Temp Industry: Enablers of precarious employment

In a previous post an excerpt from Guy Standing's book, The Precariat, was provided to show that the growth and reliance on part time work was here to stay. As this segment of society grows it begs the question of where the 'effective demand' and consumption, a cornerstone of market based economies, will come from as more individuals live an existence of precarious employment.

Below is an excerpt from Rob Bryan's article in Jacobin Magazine, titled "Disposable Goods" aimed at overcoming the temp industry.

...Nowadays everyone from underpaid Production Assistants to overpaid bankers brag about their 60, even 70-hour weeks, as if shunning one of labor’s most important victories in the name of professional fealty and at the expense of a personal life were something to be proud of. Reducing these absurd workloads by sharing hours with the unemployed members of their respective industries never comes into consideration. And the idea of rejecting temporary employment as insufficient would today be seen as ungrateful, even  “entitled.”

We no longer live in a world where workers demand what they think they deserve. The dominant ethos of the modern American labor market is as simple as it is defeatist: Take what you can get.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the world of temp jobs. Underpaid, deathly boring, without benefits, and too short to build a life on, most temp jobs are the stuff of socialist nightmares. One wonders what Eugene Debs might make of the modern office temp: atomized, powerless, totally replaceable, hunched in a cubicle for an hourly pittance that might barely be described as a “living wage” if not for the fact that it could all be over at the end of the week, rent and loan payments be damned.

I have temped on and off for about six years, utilizing the services of three different agencies. From two-day gigs moving office furniture to six-month trudges through thousands of digitized invoices, I have known intimately the feeling of temp-hood and have even emitted that sigh of resignation I now warn against: “A temp job is better than no job, right?” That’s how you know you’re hooked.

References:
Ryan, Rob. "Disposable Goods." Jacobin, October 02, 2013. http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/disposable-goods/ (accessed October 2, 2013). 

The Growth In Part Time Work Is Here To Stay

While being in a temporary job is an indication of a person being in a career-less job, that is not always the case. Indeed, those we are calling proficians exult in a project-oriented existence in which they move from one short-term project to another. And long-term jobs in which someone must do the same few tasks over and over again are hardly aspirational. Having a temporary job is fine if the social context is satisfactory. But if the global economic system requires a lot of people to have temporary jobs, then policy makers should address what makes them precarious.
Currently, having a temporary job is a strong indicator of a kind of precariousness. For some it may be a stepping stone to the construction of a career. But for many it may be a stepping stone down into a lower income status. Taking a temporary job after a spell of unemployment, as urged by many policy makers, can result in lower earnings for years ahead (Autor and Houseman, 2010).
Once a person enters a lower rung job, the probability of upward social mobility or of gaining a ‘decent’ income is permanently reduced. Taking a casual job may be a necessity for many, but it is unlikely to promote social mobility. Another avenue into the precariat is part-time employment, a tricky euphemism that has become a feature of our tertiary economy, unlike industrial societies.
In most countries, part-time is defined as being employed or remunerated for less than 30 hours a week. It would be more accurate to refer to so-called part-timers, since many who choose or are obliged to take a part-time job find that they have to work more than anticipated and more than they are being paid for. Part-timers, often women, who step off a career ladder, may end up more exploited, having to do much uncompensated work for- labour outside their paid hours, and more self-exploited, having to do extra work in order to retain a niche of some sort. The growth in part-time jobs has helped conceal the extent of unemployment and underemployment. 

Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 15. (bold emphasis added)