an endeavour requires one to ask critical but highly complex moral questions about largely non-coercive control at, and through, work. To this end, the book sets out to identify the nature of contemporary control over workers as a basis for understanding labour exploitation and work-based harm ‘beyond criminology’ (see Hillyard et al, 2004). The basic argument is that labour exploitation and work-based harm are problems that are larger than the capitalist system is generally able or willing to articulate. An emphasis on ‘social harm’ also underlines the point that it is all too often societies – and their constituent political, economic, legal and cultural systems – that cause work-based harm rather than simply individual ‘bad egg’ employers. The legal system is, however, ill-equipped on its own to deal with such a systemic problem.

Defining the issues: determining the language

The relationship between a worker and his/her employer is one that is infinitely complex. At its core, however, is the simple need of the worker to make a decent living and the simple desire of the capitalist (employer, shareholder, property owner and so on) to make a decent profit. In the pursuit of these objectives hierarchical relationships inevitably emerge. These relationships form the basis of the capitalist system. For most workers, the struggle involves one of advancing incrementally up particular hierarchies such that the pressures of the system are, at least in some small part, lightened over time.