Temporary Work

Meanings of Temporary Work

Legal definitions and cultural meanings of temporary work are best understood when juxtaposed against the standard employment relationship. Formerly, a typical worker could expect a full-time job with long-term attachment to the same company. Temporary work deviates from this norm: it is an arrangement without contractual guarantees for full-time, year-round work schedules and expectations of continuous employment. Temporary employment includes work of a limited duration or for a finite period, such as those hired on a fixed-term project, on the basis of a job, or as day laborers. Regardless of time commitment, temporary workers may receive a formal contract stipulating terms and conditions of employment, or they may commence work with nothing more than an informal handshake.

Finally, firms or individuals may hire a temporary worker either directly as a contract worker, as an on-call or daily worker on a user's payroll, or indirectly as an agency worker on the temporary help employer's payroll. Usually, temporary workers are ineligible for unemployment insurance and other entitlements pegged to standard employment. The reference point, then, for defining temporary work is its departure from an established contractual arrangement based on a standard of full-time permanent employment of unlimited duration, spatial continuity of work at the same company, and usually receiving a set of benefits negotiated through collective bargaining, state-based regulations, or common practice.

Known familiarly as temp work, agency temporary work alters the employment relationship, involving a triangular relationship between a labor market intermediary, a client firm, and an employee. Though labor law in most countries [Page 876]holds the temporary-help firm responsible for supervising and establishing the work conditions of the temporary employee, in reality this triangular relationship creates legal ambiguity for temporary employees seeking to exercise their rights, both at the client companies where they perform the work and vis-à-vis the temporary-help firms that employ them. Like all temporary workers, temps are vulnerable to the extent that their future time horizons regarding both work schedules and prospective jobs, and their resulting income streams, are uncertain and unpredictable. Agency temps are literally on call, waiting next to the phone for the agency to dispatch them to their next job assignment that may last for many years, for a short period of time, or even only for a one-hour or a one-day stint.

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