one-third of adults who live in poverty are working but do not earn enough to support themselves and their families.
A quarter of jobs in America pay below the federal poverty line for a family of four ($23,050). Not only are many jobs low-wage, they are also temporary and insecure. Over the last three years, the temp industry added more jobs in the United States than any other,
Low-wage, temporary jobs have become so widespread that they threaten to become the norm.
employers had (and have) choices. Rather than squeezing workers, they could have invested in workers and boosted product quality, taking what economists call the high road toward more advanced manufacturing and skilled service work. But this hasn’t happened. Instead, American employers have generally taken the low road: lowering wages and cutting benefits, converting permanent employees into part-time and contingent workers, busting unions and subcontracting and outsourcing jobs. They have done so, in part, because of the extraordinary evangelizing of the temp industry,
While greater numbers of employers in the postwar era offered family-supporting wages and health insurance, the rapidly expanding temp agencies established a different precedent by explicitly refusing to do so. That precedent held for more than half a century: even today “temp” jobs are beyond the reach of many workplace protections, not only health benefits but also unemployment insurance, anti-discrimination laws and union-organizing rights.
By 1967 Manpower employed more workers than corporate giants like Standard Oil of New Jersey and the U.S. Steel Corporation.
“Never-Never Girl,” who, the company claimed: “Never takes a vacation or holiday. Never asks for a raise. Never costs you a dime for slack time. (When the workload drops, you drop her.) Never has a cold, slipped disc or loose tooth. (Not on your time anyway!) Never costs you for unemployment taxes and Social Security payments. (None of the paperwork, either!) Never costs you for fringe benefits. (They add up to 30% of every payroll dollar.) Never fails to please. (If your Kelly Girl employee doesn’t work out, you don’t pay.)”
By peddling products like the “Semi-Permanent Employee,” the “Never-Never Girl” and more, temp industry leaders promoted a model in which permanent employees were a “costly burden,” a “headache” that needed relief. “Stop paying help you don’t use,”
even more persuasive than their arguments were the practical tools they were able to offer: thousands of low-cost temps, without the hassle of having to hire, train, supervise and fire them.
Temporary employment skyrocketed from 185,000 temps a day to over 400,000 in 1980 — the same number employed each year in 1963. Nor did the numbers slow when good times returned: even through the economic boom of the ’90s, temporary employment grew rapidly, from less than 1 million workers a day to nearly 3 million by 2000.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...-temp-economy/
And of course the low-wage temp workers paid by the temp agency get about 50% of the rent-a-body fee paid by the employer to the temp agency. The temp agency corporations skims the payments going to the worker, just like for-profit insurerance corps skim the salaries of full time employees.
Well, maybe if we stopped allowing illegal aliens to work, we could pay people more.
Look up: "Supply and Demand."
Look up: "An Oil Boom Takes a Toll on Health Care" thread, where searches on the subject will show that Fast Food joints are paying $20/hr, to keep employees and stay in business.
With VA totally gerrymandered, sociopathic Repugs totally unrestrained, unaccountable in screwing state employees
Virginia Cuts State Employees’ Hours To Avoid Providing Obamacare Coverage
The 29-hour limit is on its way to becoming state law, thanks to language inserted into the state budget at the request of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration. The language appears in both versions of the budget adopted Thursday by the Senate and House of Delegates.[...]
Anticipating legislative approval of the policy, the state Department of Human Resource Management has advised all state agencies to implement it now.
The state has more than 37,000 wage employees. More than 7,000 of them have been working at least 30 hours a week, according to a recent survey taken by the department.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013...ees-obamacare/
So an employee revenue gets dinged with less hours plus no health coverage. The model red-state.
Shouldnt this be in your VWRC thread?
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