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America's Second-largest Employer Is a Temp Agency
cold fjord writes "From the Examiner: '...the second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a temporary work provider. ... part-time jobs are at an all-time high, with 28 million Americans now working part-time. ... There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs. Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing. ... Temp jobs made up about 10 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, but now make up a tenth of the jobs in the United States. In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary.' The NYT has a chart detailing the problem."
and some places make you an 1099 but boss and work you like an W2 one.
at least under the new bill part timers and temps can get real health insurance with out pre existing conditions or mini med planes that don't cover much.
Employers are afraid to commit and invest in their employees any more. I worked at a call center that was a "temp-to-hire" once - they had around 50 full time employees, including the 20-odd folks in management. Another 100 were temp workers who were brought in, worked to the bone until they burned out, then let go. The highest performers (read: the people who didn't screw up) were offered full time positions with the company, or promotions. The need for this could have been alleviated with better training, but training employees is expensive. Better to hire a lot of them short term through a temp agency, see which ones fit in, and just let the others go, in a constant pattern of churn.
I quit that place despite being one of the rare full timers, because I decided I'd much rather work on computers directly than just talk to people about them.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Here is our opportunity to lessen our average work week to be less than 40 hours. Now we just need our safety nets to keep up with the fact that a large percentage of the population will probably be working less than 40 hours per week in the future. In my opinion either the percentage of part time workers will continue to rise or the number of unemployed will start to rise. Hopefully we decide to fix the social problems caused by this with welfare programs instead of higher minimum wage laws this time (since small minded regulations create these problems in the first place).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Yes, having the 2nd largest employer in the country be a temp service speaks volumes about the alleged recovery and job market.
The first-largest is Wal Mart, which is pretty much the same, and horrible.
(2.2 million employees, 1.3 mill in the USA)
Yet curiously omitted from the figures?
Total number of US government employees? 2.8 million.
Total local/state employees? 19-some million.
So ~20 million people in this country get their paycheck from the government....that's what, about 7% of the entire electorate owes their income to the gubbermint? One might argue that due to a clear conflict of interest, they perhaps shouldn't get votes.
Some people would say that's even MORE revealing about the US (so called), not to mention the tendentiousness of the reporting on the story that it's NOT EVEN MENTIONED.
-Styopa
Maybe this is a good thing. Or at least, could be a good thing.
Imagine, for a metaphor, that workers are computer servers. This would be like virtualization - since the amount of work needed is often variable, being able to quickly "provision" workers could be a benefit. And having an agency that employs these people could provide more stability for the workers, in the way that Amazon and other cloud providers get more heavily-utilized servers. And, as with the computer cloud vs. dedicated server debate, employees they *need* to have, or who provide some function that interchangeable employees cannot, can be hired full-time as they currently are.
In an ideal world, these workers would get all the benefits of permanent employment (medical coverage, unemployment benefits, even regular promotions and wage increases) via the temp agency. However, in the "anything that reduces corporate profits by one iota is COMMUNISM" economy we have, something tells me this isn't the case.
People have been predicting the wealth economy for some time, but have no clear plan on how to transition to that model.
Here's an opportunity: redefine "full time" to be less than 40 hours. Our productivity is now so high that fewer people need to work, but at the same time we need to employ everyone in order to prevent unrest and revolt.
Productivity is high, so we should have more leisure time. GDP per capita has skyrocketed, it's doubled since about 1990, and the average citizen would get $40,000 per year if output was distributed evenly. That's every man, woman and child - employed or not, and every year.
Corporations have to start spending money on the people instead of cutting people out of production. Better educated workers, happier workers, healthier workers make your business stronger and give better return on investment than rehiring. Much better return than "cost accounting", which aims to make the cheapest product people can tolerate.
Government has to start rerouting wealth from businesses to the people, by way of infrastructure benefits. Free health care and free education, as well as infrastructure projects (national system of renewable power generation, universal internet service, &c) enrich the population without coddling to the lazy.
Production is met by an ever-dwindling need for human interaction. We should embrace this trend in a way that doesn't require armed revolt.
‘Bingo’: Iowahawk sums up the jobs report in one tweet about Taco Bell
David Burge @iowahawkblog
Unemployment report in a nutshell: the Taco Bell that had 30 40 hour workers now has 40 30 hour workers.
Behind the Dismal Jobs Numbers: The ‘New’ Economy Takes Shape
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Actually, I'd argue that not many people thought that so many employers are immoral shit-sucking assholes who'd intentionally try to screw their employees out of health care. I would never imagined that any business would publicly announce they're trying to fuck over their employees. I'm shocked, quite frankly, at hearing so many businesses declare that they are, in fact, run by immoral fucktards who not only couldn't give two shits about their employees, but actually see no problem with it.
- An employer who pays for health insurance for all of his employees
I don't respond to AC's.
Unfortunately for you, the Buckeye State managed to defeat a stricter-than-Walker bill and the state is still doing fine. It also helps that the Republicans here know well enough to leave labor relations issues alone lest they incur a third 1958-level event.
If you want an example of how labor and business can cooperate, Ohio would be one of the better examples. Certain must-pass bills that are considered business-friendly in other states (the ALEC-written, multiply deployed Walker bill as well as the Ohio-defeat-by-referendum-inspired RTW bill) are not necessarily considered business friendly. That, and against the trend for transplants to opt for worker-hostile states (read: the entire South), Honda chose to locate itself in Marysville.
Certainly there's plenty of pressure against the state to harmonize itself with the South, but I don't expect it to be a law-violating lockstep action.
(Before you start citing the departure of NCR as evidence of business hostility, they were already on their way out in the 1990's)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Unfortunately, those ideas had to be included to appease Democrats from more conservative districts.
This idea that things were included to "appease districts" doesnt make sense since "we have to pass it in order to find out whats in it."
The people did not know what was in it when it was passed. Not only was no attempt made to "appease districts", there was a clear plan to intentionally keep people uninformed about it.
Clearly the Democrats were trying to appease their campaign donors, not their districts. Yes, thats the insurance companies.
"His name was James Damore."
I think the strongest correlation was made between birthrate and the educational level of women..
there was a program on PBS, a reasonably employed woman (not rich but not poor) in India said when she was a young girl, she noticed the more well-to-do families had fewer children than the poor families with lots of children. She determined to not have a lot of children with she married, and get an education before marriage. Documentary went on to illustrate that is not easy for women to do because much of the culture consider women should not have rights to make those kinds of decisions.
mfwright@batnet.com
you don't want the slaves being told they have rights, do you?
Advantage to the employer of offering only part time/temporary employment through an agency:
No unions to deal with (there is no temp union anywhere)
No pensions to contribute to (part timers don't get an employer-provided pension)
No liability (for things like temps breaking their wrists - been there, worn the t-shirt, had to foot the fucking medical bill myself!)
No employers rates (things like tax/NI which is a bloody headache if you're dealing with hundreds of employees all of whim pay tax/NI and since most of them will be on PAYE, it's all on your books which means that for every employee you have to garnish their pay by 20someodd% and send it to the Treasury, on top of which a recent additional tax which is scaled according to how many *full time* employees you have)
No contracts (except with the agency, where it's pretty much a case of "I have this many spaces, I accept your rates, send me bodies.")
No medical insurance (you're not employing the slave, you're employing the agency, *the agency* employs the slave and their employment contract more often than not has a specific medical disclaimer. See above)
No employment tribunals (you're contracting with the agency, not the slave)
Minimal wage bill (they may pay a premium for being able to hire through an agency, but it's still cheaper than employing someone full time who's not up to the task and not being able to fire them because they've technically done nothing wrong)
Maximum profit per unit labour
Advantage to the employee:
None. I don't count being able to work to pay your rent an advantage, that is a basic need along with food, clothing and medical intervention when necessary.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.