Overview

Despite its geographic and industry expansion as part of the ongoing globalisation of service activity, temporary agency work (TAW) is relatively understudied. TAW is characterised by a distinct triangular structure where workers are typically hired by staffing or employment agencies while being ’dispatched’ to firms that use them as a type of temporary or non-regular labour. This agency-mediated labour dispatching, as a newly institutionalised industry, has registered rapid growth rates over recent decades across vast swathes of the globe. To a great degree, TAW is part of a wider structural transformation of work and employment under neoliberalism. Arguably, controversy over the expanding non-regular workforce is at its most acute when it comes to unsavoury labour-selling practices. In this connection, TAW is an exemplary field in which to examine today’s ’flexible’ capitalism and its concomitant phenomenon, i.e. ’inequality’. Featuring holistic and interdisciplinary perspectives, this edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of TAW, in an international context. It reveals how the TAW industry is intertwined with the changing relationship between the state, corporations and labour unions at the institutional-structural level, and also the perceptions and experiences of ordinary workers in everyday practice. By combining global and local forces, macro and micro levels of analysis, and theoretical and empirical investigations, the book offers fresh insights into recurring issues of labour flexibility and inequality, contributes to practical applications and facilitates fruitful cross-national collaborations.

Full Product Details

Author:   Huiyan Fu
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9780367879839

ISBN 10:   0367879832
Pages:   264
Publication Date:   12 December 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Selling flexibility, institutionalising insecurity: the US temporary agency work industry in the 1970s. Bridges or traps? Employment precariousness, temporary agency work and the labour market status of MG Rover workers four years after plant closure. Temporary agency work in Australia, Germany and Singapore. The temporary agency work industry and its regulatory environment: evidence from Australia. Dispatched labour in South Korea: regulatory issues and causal analysis. Fragmented work in post-bubble Japan: negotiating identity, gender, age and class in triangular employment relationships. Labour flexibility in an already flexible market: temporary agency work in Brazil. Selling flexibility, institutionalising insecurity: the US temporary agency work industry in the 1970s. Bridges or traps? Employment precariousness, temporary agency work and the labour market status of MG Rover workers four years after plant closure. Temporary agency work in Australia, Germany and Singapore. The temporary agency work industry and its regulatory environment: evidence from Australia. Dispatched labour in South Korea: regulatory issues and causal analysis. Fragmented work in post-bubble Japan: negotiating identity, gender, age and class in triangular employment relationships. Labour flexibility in an already flexible market: temporary agency work in Brazil.

Reviews

'By taking temporary labour placement as a strategic lens of analysis, the contributors shed new light on the intersections between changes in the macro political economy, industrial reconfigurations and regulatory adjustments, and individual experiences and perceptions. Well written and exceptionally coherent, the volume makes important contributions to the studies of labour relations, globalization, migration and neoliberalism.' Xiang Biao, University of Oxford, UK 'As all jobs become more temporary, this volume offers a vital, global portrait of the wellspring of this job-degrading flexibilization: the temporary help agency industry itself. This sobering volume sounds a much-needed alarm about a future work trajectory that must be avoided at all costs.' Chris Tilly, Director, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, USA 'It is an edited book with a good collection of research papers from eminent international scholars and authors. It contains diagrams, tables and lots of references that serve as a foundation for further research on temporary agency work. This book is useful for human resources scholars, practitioners and leaders at all levels. Enjoy reading this book!' Professor M.S. Rao, Amazon.com review, May 2015

'By taking temporary labour placement as a strategic lens of analysis, the contributors shed new light on the intersections between changes in the macro political economy, industrial reconfigurations and regulatory adjustments, and individual experiences and perceptions. Well written and exceptionally coherent, the volume makes important contributions to the studies of labour relations, globalization, migration and neoliberalism.' Xiang Biao, University of Oxford, UK 'As all jobs become more temporary, this volume offers a vital, global portrait of the wellspring of this job-degrading flexibilization : the temporary help agency industry itself. This sobering volume sounds a much-needed alarm about a future work trajectory that must be avoided at all costs.' Chris Tilly, Director, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, USA 'It is an edited book with a good collection of research papers from eminent international scholars and authors. It contains diagrams, tables and lots of references that serve as a foundation for further research on temporary agency work. This book is useful for human resources scholars, practitioners and leaders at all levels. Enjoy reading this book!' Professor M.S. Rao, Amazon.com review, May 2015

Author Information

Huiyan Fu holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Oxford. Working at the intersection of social anthropology and international business, she has previously taught as a visiting professor at Aalen University in Germany and is currently a senior lecturer at Regent’s University London. She is the author of An Emerging Non-Regular Labour Force in Japan: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers (Routledge/Nissan Institute Japanese Studies, 2011).

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