Regulating supply-chains to address the occupational health and safety problems associated with precarious employment: the case of home-based clothing workers in Australia.

Over the past 20 years the labour market, workforce and work organisation of most, if not all, industrialised countries have been significantly refashioned by the increased use of more flexible work arrangements, variously labelled as ‘precarious employment’ or ‘contingent work’. There is now a substantial and growing body of international evidence that many of these arrangements are associated with a significant deterioration in occupational health and safety (OHS), using a range of measures such as injury rates, disease, hazard exposures and work-related stress. Moreover, there is an emerging body of evidence that these arrangements pose particular problems for conventional regulatory regimes. This article describes a regulatory initiative in Australia with regard to home-based clothing workers. The regulatory strategy developed in one Australian jurisdiction (and now being ‘exported’ into others) seeks to counter this process via contractual tracking mechanisms to follow the work, tie in liability and shift overarching legal responsibility to the top of the supply chain. The process also entails the integration of minimum standards relating to wages, hours and working conditions, OHS and access to workers’ compensation.