El. knyga: Temporary Work, Agencies and Unfree Labour: Insecurity in the New World of Work [Taylor & Francis e-book]

It is supposed to be the freest labor in the world. The worker picks ad chooses the type of labor he or she want to provide, and to some extent, the hours, compensation, and duration of employment. This would be true, if the worker had any other option than to take temporary labor, or had access to labor organizations such as unions. These nine articles examine the true nature of temporary work around the world, particularly where the temporary ways of the worklife (no benefits, little accommodation) are hurtful to the workers. Topics include insecurity in the new world of work, temporary staffing in a volatile economy, regulation in the European Union, placing Filipino caregivers in Canadian homes, the creation of distinctive national temporary staffing markets, the persistence of unfree labor in South Africa and Namibia, the emerging temporary worker market in China, the regulation of unfree temporary work in the UK, and leased labor and the erosion of workers' protection in Quebec. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. In this sense the debates among and between Marxist and orthodox economic historians about the incompatibility of capitalism and unfree labor are moot: the International Labour Organisation has identified forced, coerced, and unfree labor as a contemporary issue of global concern. Previously hidden forms of unfree labor have emerged in parallel with several other well-documented trends affecting labor conditions, rights, and modes of regulation. These evolving types of unfree labor include the increasing normalization of contingent work (and, by extension, the undermining of the standard contract of employment), and an increase in labor intermediation. The normative, political, and numerical rise of temporary employment agencies in many countries in the last three decades is indicative of these trends.

It is in the context of this rapidly changing landscape that this book consolidates and expands on research designed to understand new institutions for work in the global era. This edited collection provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the links between unfree labor, intermediation, and modes of regulation, with particular focus on the evolving institutional forms and political-economic contexts that have been implicated in, and shaped by, the ascendency of temp agencies. What is distinctive about this collection is this bi-focal lens: it makes a substantial theoretical contribution by linking disparate literatures on, and debates about, the co-evolution of contingent work and unfree labor, new forms of labor intermediation, and different regulatory approaches; but it further lays the foundation for this theory in a series of empirically rich and geographically diverse case studies. This integrative approach is grounded in a cross-national comparative framework, using this approach as the basis for assessing how, and to what extent, temporary agency work can be considered unfree wage labor