Contingent Employment, Workforce Health, and Citizenship By Marc ...

of large oligopolistic firms and their desire for labour market stability, some workers were able to secure bargaining rights that allowed them to share in this prosperity, improve their standard of living, reduce the risks to their health and safety, and ensure their income and job security³ (Lane, 1989). The growth and influence of unions during this period further contributed to improvements in the terms and conditions of work and to labour market stability. Unions (along with the state), for example, pushed for the establishment of internal labour markets, which not only served the goals of capital (Osterman, 1999; Rubin, 1996) but also ‘insulated jobs and employees from developments in the external labour market’ (Cappelli et al., 1997, p. 15). In other words, employment relationships during this period were more or less protected from external market forces because they were not market mediated.

Although contingent forms of employment continued during this period, the standard employment relationship came to be identified with and seen as the norm⁴ (Lane, 1989; Vosko, 2006). This relationship was characterised by permanent, full-time employment with one employer, and work was carried out on the employer’s premises, under his or her supervision, usually in a unionised environment (Vosko, 2006). Although employers retained some power over their employees during this period (Ross & Trachte, 1990), both existed in a prima facie mutually symbiotic relationship. This more or less tacit agreement about reciprocal obligations between capital and labour implicitly stipulated that both workers and employers were to prosper, wages and benefits would grow in tandem with firms’ prosperity and productivity (Osterman, Kochan, Locke, & Piore, 2001), and workers could expect to have relatively secure, well-paid jobs (Rubin, 1996). When a worker’s labour was jeopardised,⁵ whether through sickness, accident, or old age, adequate security