There are few quantitative studies that show the workplace is experienced in a different way by employees with disabilities. This article fills this gap using data from the British Workplace Behaviour Survey, which found that employees with disabilities and long-term illnesses were more likely to suffer ill-treatment in the workplace and experienced a broader range of ill-treatment. Different types of disability were associated with different types of ill-treatment. The survey also showed who employees with disabilities blamed for their ill-treatment and why they believed the ill-treatment had occurred. Drawing on the existing literature, four possible explanations for illtreatment are considered: negative affect raises perceptions of ill-treatment; ill-treatment leads to health effects; ill-treatment results from stigma or discrimination; ill-treatment is a consequence of workplace social relations. Although some of these explanations are stronger than others, the discussion shows that more research is required in order to decide between them.
Data from the countries which social theorists had in mind when they elaborated the idea of a new age of employment insecurity do not support their theories. If the age of insecurity is dawning anywhere, it is in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey, Finland and Poland. It is not plausible that these examples inspired Beck, Giddens and Sennett. The causes of the different trends revealed by international comparison are more likely to be found in complex, multi-factoral explanations than in an age of insecure employment. The theorists became wedded to their diagnosis because of the problems they encountered in doing theory after the demise of Marxism and the post-modern turn made their critiques insecure. Their need for legitimation made their theorizing vulnerable to co-option in dystopian nightmares that served powerful interests.
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