I’ve signed on with temp agencies twice in my life: once in New York City and now in Wisconsin. The temp agency I worked for in New York was as corporate as they come, complete with the high-ceiling office, the arbitration clause, the low hourly wages and that helpful 180-day non-compete clause.
Yes, that means unless the staffing agency places you in a temp-to-permanent position, you’re not allowed to immediately apply for a job at the company where you’ve been making connections and gaining experience. A lot of us fail to read this small print.
This temp agency placed me at HarperCollins doing administrative work for two months. It was great: I got to meet a lot of book-wormy types and fish around on the bookshelves for galley copies. Sure, there were plenty of downfalls, too. For example, I didn’t get paid much, I had to clock out for my lunch break and I was treated like a temp — I never felt included in the department.
Still, particularly as a recent MFA graduate, I loved publishing. The moment my placement was up, I applied to Harper, hoping they might let the temp agency rule slide. Nope. When I got ahold of someone in human resources, I learned they wouldn’t consider hiring me for a full year to avoid paying the temp agency a referral bonus. So much for all that schmoozing.
After that, I avoided temp agencies for a long time. But after finding myself stuck between a dead-end job and some sporadic adjunct teaching this year, I found myself lured again by the bottom feeders with promises of a stimulating, well-paying job that (of course) would want to hire me permanently after my temp placement.
This time around, the temp agency insinuated this placement would let me write their newsletter, that I wouldn’t “just be doing administrative work” and the organization would have a full-time position with benefits opening up soon. Unlike the temp agency in New York, this agency’s non-compete clause is only three months long.
Still, the position pays low wages, there’s no guarantee of full-time employment and I don’t get to write the newsletter. I mostly do boring administrative work. And simply for processing payroll and mailing me a check, the temp agency takes 30 percent of my paycheck.
While this isn’t advantageous to me, “this industry of middlemen provides huge savings for … companies,” Adam Satariano and Spencer Soper wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Then there’s me, the temp, puttering away at the front desk, barely making ends meet. At staff meetings, I get to hear about the raises the permanent employees are getting and how many paid holidays they enjoy. I’m not sure if my coworkers know how different my experience — and pay — is.
Almost anyone who has job searched in recent years knows where to look — there’s Monster.com, Idealist.org, Indeed.com, LinkedIn and Craigslist. In the online age, temp agencies should be obsolete. Instead, they’re proliferating at a frightening pace. Companies are “institutionalizing a permanent tier of temporary workers.”
“The problem is growing as [temps] account for 2.1 percent of the U.S. workforce — an all-time high, according to the Department of Labor,” Satariano and Soper wrote.
What’s the answer? We can’t stop the demand, but we could temper the supply. After this last stint as a “variable cost” to help “improve operating margins” — as one recruiting agency describes temps — I’m done.
Sara DeGregoria ([email protected]) is a UW graduate, blogs regularly at Prog Chik http://progchik.com/ and tweets @ProgChik.