Waste management and the workplace

Abstract

The article examines forms of labour and economic opportunity created by local government in relation to waste management (refuse removal and recycling) and the kinds of vulnerabilities these generate.

The authors seek to lift the “contractual veil” on outsourced municipal services and describe a typology of labour arranged along a declining gradient of formality and employment protections, with inequality and vulnerability commensurately rising toward the informal pole. The article argues for an enlarged conception of the “workplace” but also poses difficult questions of how employment protections might be extended to those at its most vulnerable and informal pole.