Temporary work
Temporary work or temporary employment refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time-based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", and "freelance"; or the words may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals refer to themselves as consultants. Increasingly, executive-level positions are also filled with interim executives or fractional executives.
Temporary work is different from secondment, which involves temporarily assigning a member of one organization to another. In this case, the employee typically retains their salary and other employment rights from their primary organization. Still, they work closely with other organizations to provide training and share experiences.
Temporary workers may work full-time or part-time depending on the individual situation. In some instances, temporary workers receive benefits, but usually benefits are only given to permanent employees as a cost-cutting measure by the employer to save money. Not all temporary employees find jobs through a temporary employment agency. With the rise of the Internet and gig economy, many workers are now finding short-term jobs through freelance marketplaces: a situation that brings into being a global market for work.
A temporary work agency, temp agency or temporary staffing firm finds and retains workers. Other companies in need of short-term workers contract with the temporary work agency to send temporary workers, or temps, on assignments to work at the other companies. Temporary employees are also used in cyclical work, requiring frequent staffing adjustments.
History
The staffing industry in the United States began after World War II with small agencies in urban areas employing housewives for part-time work as office workers. Over the years, the advantages of having workers who could be hired and laid off on short notice and were exempt from paperwork and regulatory requirements resulted in a gradual but substantial increase in temporary workers, with over 3.5 million employed in the United States by 2000.There has been a paradigm shift since the 1940s in how firms utilize temporary workers. Throughout the Fordist era, temporary workers made up a rather marginal proportion of the total labor force in North America. Typically, temporary workers were white women in pink collar, clerical positions who provided companies with a stopgap solution for permanent workers who needed a leave of absence when on vacation or illness. In contrast, in the Post-Fordist period, characterized by neoliberalism, deindustrialization and the dismantling of the welfare state, these understandings of temporary labor began to shift. In this paradigm, the idea of the temporary worker as a stopgap solution to permanent labor became an entirely normative employment alternative to permanent work.
Therefore, temporary workers no longer represented a substitute for permanent workers on leave but became semi-permanent, precarious positions routinely subject to the threat of elimination because of company product fluctuations. In today's temporary labor force, both people and positions have become temporary, and temporary agencies use the temporary workers systematically and plan instead of impromptu.
Temporary employment has become more prevalent in America due to the rise of the Internet and the gig economy. The "gig economy" is defined as a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work instead of permanent jobs. It is a common misconception that participation in the gig economy is a relatively new method of employment. However, finding work in the gig economy is similar to the employment style before the Industrial Revolution. It is the "one-person, one-career model" that society is accustomed to, and the gig economy is disrupting a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, it was common for one person to take on multiple temporary jobs to piece together livable earnings.
Post-Fordism
As the market began to transform from Fordism to a post-order regime of capital accumulation, the social regulation of labor markets and the very nature of work began to shift. This transformation has been characterized by an economic restructuring that emphasized flexibility within spaces of work, labor markets, employment relationships, wages and benefits. Indeed, global processes of neoliberalism and market rule contributed greatly to this increasing pressure on local labor markets towards flexibility. This greater flexibility within labor markets is important at the global level, particularly within OECD countries and liberal market economies.The temporary labor industry is worth over €157 billion per year, and the most prominent agencies are spread across over 60 nations. The biggest temporary work agencies are most profitable in emerging economies of the Global North and those that have undergone market liberalization, deregulation, and regulation.
Temporary work opportunities and restrictions vary around the world. Chile, Columbia, and Poland have the highest percentage of temporary dependent employment at 28.7%, 28.3%, and 27.5%, respectively. Romania, Lithuania, and Estonia have the lowest temporary dependent employment percentages, ranging from 1–4%. The United Kingdom has 6% temporary employment, Germany has 13% temporary employment, and France has 16% temporary employment. In many countries, there are no restrictions on the type of temporary work that is legal, including the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Sweden, and Denmark. The United Kingdom has in place the Temporary Agency Work Directive 2008, which ensures equal pay and treatment of temporary workers. Similarly, Brazil enforces full-time employment regulations to part-time employment and outsourcing. In some countries, including Brazil, there is a wage gap between temporary and permanent workers, but this is due to violations of legislation that specify equal wage determination. In other countries, prohibitions are placed on temporary employment in fields such as agriculture, construction, and non-core employment. In Mexico, a temporary employee is, "prohibited to perform the same work as regular employee", making temporary work illegal.
Gig economy-based temporary work is prevalent around the world. Uber, for example, operates in North, Central, and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, East, South, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Airbnb advertises listings in 191 countries around the world with the most in Europe.
The desire to market flexible, adaptable temporary workers has become the temporary work industry's driving, monetary-oriented objective. This has caused individual agencies to adopt practices that focus on competition with other firms, that promote "try before you buy" practices, and that maximize their ability to produce a product: the temporary worker. Through this process, the ideal temporary worker has today become largely imagined, produced, and marketed by temporary agencies.
Agencies
The role of a temp agency is as a third party between the client employer and the client employee. This third party handles remuneration, work scheduling, complaints, taxes, etc., created by the relationship between a client employer and a client employee. Client firms request the type of job that is to be done and the skills required to do it. Client firms can also terminate an assignment and file a complaint about the temp. Work schedules are determined by assignment, which is determined by the agency and can last for an indeterminate period, extended to any point, and cut short. Because the assignments are temporary, there is little incentive to provide benefits, and the pay is low in situations with a lot of labor flexibility.. Workers can refuse assignment but risk going through an indeterminate period of downtime since work is based on the availability of assignments, which the agency cannot "create", only fill.Whether the work comes through an independent gig economy source or a temp agency, when a temporary employee agrees to an assignment, they receive instructions pertaining to the job. The agency also provides information on correct work attire, work hours, wages, and whom to report to. If a temporary employee arrives at a job assignment and is asked to perform duties not described when they accepted the job, they may call an agency representative for clarification. If they choose not to continue on the assignment based on these discrepancies, they will most likely lose pay and may undermine chances at other job opportunities. However, some agencies guarantee an employee a certain number of hours of pay if there is no work once the temporary employee arrives or the work is not as described. Most agencies do not require an employee to continue work if the discrepancies make it difficult for the employee to do the work.
A temporary work agency may have a standard set of tests to judge the competence of the secretarial or clerical skills of an applicant. An applicant is hired based on their scores on these tests and is placed into a database. Companies or individuals looking to hire someone temporarily contact the agency and describe the skill set they are seeking. A temporary employee is then found in the database and is contacted to see if they would be interested in taking the assignment.
It is up to the temporary employee to keep in constant contact with the agency when not currently working on an assignment; by letting the agency know that they are available to work, they are given priority over those who may be in the agency database who have not made it clear that they are ready and willing to take an assignment. A temp agency employee is the exclusive employee of the agency, not of the company in which they are placed. The temporary employee is bound by the rules and regulations of the temp agency, even if they contrast with those of the company in which they are placed.