Survey reveals poverty pay, permatemping, deceptive recruitment practices, and other job quality issues

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Introduction

Antonia Bannister fears for her younger brother’s safety every day he works as a “temp” at a Jacksonville, Florida, warehouse picking and packaging high-priced clothing and accessories for the global multi-billion-dollar luxury fashion brand Coach.

Coach, like many major corporations operating warehouses and factories in Jacksonville, contracts with a company called Remedy Intelligent Staffing to supply a sizable portion of the labor at its distribution hub in the city.^[1]

Antonia’s younger brother is a Remedy “temp” just like two of his older siblings had been.

Back in 2012, Remedy placed their older brother, Lawrence “Day” Davis, at a Bacardi bottling plant in Jacksonville. It was his first job ever, and 90 minutes into his first day, he was killed in a machine accident. He was just 21 years old—the same age Antonia’s younger brother is now.^[2]

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration identified Day’s death as part of a pattern of temp workers dying on their first days on the job. His death was part of what prompted the agency to launch its Temp Worker Initiative to improve safety for temp workers and lay out the joint responsibility of both “host employers” like Bacardi and staffing agencies like Remedy in ensuring it.^[3]

The initiative was an important step. And more needs to be done. Antonia knows first-hand. After Day’s death, Antonia became the eldest sibling, felt a new sense of responsibility to her family, and vowed that she would never take a job that put her safety at risk. But “times get hard, and a lot of time it’s only the warehouses and factories, only hiring through temp agencies, that have work readily available when you need it most.”  Desperate for work, she had to go to the same staffing agency that employed Day. “It never felt right, but it was my only option.”^[4]

Times get hard, and a lot of time it’s only the warehouses and factories, only hiring through temp agencies, that have work readily available when you need it most.

Antonia worked in warehouses for Remedy for a total of 5 years, 4 of which were at Coach’s old warehouse location in Jacksonville. While there, she once injured her ankle when she was not provided with the proper equipment to safely do her job, and once fainted because of extreme heat in the warehouse. After neither incident did Coach nor Remedy ask Antonia whether she needed to see a doctor. Each time, she was sent to an onsite medical room, given ice or water, then expected to return to work. She was forced to seek out and pay for medical treatment on her own for her ankle injury, and doubts that the injury was even logged by her employers.

Antonia explains that temp workers in Jacksonville’s industrial parks are often placed in more dangerous jobs than permanent workers at their worksites, safety training is lacking, and host employers fail to show concern, treating temps as disposable. “As a temp, they don’t care about your safety, or us as people,” she says. “Everybody is expendable because the staffing agency can always get another person to work that position.”^[5]

As a “permatemp” at Coach for four long years, she worked with stagnant wages, no benefits, no paid time off, no sick time, “no freedom” to balance her life with her work. She earned less in wages and benefits than permanent workers, and unlike them, her seniority provided her no say in selecting a floor assignment.^[6]

When she was finally offered a permanent position for a meager 25-cent raise, she quit. After her 4 long years, she says the offer “made me feel like I had no value.”^[7]

Antonia found a job in daycare, and she does hair for extra money—she hopes to open her own salon one day.

Although Antonia is no longer a temp worker, her years of experience as one, the trauma of losing Day to a temp job, and her younger brother’s current temp employment, have made her a fierce advocate for temp worker rights. She joined the National Temp Worker Council of a national temp worker advocacy group called Temp Worker Justice (TWJ) in 2020. Through her work with TWJ, she’s speaking out and raising awareness about the dangers and insecurity of temp work, the inequity it creates in workplaces, and she’s fighting to make work better and safer for temp workers like her younger brother.

Antonia’s family’s experience working for companies that employ workers through staffing agencies—the grave health and safety issues they have had to deal with, the permatemping, the wage and benefit penalties relative to permanent and directly hired workers—is indicative of the experience of millions of temp workers in the United States. Remedy Intelligent Staffing is part of a large, globalized temporary help and staffing industry that supplies labor to companies that have decided to temp out their workforces in nearly every U.S. industry.^[8] And Coach is just one of many corporations that contract work throughout their supply chains to staffing agencies rather than hiring workers directly.^[9]  See the diagram below for more information on “temp” work players and relationships.

In December 2021, nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, employment via U.S. temporary help and staffing agencies was 2.8 million.^[10] According to temp industry estimates, between 13 and 16 million U.S. workers find work via staffing agencies each year.^[11]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a surge in e-commerce has spurred growth in industries such as warehousing, where companies use temporary help and staffing agencies at a relatively high rate.^[12] In March 2020, days after the pandemic was declared, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, whose members including Walmart and Kroger, partnered with the staffing industry’s largest trade group, the American Staffing Association, to launch a staffing agency database where retailers could find labor to supply their warehousing, retail store, and other operations.^[13]

After a drop during the first month of the pandemic, growth in the volume of temp work has outstripped that of all private sector work by a factor of 2.5.^[14] U.S. staffing industry revenue was projected to grow 16 percent to a record $157.4 billion in 2021.^[15]

The prevalence and projected growth of companies employing workers via staffing agencies is a concern. Evidence shows that, under current law and employer practice, a host employer contracting out work to a staffing agency reduces job quality for workers, and breeds inequality and racial segregation within workplaces and in the broader labor market.^[16]

To better understand the job quality issues that temp workers face, Temp Worker Justice (TWJ) partnered with several worker and advocacy groups—the Chicago Workers Collaborative, Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, New Labor (New Jersey), Warehouse Workers for Justice (Illinois), the North Carolina Justice Center, and the National Employment Law Project—on a national survey project between 2019 and 2021. In total, 1,337 workers from 47 U.S. states participated in the TWJ Survey Series. Temp workers employed by staffing agencies including Aerotek, Adecco, Manpower Group, Kelly Services, Robert Half, and Randstad, and working for host employers including Amazon, Walmart, Google, and Tyson Foods, answered questions about issues like pay, benefits, health and safety, discrimination, and employer retaliation. See the Appendix for more on the TWJ Survey Series methodology and sample.

Key findings from the TWJ Survey Series:

• Wage theft: Nearly 1 in 4 (24% of) temp workers reported that, while working as a temp, their employers have stolen wages from them in at least one of three ways—paid less than the minimum wage, failed to pay the overtime rate, or failed to pay for all hours worked.
• “Permatemping”: More than 1 in 3 (35% of) temp workers reported that their current temp assignment had lasted over 1 year, and 18 percent reported that their current temp assignment had lasted over 2 years.
• Workplace injury: More than 1 in 6 (17% of) temp workers reported experiencing a work-related injury or illness while employed through a staffing agency. Of those workers who reported experiencing a work-related injury or illness, 41 percent said that they covered healthcare costs themselves, out of pocket or through their own health insurance.
• Employer retaliation: Nearly 3 in 4 (71% of) temp workers said that they experienced some form of retaliation for raising workplace issues with a supervisor or management.
• Interest in joining a worker organization: Fully 4 in 5 (80% of) temp workers reported interest in joining a worker organization like a union that works to improve conditions for temp workers.

Temp workers are organizing in their workplaces and advancing public policy campaigns to address the issues listed above, as well as others.

This report provides an overview of key temp worker job quality issues, drawing on government data and the TWJ Survey Series.  The stories of temp worker leaders and groups leading efforts to improve conditions for temp and all workers are featured throughout the report. The final section of the report provides a roadmap for worker groups, advocates, and policymakers looking to raise standards for temp workers and all workers in the U.S.