Temporary insanity

The life of a temp worker: No job security, benefits, or regular hours. Is relief over the horizon?

by Kristen Lombardi

Almost anyone under age 35 knows about temp work -- or, more precisely, lousy, miserable temp work. Jobs that require lots of discipline but offer little prestige. Jobs that appear everywhere yet lead nowhere. Jobs that involve so many mind-numbingly tedious tasks that a 15-minute coffee break feels like manna from heaven.

Crappy temp work has been such a defining trait of the twenty- and thirtysomething set that it's created a cultural stereotype. Consider Douglas Coupland's 1990 book Generation X, which coined the term "McJob" for positions, including temp jobs, that offer low pay, no benefits, and little future. Or the overqualified, drone-like office temps portrayed in such 1990s movies as Reality Bites and Clockwatchers. Dead-end temping has even inspired a literary genre -- the job 'zine. Entire self-published mini-magazines such as McJob and Temp Slave! have chronicled the angst and dismay of temp workers trapped on this treadmill.

Fed up with the grind, temp workers are organizing for improved conditions through groups like the Boston-based Campaign on Contingent Work (CCW), one of dozens that make up an umbrella network known as the National Alliance for Fair Employment (NAFFE). Last June the CCW, which draws members from 40 unions, churches, and social-justice organizations in and around Boston, staged a modern-day slave revolt. Some 200

temps and their supporters rallied at the State House, waving posters that read JUSTICE FOR TEMPS and TEMP WORK: THE FACE OF GLOBALIZATION. From there, they marched into the city's financial district and hand-delivered to temp agencies a temp workers' "bill of rights" calling for better pay, benefits, and job security.

In spite of today's booming economy, activists see a need to regulate "contingent labor" -- a catchall phrase that describes any job falling outside the bounds of customary, full-time employment. Temp workers, hired by agencies and assigned to companies, are the most obvious ones to wear the label; but it also refers to those who work part-time, who are called on the job as needed, and who are contracted for special projects. Pay for such work ranges from $6 per hour for cab drivers, truckers, and home health aides to $20 per hour for office workers to more than $50 per hour for software engineers.

Despite this diversity, all contingent laborers have something in common: they face discrimination based on their work status. Most earn an average of $180 less per week than their full-time counterparts, according to a 1999 Ford Foundation study. Contingents, too, are less likely to get benefits; only 12 percent of them receive health insurance through employers, compared to 53 percent of full-time employees. And although some workers choose to temp because they're looking for a flexible schedule, federal surveys show that two-thirds of temps would prefer a permanent position.

Today's low unemployment rate is often trumpeted as a good thing for job seekers, but one of every eight new jobs created is a temp job -- making that industry the fastest-growing sector of the American job market. In 1973, just 250,000 workers were hired each day for temp service; by 1997 that number had jumped to three million. In 1998, 15 million workers -- or 12 percent of the nation's work force -- held a temp job sometime during the year. And in a June report, the US General Accounting Office found that 30 percent of the work force toils in temporary, leased, on-call, and other contingent arrangements.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.