Employmentweb_low

EMploYMEnt, work, And hEAlth inEquAlitiEs - a global perspective
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Work is the means through which most people provide for their daily
sustenance. People work in or out of their homes, with or without
labour contracts, and in either safe or hazardous working conditions.
Factors related to working conditions have received a great deal of
attention and are recognised as a key social determinant of health and
health inequalities, but this has not often been the case for
employment conditions. Some of the reasons for this neglect are found
in the confusion between the concepts of work and employment, and
the lack of clarity and development of indicators and data related with
employment. Yet, labour markets and social policies determine
employment conditions such as precarious or informal jobs, child
labour or slavery, or problems such as having high insecurity, low paid
jobs, or working in hazardous conditions, all of which heavily influence
health inequalities. In sum, these types of employment and working
conditions have different implications for the health of populations and
the social inequalities in health among social classes, genders or
ethnic minorities. To reveal the different ways that employment
relations, employment conditions, and working conditions affect the
health of populations we need to define what those concepts mean.
Then, we must use these concepts and meanings to understand both
how society structures labour relations, labour/capital agreements,
labour or employment contracts, and what the social processes of
production are that affect the health of workers.
To begin with, employment relations, employment conditions
and working conditions are different yet interrelated concepts. The
first term, employment relations, constitutes the relations between
buyers (employers who hire workers who perform labour to sell a
profitable good or service) and sellers of labour (employees who
contribute with labour to the enterprise, usually in return for
payment of wages), as well as the practices, outcomes and
institutions that emanate from or affect the employment
relationship. Two important components of employment relations
are the power relations between employers and employees and the
level of social protection that employees can count on. In wealthy
countries, employment relations are often subject to the provisions
of the law or a hiring contract. In these societies, the government is
often the largest single employer although most of the work force is
employed in small and medium businesses in the private sector. In
middle income and poor countries however, most employment
agreements are not explicitly subject to any formal contract, and a
high proportion of total employment is in the informal economy.
Given this vast spectrum across which types of employment
relations can range, both within and between countries, we concern
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