This book began by posing four inter-related questions: 1) How is the distribution of power between labour and capital changing?; 2) How is labour now controlled?; 3) What are the negative outcomes of control?; and 4) How can these negative outcomes be reduced? It has addressed these four questions through eight chapters.

In Chapters One and Two the scope of the book was established and, specifically, I argued that legal baselines associated with issues such as fatalities at/through work, chattel slavery, modern slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and child labour are only a part of a much broader social problem. This broader problem is best understood through reference to labour exploitation and work-based harm, problems that exist ‘beyond criminology’ (Hillyard et al, 2004). In Chapter Three selected lessons of history were identified to show both how labour has been exploited in the past, and to underline the point that labour–capital relations can change for the better as far as workers are concerned through both radical action and incremental change. Chapters Four, Five and Six looked at different types of largely legal and non-coercive controls which labour now faces. The purpose of these three chapters was to show not only how labour is controlled per se, but also to link this control infrastructure to the problem of labour exploitation and work-based harm. Chapter Seven tackled some of the difficult, and sometimes provocative, issues that surround the question of what constitutes the excessive and oppressive control of labour. Finally, Chapter Eight examined three types of solution to labour exploitation and work-based harm and made the case, consistent with the social harm agenda, for looking at structural solutions as well as criminal–legal baselines.

If there is one unifying narrative to this book, it is that the legal approach to problems at work is deficient, and it has been shown to be deficient in four important respects. First, even when legal baselines exist to purportedly protect workers from exploitation and harm they are rarely invoked and are ill-equipped to enable victims and their families to take on (often powerful) state and corporate interests. This explains why, for example, even when workers die as a result of their employment, employer prosecution is still far from commonplace (Slapper and Tombs, 1999).