Contingent And Alternative Employment Arrangements

Business structures, employment relationships, job characteristics, and worker outcomes have changed in the United States over the last few decadesâ€"in some ways unpredictably. A high level of interest exists among policy makers and researchers in addressing concerns about the future of work in the United States. These concerns are heightened by the perceived fracturing of relationships between workers and employers, the loss of safety net protections and benefits to workers, the growing importance of access to skills and education as the impacts of new technologies and automation are felt, and the market-based pressure that companies face to produce short-term profits, sometimes at the expense of long-term value. These issues, as well as related ones such as wage stagnation and job quality, are often associated with alternative work arrangements (AWAs)â€"which include independent-contractor and other nonemployee jobs, work through intermediaries such as temporary help agencies and other contract companies, and work with unpredictable schedulesâ€"although they also pertain to many standard jobs. A better understanding of the magnitude of and trends in AWAs, along with the implications for job quality, is needed to develop appropriate policies in response to the changing nature of work. Measuring Alternative Work Arrangements for Research and Policy reviews the Contigent Worker Supplement (CWS) of the Current Population Survey (CPS) for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the U.S. Department of Labor. The CWS provides key measures of temporary (contingent) work, alternative work arrangements, and the "gig" economy. Disagreements, however, exist among researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders about the definitions and measures of these concepts and priorities for future data collection. The report also reviews measures of employment, earnings, and worker well-being in temporary and alternative work arrangements that can be estimated using household survey data, such as those generated by the CWS, as well as measures that can be produced using administrative, commercial, and combined data sources. The comparative advantages and complementarities of different data sources will be assessed, as well as methodological issues underpinning BLS's measurement objectives.

Analyzes the personal and job characteristics of workers supplied by temporary help agencies and in temporary employment. Discusses policy implications of temporary employment and working conditions of contingent workers. Covers trends from 1982 to 1998.

This book provides an overview of the facts and issues of nonstandard employment in the countries where this labor market phenomenon has been most studied: the United States, Japan, and the European Union

The successful 1997 strike by the Teamsters against UPS, and the overwhelming support the American public gave the strikers highlighted the impact of contingent work—an umbrella term for a variety of tenuous and insecure employment arrangements such as temping, independent contracting, employee leasing, and some self-employment and part-time or part-year work. This new book contends that contingent work represents a profound deviation from the employment relations model that dominated most of this century's labor relations. It delineates essential features of contingent work from both the worker's and the organization's point of view. Articulating a variety of perspectives from various disciplines, the contributors examine the business forces driving contingent work and assess the consequences of working contingently for the individual, family, and community, taking into account issues of race, class, and gender. They ask how current labor and employment laws need to be rewritten to provide contingent workers with the same comprehensive protections offered to permanent employees. In the final chapter, the editors comment on the status of research on contingent work and chart future research directions.