2. Temporary Work: The Flip Side of Job Security

Abstract

It is well recognised that job security has risen relative to pay in the hierarchy of employee concerns. Job security provisions won by or awarded to employees comprise high fixed costs from the employer's viewpoint. The firm's flexibility and adaptability to fluctuations in product demand are reduced thereby. For these reasons American employers have long resisted any form of job guarantee. The few who have made a fetish of such guarantees have been companies experiencing either long‐term growth or stable demand and have insured themselves against unsupportable fixed costs by strictly limiting the number to whom guarantees are made. Such practices add to the insecurities of those outside the guarantees. More employers are now succumbing to the pressures from employees, unorganised as well as organised, for job guarantees, but they too have protected themselves by use of temporary work devices as buffers against over‐commitment to permanent employees. The next employment policy issue after displaced workers may be some protection for the temporary workers who increasingly bear the brunt of fluctuations in labour demand.