by Andy Bauck
No one who has been in the job market the last several years would be surprised to learn that temporary employment is the fastest growing sector of new jobs, or that the largest employer in the U.S. is now Manpower Temporary Services. And certainly none of those working full-time with no benefits (an apt description of most temps) would question the fact that 17 percent of the U.S. work force is now engaged in "contingency work," a classification including the innately unstable sectors of temporary work, contract work, and leased work.To myself and the millions of others who have braved the brutal employment scene of the 1990s in search of a meaningful and rewarding job, the "good jobs at good wages" promised us during the all-but-forgotten 1992 campaign season have proven elusive at best. In reality, these jobs have been either unattainable, demanding of a sizable investment of time as an underpaid temporary worker, or requiring one to pay a hefty finder's fee to an employment agency.
While it should be recognized that some workers choose temp work because of its flexibility, the over-use of temps by private and public employers has created an enormous pool of expendable workers with no health care or other benefits.
Governor Lowry's now-endangered health care reform could go a long way toward rectifying this by making it more expensive to hire temps because health care costs would be covered by employers. Not only would temp workers gain health benefits, but employers might be less likely to rely on temps if the difference in the cost of using a temp or hiring a permanent employee was negligible.
Although organizing temps would be extremely difficult because most hope to leave their agency behind for permanent work, temp workers are a large and disenfranchised class of workers which could benefit greatly from union representation or alternative methods of organization such as worker-run agencies.
What may surprise some job-seekers is that the prevalence of temporary work is not limited to downtown law offices and print shop binderies. Temporary employment is also endemic to many highly desirable employers. Locally, a few examples include the University of Washington and the U.S. Postal Service, both large public employers whose entry and mid-level workers are supposedly covered by collective bargaining agreements, as well as Microsoft, one of the nation's most prosperous and rapidly growing corporations.
While it's no surprise that Microsoft often uses six-dollars-an-hour temp workers to package its wildly successful software products, it is less well-known that the company also uses enormous numbers of highly paid and well-educated agency temps and self-employed contractors. These "pseudo" employees include receptionists, support and clerical staff, switchboard operators, technical writers, graphic designers and editors.
Several calls to Microsoft officials were unreturned, but contract workers at Microsoft report that the corporation avoids paying workers' benefits by sending new temporary hires to register with one of many temporary agencies such as Sakson and Taylor, Rho, Wasser, Manpower, and others. In one example, as few as two permanent employees have worked in groups with 20 or more contract workers. One Microsoft temp estimated that 20 to 30 percent of all workers at the Redmond campus were actually employed through a temporary agency.
Microsoft gains a measure of loyalty from its skilled temps by paying them between 10 and 25 dollars per hour, often more than salaried employees doing similar work, but provides none of the health insurance, vacation time, sick leave, or stock options available to regular employees. The more desirable temp agencies may provide some benefits, but none can offer job security that makes these benefits reliable over the long term.
Aside from saving money on benefits, one obvious advantage for the company is that temps can be laid off at any time, for any reason. Ironically, these "layoffs" wouldn't even show up in official economic statistics under Microsoft's name (unlike Boeing layoffs), because the temps are considered employees of the agencies.
Many temps work at Microsoft for more than a year, or even three or four years, often being switched to work on a new product when an old one ships. According to some temps, contract workers are expected to work the same long hours as permanent employees, or even more in some cases. Although there is the potential to make a lot of money through overtime, Microsoft also sometimes sends temps home, saying, "There's no work this week." Eventually, an undetermined percentage of those who have performed well and proven their allegiance may be hired into regular positions, but this is never a sure thing.
Despite the fact the temp workers perform much of the work which the customer sees in finished software, these workers often feel like pariahs within the organization. In a workplace where individuals are known first by their e-mail tags (i.e. "andyb"), contingency workers are given a "scarlet letter" prefix so that everyone is aware of their status (i.e. "a-andyb"). Microsoft further discriminates such workers from permanents by officially banning them from standard perks such as the use of company athletic facilities and social e-mail groups, although such rules are routinely ignored.
The social cost of a system which denies workers sick leave and health insurance is illustrated by an example from late 1993. A Microsoft contract worker felt himself getting sick during the week, but kept working and neglected to see a doctor. Finally, he went home sick on a Friday, and died of pneumonia on Sunday. According to an anonymous colleague, "It's obvious that his death can be directly attributed to the lack of health insurance and sick leave from his job."
Because University of Washington personnel policy is governed by the provisions of the Washington Personnel Resources Board (WPRB), which enforces uniform personnel standards for all State of Washington employers, classified office workers at the UW are protected from losing their jobs to temp workers in ways that most private sector employees are not.
The most significant rule prevents a permanent position from being cut and replaced with a temporary position. Another primary regulation dictates that no temporary worker is allowed to work more than 1050 hours (about six months of full-time work, or year-round part-time) in any 12-month period.
According to Teresa Spellman, director of University Temporary Services (UTS), the UW's in-house temporary agency, a pool of about 500 workers fills 1600 temporary jobs each year. Each assignment averages about three-and-one-half weeks. Business at UTS has increased 20 percent since 1991, a period in which budget cuts have annually hit the UW. Like most private temporary agencies, UTS typically pays between seven and nine dollars per hour with no employee health benefits.
The university's actual use of temps, however, is likely to be much higher than these figures indicate. Departments are free to bypass UTS and hire temps directly, provided they also track their hours to make sure that they do not cross the mandated limit of 1050 hours. Managers in university offices generally use temps to fill short-term staffing shortages, and many classified (regular) employees say the system works fairly well.
But according to Kim Cook, regional director of Classified Staff Association District 925 Service Employees International Union (CSA 925), which represents 3000 university employees, the system is still open to abuse despite the regulations due to lax enforcement and workers unaware of their rights.
In 1988 and 1989, Lisa Harstrom worked as a temp for the Intercollegiate Athletics department (ICA), and was inadvertently allowed to work over the 1050 hour limit. When she realized that the violation had occurred, Harstrom enlisted the help of CSA 925 in initiating a remedial action claim with the Higher Education Personnel Board (a precursor to the WPRB). In 1990, after a long series of appeals by her supervisors at ICA, Harstrom won her case and the university was forced to give her a permanent position. As a result of this case, "The university was forced to pay attention to this law," says Cook, and now the hours of all temporary workers are carefully tracked. But she adds, "Obviously, if they keep somebody over 1050 hours, and nobody complains, nothing is going to happen to them."
Perhaps the largest loophole in the protections afforded UW workers is that the 1050-hour limit applies to individual workers rather than positions, and does not explicitly restrict departments from bringing in a series of temps to work six months each at the same or similar jobs, although this would clearly violate the intent of the law.
"The university does not promote extensive use of temps one after the other on an ongoing basis," explains Spellman, "because that situation shows an obvious need for a permanent position."
CSA officials could not recall any reported cases of this nature, but claimed that it probably does occur on a limited scale and goes unreported.
Over the last three or four decades of declining union membership and huge losses of well-paying blue-collar jobs, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has remained a major provider of stable, well-paying jobs. In order to ensure adequate staffing through the peaks of mail volume and vacation seasons, the Postal Service long ago created an internal temporary system of "casual" workers.
But according to Ed Conti, president of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU) Local 316, "The Postal Service is abusing the original intent of the casual workforce because they have casuals that are doing the same thing every day for a year or two years."
Because postal work is divided into crafts, each with its own union contract, provisions governing casual work vary somewhat between clerks and mail handlers, the two main crafts using the casual system. National agreements with the NPMHU govern the percentage of mail handlers who may be casuals. This percentage is currently set at 15 percent of all mail handlers, and will decline to 10 percent in 1996. Casual mail handlers make seven dollars per hour with no benefits, and are permitted to work for a period of up to 359 days, which can be extended for another year after that.
A more insidious aspect of the Postal Service's casual system is the way in which casual employees are subtly led to believe that their status will lead to full-time permanent status with the USPS. Many casuals accept their assignments hoping that working as a casual is a foot in the door which will eventually lead to a permanent job.
What supervisors frequently neglect to tell their casuals is that all permanent hiring for the Postal Service is done from lists of people who have passed the Postal Exam, which is only offered to the general public about once every two years. Thus, casual mail handlers who have not taken the test may do the same tasks as union members who make twice as much money, and work alongside them for years, but remain casuals indefinitely.
"You have a system where casuals are coming in and busting their asses off trying to impress someone," says Conti, "thinking that if they do they'll have a secure job 20 years down the road. Supervisors never tell them otherwise."
And so, in many varied areas of the employment sector, jobless workers line up at temporary agencies, hoping for that golden placement that will land them a steady job. However, as more employers begin to utilize a higher percentage of temporaries, the existence of a "steady job" is becoming more endangered.
While this vicious circle may have a short-term, bottom-line benefit for employers, it also erodes worker morale and saps the long-term productivity of the U.S. economy. It could also have frightening social costs for a violent nation rife with resentment and frustration, as the gap between the upper and lower classes widens and the middle class is "temped" out of existence.
"Temp Survival" (WFP Issue 26 March/April 1997)
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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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