Abstract
Efforts to prohibit home work as socially undesirable have almost everywhere given way to attempts to regulate it through legislation, collective agreements and the courts. While there is no shortage of regulation, its effectiveness is another matter, due to the confusion and contradictions in the relevant legal texts, partly due to the problems of enforcement faced by the authorities as a result of the dispersed and frequently clandestine nature of home work. The author's comparative overview concludes with some examples of attempts to organize this vulnerable category of workers or to extend effective protection to them in other ways.