Marc Belanger writes on the background to the increase in temporary workers which parallels the growth in microcomputing.

 

   Computers Cause
Temporary Working Insanity
   



 
Computers Cause Temporary Working Insanity
It's almost insane: we know that stable, permanent jobs are the basis of a civilized society. People are happier and healthier when they have jobs they can count on - whether those jobs are on the farm, in the plant, at the office or in the home. Yet, we persist in designing our societies today so that more and more people are part of the so-called "flexible work-force": temporary workers, consultants, self-employed workers, contract employees and part-timers.
 It's insanity and it's getting worse.

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 In 1985 there were 75,000 temporary workers in the United States.

 Today there are about

1.6 million.

 Canada's number of temporary workers increased 21 per cent to 970,000 between 1989 and 1994. Around the same time Europe, Australia and other countries were also increasing the percentage of temporaries in their work-forces.

 Meanwhile huge multinationals specializing in supplying temporary workers have begun flourishing as never before. Kelly (which used to be known as Kelly Girls) services 200,000 companies through 1,100 offices in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

 Manpower has 1,000 North American offices and offices in countries such as Israel, Norway and Great Britain.

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 Is the growth in temporary workers happening because we need more secretaries
to fill in for vacationing employees or more labourers to occasionally dig earth?

No, that can't be the full story.

 
 

Temporaries now include managers, programmers, graphic artists,

technical workers, health care specialists,

skilled manufacturing workers such as machinists

and others such as writers and administrators.

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 Is it happening because companies don't need more employees on a permanent basis?

 Nope, that can't be it either because a 1995 Olsen survey in the United States showed that nearly

half of the firms surveyed were understaffed. Just recently a number of auto manufacturers in the

States were hit by strikes caused by under staffing so bad that employees couldn't take vacations.

 So why the great increase in temporary workers in the 1980s and 1990s?

 A traditional, and still valid, answer is that companies hire temporaries and part-timers

so they can avoid paying benefits such as pensions, health care insurance and dental plans.

 Another reason legitimately raised is that a work-force of temporaries and part-timers

can be more easily intimidated. "You don't like the working conditions? Well, we'll just give

you less hours to work under those conditions. You want to form a union? Gee, unions can only

be formed by employees and, coincidently, your contract is not being renewed next month".

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 No. Cost-cutting and anti-unionism alone can't account for the rapid rise in temporaries.

Unenlightened employers have always wanted to cut benefit costs. And certainly employers have

never been great supporters of unions.

 The reason for the sudden rise in temporary workers is the advent of the microcomputer.
It is no coincidence that the rise in the number of temporary and part-time workers in the 1980s and 1990s came at exactly the same time microcomputers were being introduced ....next...

 

The introduction of the microcomputer provoked the rise in temporaries and part-timers, first, because employers could suddenly hire many more employees working partial hours.

Before microcomputing became widespread it was a real chore to manage the payroll and scheduling of many employees. Hiring a few employees for a few hours a week was difficult if not impossible. However, with microcomputers even small entreprises could manage a greater number of workers.

A permanent work-force of 100 could be reorganized into a core group of 40 full-time employees and hundreds of temps and part-timers.

Along the way, firms such as Kelly responded to the growing acceptance of temporaries and part-timers by learning to market their services more efficiently.

For example, Kelly has won ISO 9002 certification of its operations. ISO 9002 is an internationally recognized program which certifies a company's quality management system. ISO is almost mandatory for businesses in Europe and is quickly spreading into North America.

The days of organizing a few temporaries to fill in during the summer is over.

Supplying temporary workers is now a very sophisticated full-time business, managed with the use of computers.

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Around the same time, companies learned that they could administer huge groups of temporaries as a way of starting new enterprises.

For example: in 1995, Wal-Mart, the giant American department store corporation, bought a chain of 122 Canadian stores called Woolco. (It bought all the Woolco stores except for the two that were unionized). Wal-Mart then firedmost of the Woolco workers and re-hired many as temporaries earning the minimum wage. It also hired many more temporaries in anticipation of the sales rush that would occur when the stores opened. The company let it be known that all its employees were part of the Wal-Mart "family" and would have secure jobs.

A few months after the stores opened Wal-Mart laid off 2,700 people.

This is not the story of a company laying-off people in bad times. It is a story of a company which deliberately planned the opening of a chain of stores knowing that it had a large number of temporary workers available that it could use and then discard.
But it could only have implemented that strategy if it had the computing power available to hire the workers, and schedule their hours. And it did... next...

 

 

A second reason the advent of microcomputers provoked a great increase in temporaries and part-timers is the obvious point: microcomputing stimulated a period of rapid technological change. Large numbers of entreprises grew seemingly overnight to study the new technology and exploit its potential. And then companies all around the world began adopting the new technology. The result was a period of great innovation and change. Every month it seemed a new computer model or piece of software was introduced.
Employers found it easier to handle this change by hiring temporaries with up-to-date skills rather than training their own staff. If a new computer program was introduced they recruited temporary workers with skills in that particular program. The rise of the large firms supplying temporary staff, the ability to administer large numbers of people by using computers and the refusal of governments to implement full-employment policies all helped lead to a greatincrease in the use of temporary workers.
Microsoft - the giant American software company - is an example of companies basing their operations on temporary workers. At its Redmond headquarters Microsoft uses an estimated 2,500 or 3,000 temporary workers - about 20 to 30 per cent of its local work force of 11,000. The companies which provide the temporary workers even have permanent offices inthe Microsoft headquarters.
The theory is: get temporary workers, work them hard and move them out.
This strategy is used extensively by other advanced technology companies such as Corel and by many more less-technologically advanced companies world-wide....next...
 

 

 

 

The problem with this "bring them in, burn them out" strategy for a company is that the new employees know very little about the company's history, traditions or ways of doing business. The single biggest problem about using temporary workers reported by companies is the inability of employees to assimilate the corporate culture.
Well gee. If you are going to deliberately implement a process of rapid turn-over then the least you can expect is a drop in corporate memory. Temporary employees may not remember how things were done in the company last week never mind last year. (Unless, of course they are one of those "temporary" employees who have been there for years.)
Another reason the introduction of the microcomputer provoked an increase in temporary and part-time workers is more subtle because it involved a shift in how we began to think. Our view of what it meant to be "connected" was radically altered.
Let me explain:

 

 

 

 

 

 In the industrial world machines were large and loud and built of metal connected by bolts or welding. Connections were hard and permanent.

In the new electronic world of software, products are linked by easily changed programs. Connections are soft and fleeting.

These different ways of organizing work influenced how people thought about many things, including employer-employee relations.

In the industrial world employees were seen to be permanent attachments to the machines. In the new electronic world they are seen as just so many temporary electrons to be used, burnt out and replaced.
The result is a culture that thinks an easily disposable work-force makes sense.
So what can we do?

 

 

 

 Marc continues for

on the perspective for unions, the traditional battlers for workers and workplace rights in this new employment climate.

 So what can we do?