Temporary Employment Industry Research Articles

The resistible rise of the temporary employment industry in France

This article is an historical account of the contested growth of the temporary employment agency sector in France. It utilises a variegated capitalism conceptual framework to explain the evolution of a distinctive temporary employment agency sector and regulatory environment under French politico-institutional conditions that was contingent upon global developments. The article charts the role of large agencies in constructing a market for agency labour despite wide-scale cultural, political and trade union opposition. In order to build legitimacy, agencies sought partners in the labour movement from the late 1960s onwards. By the late 1990s, the sector had grown significantly within a gradually more permissive regulatory framework, despite ongoing but fragmenting opposition. The article demonstrates that the growth of agency labour was not an inevitable outcome of global pressure for labour market deregulation. It also reveals how national regulatory institutions alone are not a sufficient bulwark against global labour market pressures.

Rise of the temporary employment industry in Namibia: A regulatory ‘fix’

The role of the temporary employment industry as an active intermediary in the job market can only be fully understood in the context of wider processes of restructuring and regulation at a particular time and place. In Namibia, the rise of poorly regulated employment relationships occurred in a context of expanding institutional and statutory regulation of the labour market. Here the temporary employment industry thrives within the interstices left by the limits in regulatory coverage. Nonstandard jobs are premised on a selective decoupling of the employment relationship from statutory, and hence almost invariably also collective, protective measures. The mediating role of the employment agency between the client firm and the temporary labourer allows management to evade or dilute the protections that insulate permanent employees from competitive pressures in the external market. As such, temporary agency employment constitutes both a regulatory ‘fix’ for the dilemmas associated with the deployment of labour and a mechanism for the social reproduction of a nonstandard labour supply. However, the role of labour market intermediary varies depending on whether an agency is located at the top or the bottom of the temporary employment industry.

A look into the temporary employment industry and its workers

This article offers a brief overview of the contingent worker industry and its employees. In addition to defining temporary worker, the authors describe the importance of the temporary worker industry to the U.S. economy and the forces that have driven this industry's rapid growth. The changing profile of temporary workers, the benefits and drawbacks of temporary work, and ways employment counselors can help clients make the best use of temporary work arrangements are also discussed.

Suzanne F. Delbanco on the Leapfrog Group and employer purchasing power. Interview by Pamela K. Scarrow.

Suzanne F. Delbanco, PhD MPH, is the first executive director of The Leapfrog Group, founded by the Business Roundtable. The Leapfrog Group's goal is to mobilize employer purchasing power to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality, and overall value of healthcare for American consumers. The group's growing consortium of more than 155 Fortune 500 companies and other large private and public healthcare purchasers provides health benefits to more than 34 million Americans; these companies spend more than 62 billion dollars on healthcare annually. Dr. Delbanco is a member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance Purchaser Advisory Council and a board member of Bridges to Excellence. Before joining The Leapfrog Group, she was a senior manager at the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), where she worked on the quality team. Prior to joining PBGH, she worked on reproductive health policy and the changing healthcare marketplace initiative at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. She has also consulted on health insurance coverage in the temporary employment industry and on the first statewide survey in California of MediCal beneficiaries, and worked as a community Liaison for Kaiser Permanente during the establishment of one of California's first County Organized Health Systems. She holds a PhD in public policy from the Goldman School of Public PoLicy and a MPH from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Business of Contingent Work: Growth and Restructuring in Chicago's Temporary Employment Industry

The Business of Contingent Work: Growth and Restructuring in Chicago's Temporary Employment Industry

The Business of Contingent Work: Growth and Restructuring in Chicago's Temporary Employment Industry

The `temp' industry is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors in the United States, though relatively little is known about the operations of its key institutional agents - the temp agencies themselves. In the paper, the restructuring of the temp industry and the role of temporary help agencies as `labour market intermediaries' is critically examined. It is argued that not only is the industry growing at a rapid rate, it is also polarising, as some agencies `restructure down' into the lowest-paid and most exploitative niches of the labour market - where employment instability is a daily phenomenon, while others `restructure up' into increasingly long-term relationships - including `on-site' management deals and `insourcing' agreements - with major corporate clients. Likewise, `temping' is not only becoming more commonplace, but the labour-market and workplace experiences of temporary workers are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. It is apparently in the nature of the industry that both these developments are scarcely `visible', as restructuring down is often associated with `backstreet operators', undocumented workers and unregulated work, while restructuring up draws agencies into increasingly seamless, reflexive and internalised relationships with corporations. The paper traces some of the labour market and organisational implications of these restructuring practices through an examination of the long-established but newly-vibrant temp industry in Chicago.

“Temporary Solutions”: Uncovering New Market Opportunities in the Temporary Employment Industry

“Temporary Solutions”: Uncovering New Market Opportunities in the Temporary Employment Industry

“Temporary solutions”: Uncovering new market opportunities in the temporary employment industry

“Temporary solutions”: Uncovering new market opportunities in the temporary employment industry

Industrial restructuring, labour market segmentation and the temporary employment industry in Namibia

Abstract The rapid growth of the temporary employment industry in Namibia is related to changes in the relationship between restructuring in the workplace (labour demand) and shifts in the composition of the labour market (labour supply). Instead of seeking a general explanation for the use of temporary employment, a more fruitful approach is to focus attention on the reasons why certain industries are more inclined to resort to casualisation or outsourcing. This calls for a study of the factors peculiar to a sector that encourage or facilitate the recourse to temporary employment. Given the complex distribution of temporary employment across economic sectors, however, there can be no simple or functional relationship between type of production process or market conditions and the use of agency temporaries. Despite the lack of a simple or direct correspondence between the type of firm and the use of temporary labour, case studies reveal some correlation between the nature of the production process and the...