On this Labor Day weekend, millions of Americans working at highly profitable Fortune 500 companies will not enjoy a paid day off. Ironically, the one day of the year set aside specifically to honor hardworking Americans will be just another Monday on the job for them. It doesn’t matter if they work at a corporation famous for benefits, because they don’t get any.
Welcome to the grim world of the revolving quasi-permanent employee. On the off chance you don’t know what that is, a temporary worker or “temp” is someone working at a company like Microsoft who isn’t actually employed by Microsoft. The temp may work on the Microsoft campus, they will do Microsoft jobs, they certainly contribute to Microsoft’s earnings, but they’re employed by a third-party staffing agency. Lest anyone think we’re picking on Microsoft, 1) they happen to deserve the attention, and 2) they are hardly the only serial offender. Pick any tech giant or household company name, and odds are decent they now rely on temps to some degree.
These workers are critical to the success of their respective mega-corporations. That’s why big companies use them—and too often, some might say, abuse them. But if you think for one second that those wealthy companies benefiting from that temp labor share even a fraction of whatever those returns may be with their temp workers, you need to come below the fold for a big, long swig of reality juice.
By and large, the kind of temps we’re talking about here get screwed royally in just about every way imaginable. The only reason they get time-and-a-half for overtime, or worker’s comp for on the job injuries, is because it’s illegal to withhold those. Outside of that, it’s anything goes when you’re just a temp, like bottom of the barrel wages and no company benefits. Temps can be laid off at a moment’s notice with no unemployment to cushion the gut-punch, and they can be fired for a long list of things they have zero control over. They are about as close to disposable as you can be while still remaining part of the legal workforce.
It's one thing for a department store to temp up during the holidays or another predictable spike in the workload lasting only a few weeks. If that’s your business model, there ought to be a better way to handle the upticks, but it’s understandable. But what's going on these days is a growing trend, all over the country, where some of the biggest, wealthiest, most successful corporations on Earth are rotating temps through 365 days a year in an obvious concerted effort to get all the benefits of a full-time, regular workforce without having to pay any full-time, regular benefits.
There are seamy sides to this from every angle, and staffing agencies themselves are far from innocent. They may cleverly dangle the prospect of working for a good company in front of a new recruit to get them excited. But the more they get on board the more that deal evaporates. There are plenty of anecdotes of people looking for work getting an email or call about a job at Awesome Company Inc. Then it changes to a staffing agency that has AC Inc. as a client when they respond. In the initial interview, the recruit may still be told what a great opportunity they are being offered, that that company hires directly from the temp workforce after taking the temps for a “test drive.”
Then, at some point, on the first day of orientation perhaps, a bland staffing agency spokesperson stands up and goes into full Sgt. Schultz mode claiming this is purely a temporary assignment and they know nothing about how anyone could have possibly gotten the notion that it was a temp-to-hire position. At this point the temp can walk out and start looking for a job all over again, or they can make the best of it. Most choose the latter in part because many are desperate for paid work, and staffing agencies know this too well.
In the pro-business fantasy world we all know and despise, we’re supposed to trust in the divinity of the sacred job creators to solve all social problems, provided you and I, the loyal employees, are able and willing to work hard. That was always bullshit, but temps expose the lie even more. Once in a while a temp will get hired full time. Temps cynically refer to this as being “knighted” or “made.”
But it rarely matters if temps go above and beyond: They’re just-a-temp. They can do everything right, volunteer for any shitty shift, be solid team players with the best attitude and work ethic imaginable, and none of it matters. They’re never going to get a raise, they will never know a promotion, they won’t ever get company benefits, because none of that applies to them as long as they’re just-a-temp. In fact, in most places by law they can only be just-a-temp for a few months before they have to be let go and a new temp brought on to take their place. Their only guarantee is institutionalized job insecurity.
For years this practice has flown under the radar because it was used mostly against the working poor, the powerless, the undocumented laborer, the hotel maid, security guard, entry level call center jobs, that kind of thing. But over the last 10 to 15 years and especially starting with the Great Recession, it has become more and more widespread, creeping into the white collar and even executive classes. It is now rampant in customer and tech support.
On this three-day weekend celebrating the American worker, no one would blame you for thinking, since you're not a temp (or your company doesn’t abuse temps, or your job hasn't traditionally been done by temps) that you’re immune to this trend. Maybe you’d like to believe your job is just too dang complicated, or you’re just too gosh-darned good at it after all these years, to ever be replaced by a mere temp.
You might be right on almost all of that. But here are some points to consider: The longer you’ve been around and the more you make—the more vacation time you earn and the more vested you get in a 401K match—the more vulnerable you are. Because all that means is the company can save more if they replace you with a cheaper model. If you can be replaced for 60 percent of your total comp package, and the company—rightly or wrongly—projects they’ll get 61 percent or more of the results you provided from that replacement, in the top-secret spreadsheets quietly discussed in remote corner offices and gilded board rooms among senior management, ruining your life looks like a smart, fiscally sound trade off.
Some of the companies pulling this crap include the most affluent, powerful corporations on the planet and they’re doing it at a time when corporate profits are hitting record highs. Taken all together, corporate America and their overseas counterparts are said to be sitting on hordes of cash and equivalents amounting to trillions of dollars. In this easy economic environment, there is simply no excuse, no justification whatsoever, for those wealthy companies and their highly paid senior executives to rely on second-class, disposable temp workers as part of their—nod nod, wink wink —“temporary” workforce.
We don’t have to outlaw staffing agencies to stop the abuse. We could just require them to offer their temp workers a minimum benefits package. There doesn’t have to be a requirement for staffing agencies to subsidize group health insurance in order to offer temps group rates, there doesn’t need to be a law saying staffing agencies must match retirement contributions in order for temps to have contributions withheld from their pay pre-tax. Agencies can be required to provide paid time off and holiday pay for longer assignments.
Some agencies already do this even though it puts them at a competitive disadvantage. Why not pass some basic legislation and level the playing field for everyone?
Without those kinds of changes, a nation turning into Temp-U.S.A., ruled by corporations unwilling to share their success with anyone outside of a select handful at the top, is not just a raw deal for the temp—it’s a bad deal for the rest of the workforce. It holds down everyone's wages and it stalls promotions and postpones raises, just like any other source of cheap labor.
So maybe your employer has never used temps and never plans to. But until this is addressed, it indirectly affects just about everyone—and that probably includes you.