Policies and interventions on employment relations and health inequalities

The association between certain increasingly pervasive employment conditions and serious health inequalities presents a significant policy challenge. A critical starting point is the recognition that these problems have not arisen in a policy vacuum. Rather, policy frameworks implemented by governments over the past 35 years, in conjunction with corporate globalization (itself facilitated by neoliberal policies), have undermined preexisting social protection policies and encouraged the growth of health-damaging forms of work organization. After a brief description of the context in which recent developments should be viewed, this article describes how policies can be reconfigured to address health-damaging employment conditions. A number of key policy objectives and entry points are identified, with a summary of policies for each entry point, relating to particular employment conditions relevant to rich and poor countries. Rather than trying to elaborate these policy interventions in detail, the authors point to several critical issues in relation to these interventions, linking these to illustrative examples.