US corporations move to create a part-time, contingent workforce

[Hannah Bell]

Big employers in the US are increasingly using part-time and temporary workers to hold down labor costs, according to the latest figures from the Labor Department. In a trend that has been accelerated over the last two years, corporations are moving to phase out full time positions and create a workforce earning far lower wages and fewer, if any, benefits that can be hired and fired at will.

In November there were a total of 9.2 million “involuntarily part-time” workers in the US. After adding an average of 28,000 new jobs over the previous few months, temporary help services created 39,500 jobs in November, more than any other sector of the economy. Temporary agency jobs accounted for 80 percent of the 50,000 jobs added by private employers last month.

Since the beginning of the year, employers have added a net 307,000 temporary workers, more than a quarter (26.2 percent) of the 1.17 million private sector jobs added in total, according to a December 19 article in the New York Times. In the comparable period after the recession of the early 1990s, only 10.9 percent of the private sector jobs added were temporary, and after the downturn earlier this decade, just 7.1 percent were temporary.

In a recent interview with the job search web site monster.com, Melanie Holmes, vice president of staffing agency Manpower, said, “The nature of work is changing. Because of technology, we’re able to work anywhere, at any time, and not just from home or from Starbucks, but from India. That’s changed the way some employers look for employees. They recognize they’re always going to want to have a contingent workforce and to staff up or down to meet their needs.”

The shift to low-paid and part-time workers is part of a fundamental change in class relations in the US. America’s corporate and financial elite has used the economic crisis—created by their own making—to strip workers of long-standing income and job protections and drastically increase productivity and exploitation. As a result, US corporations are making record profits and are sitting on huge financial reserves. Rather than hiring they are using the cash hoards to pay out bigger executive bonuses, boost share values through stock buybacks and to prepare a new wave of mergers and acquisitions.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/temp-d21.shtml

[JANdad]

1. Manpower...

Legal pimps...fuck them!

[jotsy]

2. I've got a friend who theorizes that the idea is to free up capital to invest in China.

Boom Town @ OpEdNews by David Glenn Cox.

<http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=Boom-Town-by-David-Glenn-Cox-101207-421.html&c=a>

I notice the buffering trend a few years back and realized immediately that corporations unloaded a lot of expenses by hiring through employment services like these...No benefits, no vacation pay, no sick pay, no unemployment responsibilities, no need to hire a payroll person to calculate what the employer's share of withholding is. Because I handled payroll for a small contracting business once upon a time, I know that there are two parts to social security; what's removed from a payroll check is required to be matched by the employer. At least one other deduction calls for the same, tho I don't remember what that is. So a payroll tax holiday had nothing to do w/ tax payers per say, just another beefy bone for the bad guys.

Thanks Miss Hannah, have a safe and merry holiday.

RECOMMENDED

[AlabamaLibrul]

3. You don't have to free up capital to invest in China...

if you can manage to put American jobs on the same level as those in China.

[jotsy]

4. I also remember thinking that there wouldn't be so much outrage

about how low wages may go if the only other choice is debtor's prisons, which I understand are on the rise.

Bringing them level will take time, not that I have a clue as to what that gap might be or how it applies to their cost of living.

[snot]

5. EXACTLY!

[WinkyDink]

6. We have devolved from wanting to improve everyone's lot to just increasing profits.

[LooseWilly]

7. If the states gave a shit, they could use this trend to provide for workers, and cut expenses.

If the state were to step in and provide a state-based temp agency that guaranteed benefits and liveable pay scales... they could draw enough workers to force companies to pay the state-temp wages, and cover benefits.

It would essentially be a communistic trade union of temporary employees... which would force companies to pay benefits for temp employees, and thereby take some of the burden off state medicaid funds... which is an incentive for the states. The guarantees of wages and benefits would draw the workers away from the private temp agencies, thus ensuring the need for companies to hire from the state-implemented temp agencies.

The liveable wages would then also provide taxable dollars to provide regulation enforcement.

The only objectors would be those who are intimidated at the idea of trying to push a state government around in order to take advantage of workers...

If the country and the world want to accept the new model of exploitative use of workers, some "bones" will have to be thrown back to the workers... some token cash, holidays... something that won't impinge on the bottom line too much.

All told, this small outlay would more than balance out in time. Or employees can increasingly join the gypsies around the region (there'll likely be all the more in the near future). But, that wouldn't improve the bottom line of the factories...

[earth mom]

8. This is why we need unions! Those bastards are bringing back 19th century working conditions!

:argh: :grr: :mad:

[elehhhhna]

9. I'm an expert in temp/contract staffing and ...

here's the deal:

Contract/temp costs more than standard wage-earning employees EXCEPT that contractors don't get company paid HEALTHCARE benefits. Single payer would solve this. Period.

Temp hiring is always the leading edge of jobs recovery. If you're a good worker with a lousy resume, get registered now. It's the best way to get hired permanently in a company that otherwise would never have even interviewed you. Temp jobs are out there for light assembly employees to physicians. And if you know a Canadian citizen geophysicist (no PhD required, Masters is fine) with geothermal modeling experience, PM me. I need one.

[lunatica]

11. Temp work opened the door for me when I went to work in my 40s

After my divorce, but people still need health care. Single payer isn't here yet and with depressed wages who's going to pay the taxes for it? Certainly not the corporations if they have any say, and obviously they have a say.

[elehhhhna]

12. Most staffing companies offer insurance plans --

some even kick in for the employee after a certain period of time, but it's not great coverage and never does the company pay for dependent coverage, etc.

[lunatica]

10. Disaster Capitalism at work.

Can anything stop the bloodless coup? I think it's probably too late by the time you see the tiger pounce on you.

[mmonk]

13. A low wage country is a third world country.

[blindpig]

14. Naked wage slavery

Take it or leave it, Market uber alles!

Once a practice advantageous to the Capitalist gets established they all gotta get on that train or lose the competitive race. It ain't good guys and bad guys, it is a mechanism. Punishing 'bad actors' is futile, they will always be replaced as long as the mechanism is in place. Capitalism cannot help but drive the working class into the dirt, workers will have no choice.....

[lonestarnot]

15. Shock and aweshit.

[lib2DaBone]

16. "Jobjacking" (like carjacking) is the correct term..."Outsorurcing" is the politically correct term

We have allowed corporations to jobjack and play off American workers against the poorest countries in the world.

Then.. these corporations are allowed to import their cheap made-in-China merchandise back into the U.S. with no consequence. It's a crime. One big theft and crime against all that AMerica stands for.

The only hope is for a massive worker uprising and banning together in new unions... maybe stop some of those container ships from unloading. Or a massive work stoppage so the elite (in their gated communities) are "Inconvenienced".

[mrdmk]

17. Now as all-ways, people are expendable philosophy from the executive class of this country

Why do I feel that we are living in the era of the Industrial Revolution? Has J.P. Morgan been cloned and animated, no joke?