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Select Labor shaped and sustained the labor market for temporary workers in a variety of ways. Its staff extended many genuine forms of assistance and guidance to people seeking temporary jobs. They tried to select people who showed promise of being good, quality temporary workers and, once hiring them, tried to further construct and maintain them as such. They provided what they saw as realistic guidance about how to enter the labor market, advocated for higher wages for temps, championed individual temps in landing decent jobs, and, in a larger context of insecurity and precariousness, provided emotional support to the temps whom they favored and wished to keep on their payroll. Agency staff monitored the work sites of hiring companies to make sure that there was a fit between job orders that line and human resources managers had submitted and the actual conditions of work that temps would walk into. Their goal was to maintain good enough temporary jobs, jobs where the conditions of work were risk-free to the extent possible. Agency staff intervened to subdue supervisors and managers who were rude, angry, or discriminatory. Importantly,however,agencystaffconstructedthismarketbecause they were primarily concerned to meet the needs and expectations of Chapter Six Do Good Enough Temporary Jobs Make Good Enough Temporary Employment? The Case for Transitional Mobility 149 Do Good Enough Temporary Jobs Make Good Enough Temporary Employment? the hiring companies. In order to compete for a share of the lucrative temporary help service market, Select Labor had to create and sell good temps: the idea, if not the reality, of the reliable and minimally qualified temporary worker who could supply reasonably productive labor within various firms. SL was able to profit to the degree that hiring companies would choose them either as a source of temporary workers or as a source of administrative and human resource expertise . Fundamentally, SL was an outsourcing organization, benefiting from a huge shift (as have other agencies over recent decades) in the way companies do their business, hire their workers, withdraw their commitments to permanent workers, and make it more incumbent on workers across the board to bear the burden of employment risk. We have argued that temporary help agencies that compete to maintain a strong share of their market must insulate their temps from the worst effects of temporary employment. To bring job applicants in the door and to keep valued temps on its payroll, Select Labor needed to develop practices to enhance its reputation as a desirable agency to work for. We would not expect this to be true of small, unstable operations, of agencies that supply day laborers only, or of contractors who pick up vulnerable day laborers on street corners to work in fields, clean houses, construct buildings, or mow lawns. But for stable, mainstream agencies that must compete for a share of the market, sending temporary employees into abusive, overtly unpleasant, harmful, or illegal work settings would be counterproductive to their profitmaking goals. As the case of Select Labor shows, agency representatives strove to avoid setting up accounts with hiring companies that matched the profile of the bad employer, as the reps construed it. Furthermore, since wages in this niche of the labor market were low, agency staff frequently pressured managers in hiring companies to increase the hourly wages for temps. From the point of view of the agency, sending temps into risky work sites and subjecting them to the lowest pay inevitably caused high turnover, which in turn jeopardized the quality of their temporary workforce and its value to hiring companies. With temporary employment so securely institutionalized, agencies have a stake in minimizing turnover much as other employers do. Temporary -help agencies invest in their temps, even if their investment 150 The Good Temp is lower than the investment that firms make in their permanent workforces. In addition to the administrative costs of hiring a temp (recruiting, advertising, processing the paperwork, interviewing, and testing skill levels), other costs must be considered. Agency staff must educate people about the temporary employment relationship (what it is; what you can and can’t expect; what rights you have and don’t have), advise temps about basic interviewing procedures and how to demonstrate an appropriate work ethic once they get a job. If a person works for an agency for a long period of time as a temp, the agency may benefit from his or her trust and goodwill. It would be impossible to quantify the advantage here, but trust and loyalty...

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