Abstracts/Résumés
THE PROLIFERATION AND CONSEQUENCES OF TEMPORARY HELP WORK: A CROSS-BORDER COMPARISON
| David Van Arsdale Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, State University of New York (SUNY), Onondaga Community College, Syracuse, New York, United States of America |
Michael Mandarino Researcher, Labour and International Union of North America, Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
In the summer of 2008, we set out to hear from Ontario´s growing population of temporary help workers, also known as, temporary service workers. Having already conducted studies of temporary help workers in the United States, we sought to compare the working conditions of temporary workers in Ontario to those of workers south of the border. We visited temporary agencies in Toronto and conducted in-depth interviews with over a dozen temporary help workers. Their circumstances are not unlike those of their U.S. counterparts — they are not adequately rewarded for their vital on-call role in contemporary capitalism and they become "stuck" in this relatively new type of work, unable to find and secure full-time employment.
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