Employers Are Sticking to Hiring Only ‘Temps’;
New Problems for Jobless Workers and Unions

By Harry Kelber

 Until they are absolutely sure  they can count on a sufficient stream of profitable orders,  most of the nation’s employers will hire temporary workers if they need to increase their workforce. For an employer, the advantage of hiring “temps,“ rather than full-time employees, is that you don’t have to pay them  costly benefits and you can fire them whenever you wish.

“When a job comes open now, our members [employers] fill it with a temp, or they extend a part-timer’s hours,  or they bring in a freelancer—and then they wait to see what will happen next," says William J. Dennis Jr., director of research for the National Federation of Independent Business.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which  does not distinguish between full-time and casual employment, reported last month that 52,000 temps were hired,  which surpassed the number of new workers hired in any other category,  even health care and government.

Understandably, employers are unwilling to expand their permanent workforce as long as the economic recovery is still fragile and may revert to deep recession. So as long as temps are available, they can take limited risks. Many are offering part-time jobs to their former full-time employees—and even  expecting a favorable response.  And it is less likely that temps will be offered full-time jobs  to the same extent they were promoted in past recessions.

Employers’ Reliance on Temps Raises Challenges for Labor
Unions must be concerned about the “surge” in the hiring of temporary workers. Will employers be free to set their own terms on the wages, benefits and working  conditions of temporary workers? And what will be the unions’ response? Will unions insist on a limit to the number of temps an employer can hire, and demand that some of them be replaced by full-time employees? Will unions also demand that the term “temporary” be defined, so that temps are not replacing permanent employees?

When the AFL-CIO and Change to Win initially asked for the creation of a massive jobs program, they meant decent jobs that would pay a living wage. Temporary employment simply does not provide a secure livelihood.

With millions of workers still unable to find work after more than 27 months without a job, many will grasp at the chance of even a temporary job, Employers can lower the wage rates and still get enough people to hire. If this trend is not challenged, the standards in union contracts can be seriously eroded
*   *   *  *   *
Production rose 8.1 percent in the third quarter of 2009, according to the AFL-CIO News of Dec. 21. Yet workers have not seen a corresponding rise in wages, which are continuing to remain stagnant.

Isn’t it time for the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to come forward with a plan for a “living wage” for all workers who spend a substantial part of their waking hours—and their lives--to produce the goods and services that enrich  their employers?           —Harry Kelber