The Fractured World of the Temporary Worker: Power, Participation, and Fragmentation in the Contemporary Workplace

Abstract

Prevailing explanations of power, class fragmentation, participation, and resistance in the contemporary workplace have not explicitly incorporated three factors: the decentered work systems increasingly typical in blue- and white-collar occupations; the terms of the employment contract; and exogenous variables, such as previous labor market experiences, that strengthen or weaken workers' commitments to their jobs. This paper demonstrates the significance of these three factors by investigating the empirical case of temporary workers. Using interview and observational field data, I demonstrate how a system of temporary employment in a participative workplace both exploited and shaped entry-level workers' aspirations and occupational goals. I conclude by suggesting that capacities for collective action, or a social movement that might pose a critique of the current transformation of employment relations into a system increasingly characterized by nonstandard jobs, is limited by structural features and by individual embeddedness in stratified occupational systems.