Temporary/Contingent Workers Deserving More Rights

Research Paper

Temporary/Contingent Workers Deserving More Rights

The use of temporary or "contingent" workers in the U.S workforce in the past decade has grown a substantial amount. Over the last three years, the temp industry added more jobs in the United States than any other, according to the American Staffing Association. Now, why the rapid increase for demand for temporary/contingent workers? The answer is cheap “legal” labor with the least amount of benefits or no benefits in some instances. In this paper I will explain why temporary workers should receive more rights/benefits compared to what they receive now now, as well as how treating them equally as permanent employees would change employee morale. Also in this paper I will explain the argument against providing temporary workers with more rights as permanent employees.

According to Katheryn Tyler - SHRM Magazine, temporary/contingent workers “are defined as workers with jobs structured to be short term or temporary, including workers from temporary employment agencies, on-call workers, independent contractors and seasonal workers.” The above definition of the term temporary/contingent worker overlooks the lack of benefits and rights a “temp worker” would have in comparison to a permanent employee. These types of workers typically earn substantially less money than their permanent counterparts and are less likely to have health and pension benefits (Feldman, 1996). By Law, companies are not required to give temp workers benefits and even the same rights or even the same pay as normal permanent employees. With this being said, notions of fairness are cast aside for millions of workers in a lot of companies that hire “working temps” or contingent workers. This often means being treated as a second-class citizen by both employers and permanent workers. Sometimes [being a temp] is demeaning. I personally worked as a contingent worker for a large corporation for over 6 years and I cannot...