The purpose of this chapter is to outline the various forms of labour exploitation that exist. At the extreme end of the ‘continuum’ (Andrees, 2008; Skrivánková, 2010; McGrath, 2012; Strauss, 2012; Lewis et al, 2015a; 2015b; Strauss and McGrath, 2017) there is worker fatality both at work and through work. There are then extreme forms of non-fatal harm, including: chattel slavery; modern slavery; forced labour; human trafficking; and child labour. All of these extremes have criminal–legal frameworks associated with them that are designed to minimise their prevalence. Often, however, these criminal–legal frameworks are either inadequate or are not enforced, and so extreme forms of exploitation and harm go unpunished. Moreover, a great deal of exploitation and harm, as argued in the introduction, goes on above these criminal–legal baseline definitions. This book, is particularly interested in the labour exploitation continuum that includes, but is certainly not limited to, illegal employer practice.

Fatalities at work

Death at or through work is perhaps the most obvious starting point for one interested in social harm (see also Slapper, 1999; Pemberton, 2015, 1). The problem, however, is that official statistics ‘must be treated sceptically’ (Tombs, 1999, 364). In the case of the UK, for example, it has been estimated that workplace fatalities are around five times more than the rate officially recorded (Tombs, 1999, 345).

Data is often simply not fit for purpose and the chronic under-reporting of workplace fatalities has its routes within a particular political–economic context, whereby the emphasis has very much been on de-regulation and on only exceptional employer criminalisation (Slapper and Tombs, 1999; Tombs, 2007; 2008; Tombs and Whyte, 2010). The onus, to a large extent, and across a range of countries, is on employers, industrial sectors, labour markets and supply chains ‘self-regulating’. Associated with this, there is a commensurate discourse around the ‘burdens’ of regulation and a pressing need to reduce these burdens to a minimum. Clearly related to this has been the neoliberal undermining of external state action, on the one hand, and internal union organising on the other. Thus, even worker fatalities need not always enter the realm of official statistics and, even when they do, the criminalisation of the employer responsible is unlikely (Slapper and Tombs, 1999).