Fragmenting Work, Fragmented Regulation: The Contract of Employment as a Driver of Social Exclusion

This chapter explores the legal construction of the contract of employment through two interrelated phenomena of the British labour market—the fragmentation of work (as opposed to atypical work) and regulation. It claims that the legal construction of the contract of employment, which still adopts one standard prototype of contract, has been a vehicle of social exclusion for work patterns in a fragmented work domain and that it has also been a vehicle leading to the fragmentation of regulation that brings about social exclusion. Three meanings of social exclusion are discussed in the chapter. The first meaning is exclusion from basic labour rights. The second is exclusion from the relevant idea of industrial citizenship, particularly the denial of voice. The third is exclusion resulting from the deprivation of capabilities, or to use Amartya Sen’s ideas, it is the deprivation from the richness of life and the freedom to choose.