Permanent temping a low-wage ghetto for many

Today's temp industry in Canada can include glamour skills, but most workers lack routine benefits

By: Paul Weinberg

  Don't call Joan a "temp." In some workplaces, that term is uttered with contempt.
  For six years, Joan (not her real name) has been "on contract" - her preferred term - for jobs that last up to six months and generally involve project management for information technology or, on occasion, customer service. The agencies that place Joan negotiate her salary and the nature of the assignment with companies seeking short-term help. She dislikes the secret nature of these discussions (including the agency's cut), during which her skills may be "low-balled" in order for the agency to make its sale. Furthermore, she notes. "You can't move upward in an organization, and in moving from one industry to another, it is hard to build a reputation."
  Temp work has traditionally been a female clerical ghetto, and it is still largely female or immigrant-based, encompassing clerical or general labour jobs. What is new is the shrinkage of full-time jobs in favour of temp work, which now represents an almost $1.5 billion industry.
 

Statistics Canada says up to 33 per cent of the work force not engaged in permanent full-time jobs

  "The image of the Kelly Girl is still in our minds, even if it is out of touch with the contemporary labour market," says Leah Vosko, assistant professor of labour studies and political science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and author of Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship. "Non-standard forms of employment are spreading, and reshaping employment norms."
  In her book, Vosko documents how the temporary help industry has expanded, as high-tech, manufacturing, health care and law firms demonstrate an increasing preference for contract employees. "Agencies are moving from supplying stopgap workers to staffing entire departments," she says.
  Hence a growth in the proportion of the Canadian work force not engaged in permanent full-time jobs - Statistics Canada puts it as high as 33 per cent. While almost two-thirds of temp jobs last one to six months, Vosko also notes that another 18.4 per cent of employees are on contract for one to five years, and 12.4 per cent for as long as six years.
  Not all temp workers are critical of the industry. Former university student Oswyn Alvares says that summer contract jobs put him through school and gave him useful experience in a telecommunications firm. And Sandra Sears, president of Toronto-based Staffworks, says temps like the flexibility of their jobs and "have a lot of control over what they do and how they do it."
  But Vosko counters that agencies essentially get employers off the hook in terms of the expense and hassle involved with hiring, firing, benefits and administrative paperwork. "Clients can rely on the agencies without the social, legal and contractual obligations associated with the full-time job," she says.
  Most agencies do not offer benefits for their workers, because they want to limit their obligation, observes Scott Maclagan, president of Maclagan & Associates, which offers benefits packages geared to this industry. Unfortunately, not all workers can afford the premiums - $100 a month for a single person, or about $200 for a family.
  Nevertheless, Mclagan sees a lot of growth potential for his benefit packages. "The staffing industry is the largest employer in Canada."
  According to Sears, agencies face a shortage of workers, especially with unemployment down. But Tom Beechner of Toronto-based Temporary Help Inc. says he has no difficulty recruiting unskilled labour, particularly among immigrants. Since 1993 he has been conducting an aggressive direct-mail campaign to employers that includes "free labour" coupons. "When new customers order people, they attach that to their invoice for a $100 deduction," he says.
  Vosko says the most economically vulnerable temps are treated like "commodities," and that, notwithstanding the media image of the itinerant, highly paid high-tech worker, the reality is that many temps are in low-paying jobs. Her book notes that permanent clerical workers are paid almost $13 an hour, while their temporary colleagues receive only about $7.60.
  Vosko discovered that a high proportion of recent well-qualified non-white immigrants to Canada from developing countries end up in temp jobs, unable to find work in their chosen field due to a lack of Canadian work experience.
  But many temp agencies refuse to provide job references for their employees and therefore are not one way tickets to permanent employment, says Vosko.
  "Mirroring the racialized division of labour in the Canadian labour market as a whole, workers speak of being placed in workplaces with no prospect for permanent work where immigrant workers dominate. Managers even confirm that they consciously place workers of similar ethnic origins together," adds Vosko.
  The temp industry is largely non-union and some of their workers have been used as strike breakers. But one major Canadian union, the United Steelworkers, is actively organizing them.
  Brad James, the Steelworkers' organizing co-coordinator for Ontario, Canada's largest and most industrial province, says he encounters many manufacturing assembly plants and warehouses where a mix of permanent and temporary employees exists.
  Both types of workers are permitted to join and become members of the same union local, adds James. "Labour relations doesn't allow employers to evade their responsibility. Temps are still employees."

Paul Weinberg is a Toronto journalist specializing in information technology issues. A shorter version of this article was originally published in Toronto's eye Weekly.

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