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The Good Temp

By: Vicki Smith, Esther B. Neuwirth

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eBook | 20 August 2010 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

ePUB
248 Pages

Age
18+

Grade
17+

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24

eBook

RRP $35.19

$31.99

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Temporary agencies place approximately two and a half million people in jobs each day in the United States. Every year, about twelve million people use these placement agencies to find temporary work. Many Americans, even those who desire permanent jobs, decide to enter the labor market through the portal of temporary agencies. Compared with the post-World War II era, when it was a marginal labor practice, temporary employment is today an entrenched feature of jobs and labor markets. How have temporary employment relationships become so widespread and normalized? In The Good Temp, Vicki Smith and Esther B. Neuwirth provide some novel answers to this question.

Their provocative analysis is based on an insider's view of the interior dynamics of a temporary help agency in Silicon Valley. It incorporates a historical perspective on the rise of the temporary help service industry. Smith and Neuwirth document how this powerful industry not only created a new market for temporary labor but also played a fundamental role in the erosion of the permanent employment model. They analyze how agencies themselves came to manufacture and market this reinvented product-the good temp, an employee who is effective and efficient, committed, and sometimes preferable to a permanent staff member.

Joining extensive participant observation data with historical analysis, The Good Temp contains some surprising findings about temporary employment today and fills a significant gap in our understanding of this important labor relationship.

Industry Reviews

"This clearly argued, readable, and perceptive book is laudable for its refusal to accept the functionalist logic that temporary work and workers arise unproblematically out of market 'necessity,' and for its corresponding analysis of how particular employment relations are culturally legitimated and organizationally embedded. I especially appreciate the innovative use of ethnography to study practices and connections among individual and institutional actors in a labor market, rather than the internal workings of a single organization."

on

Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Temporary Revolution
2. The Social Construction of New Markets and Products
  References: Personnel and Business Magazine Articles 
Analyzed in Chapter 2
3. "We're Not Body Pushers": How an Agency Constructs a 
Pool of Good Temps
4. Softening "Rough and Tough Managers": Creating Good 
Enough Jobs for Temps
5. Shaping and Stabilizing the Personnel Policy Environment
6. Good Enough Temporary Jobs, Good Enough Temporary 
Employment?
Appendix I: Analyzing the Management Media
Appendix II: Frequently Asked Questions About the Economic 
and Legal Dimensions of Temporary Employment
Notes
References
Index