Skip to main content

labor

America Has a Permanent Temp Worker Problem

David Van Arsdale The Indypendent
worker loooking at computer screen Over the last few decades, the employee-employer relationship has been hollowed-out...by the staffing industry and businesses that want to “hire” workers without the regulations and obligations that come with officially employing them.

Temp Organizing Gets Big Boost from NLRB

Harris Freeman and George Gonos Labor Notes
The new joint-employer standard provides a much more favorable legal framework for workers to form unions at temped-out warehouses, manufacturing and food processing plants, recycling facilities, hotels, and franchised janitorial services and fast food outlets.

Temporary Work, Lasting Harm

Michael Grabell, Olga Pierce and Jeff Larson ProPublica
Since the 2008 recession, companies have increasingly turned to temporary employees to work in factories and warehouses and on construction sites. The temp industry now employs a record 2.8 million workers.The trend carries a human cost. A ProPublica analysis of millions of workers’ compensation claims shows that in five states, representing more than a fifth of the U.S. population, temps face a significantly greater risk of getting injured on the job.

labor

Unions Focus Organizing Efforts on Service Sector Workplaces

Lorraine Mirabella Baltimore Sun
Labor experts say unions are focusing on the hospitality field and less traditionally unionized workplaces - car washes, retailers, taxi and limo companies - as membership rolls have decreased. The percentage of private sector workers represented by unions has fallen from a peak of about 35 percent in the mid 1950s to about 7 percent, said Fred Feinstein, a former general counsel with the National Labor Relations Board who now works as a union.

labor

Amazon's Labor Relations Under Scrutiny in Germany

JACK EWING The New York Times
The latest skirmish in an escalating battle between ver.di, one of the largest unions in Germany, and Amazon, which employs 8,000 permanent workers at eight distribution centers in the country, one of the online retailer’s largest markets outside the United States. Deservedly or not, Amazon’s labor relations have lately come under intense scrutiny by German media.
Subscribe to temporary workers