Suchergebnisse

Based on a historical study of fee regulation in the employment agency business, the claim that temporary help agencies charge "no fees" to workers is challenged. It is found that the claim rests on technical changes in the statutory definitions of fee and employment agency won through industry lobbying efforts, changes that simply mask traditional fee-charging methods. The article traces the evolution of fee-charging practices in the post-World War II period and points to a new version of "fee splitting" as a prevalent wage setting practice in the staffing industry. The implications of these developments for wage depression and income redistribution are explored.

Historical and legal research challenges the staffing industry's claim that it charges "no fees" to workers, and provides scholarly support for the spreading "right‐to‐know" movement among temps and contract workers for the disclosure of hidden, and often exorbitant, agency markups.

This article reports on preliminary research concerning temp agency workers in the logistics hub that serves the Port of Newark/Elizabeth. Our objective is to explore the potential for organizing temporary workers in this industry, and the viability of the hiring hall model in particular. The first section describes several aspects of the regional labor market in which temp agency workers are recruited for the inland warehouses and distribution centers. The second section explores the history and legality of hiring halls, and why this organizing model has in recent decades faded into disuse. The third section sets forth an exploratory plan for organizing the temporary workforce in New Jersey's logistics industry.

This article presents a historical and legal argument for reclassifying and regulating commercial staffing agencies as labor market intermediaries. Their current legal classification as employers is a major factor contributing to the exploitation of temps. The article contrasts the deregulated environment for commercial staffing agencies with the extensive federal regulation of union hiring halls. Because these two institutions serve a similar function—providing access to the job market for short‐term employees—both should be subject to comparable regulatory regimes in order to restore parity in the legal treatment of temporary employees by all parties to the employment relationship. A regulatory regime should impose on temporary help and staffing agencies a level of transparency and fiduciary obligations analogous to the duty of fair representation imposed on union hiring halls by federal labor law. Absent such legal reclassification, the staffing industry will remain unfairly privileged in the marketplace in a way that prevents fair treatment and representation for temps.