manpower temp
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.prwatch.org/node/12925</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Global Corporation Fights Obama Executive Order Holding Federal Contractors Accountable for Labor Law Violations</font></strong></h3><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2013 a U.S. Senate committee exposed the fact that too many federal contractors are violating federal wage laws and health and safety standards, yet continue to profit off of U.S. taxpayers with repeat contracts.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On July 1, 2014, President Obama acted on recommendations in the report and signed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order “to protect workers, taxpayers, and law-abiding businesses, and to make sure we’re getting what we pay for.” The order requires federal contract applicants to disclose labor violations from the past three years and it requires federal agencies to take this information into account when awarding federal contracts.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cue the hysteria.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This Labor Day, President Obama’s push to hold federal contractors to account for violating federal wage and safety laws is coming under assault from some very big companies, and it comes as no surprise that giant temp firm Manpower is crying the biggest crocodile tears.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Manpower Model: Pay Less and Pocket the Profits</font></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ManpowerGroup, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the world's second-largest temporary staffing company (after Switzerland's Adecco). <a href="http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/MAN/24066740x0x816369/9CEB2FBF-9542-477B-9689-1719C69F4FBC/ManpowerGroup_OptPDF.PDF" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">According to its annual report</a>, the company had global revenues of $20.8 billion and operating profits of $3.5 billion in 2014. Across all of its divisions, Manpower reports linking <a href="http://www.manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/0f410928-6700-4a10-a6cb-e697b7df7e94/ManpowerGroup-Fact-Sheet-13.pdf?MOD=AJPERES" style="text-decoration: none;">3.4 million people worldwide</a> to temporary, contract, and permanent positions.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Founded in the 1940s, companies like Manpower and Kelly Services cleverly portrayed temporary work as "women's work" in big dollar advertising campaigns, suggesting that temps were housewives working for pin money. While Kelly Services promoted “Kelly Girls,” Manpower spent a whopping <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">$1 million in 1961</a> to put its “White Glove Girls” in the Sunday issue of big city newspapers. With the help of these gender stereotypes, temp agencies established "a new sector of low-wage, unreliable work" exempt from many of protections workers enjoyed in other parts of the economy, explains Erin Hatton, an assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo writing for the <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><em>New York Times</em></a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Today, the United States almost 3 million temp workers and a large portion of the growth in jobs since the 2008 financial crisis has been in the temp sector. "Temporary work has become a mainstay of the economy," <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-temps-who-power-corporate-giants-are-getting-crushe" style="text-decoration: none;">says <em>ProPublica</em></a> and temp services firms “are among the largest employers in the United States.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Temp work is also moving higher and higher up the income ladder. One reason why manufacturing jobs in the United States are now in the bottom half of all jobs in terms of pay is an increased reliance on temp workers, says the National Employment Law Project (NELP). <a href="http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/2015/03/Manufacturing-Low-Pay-Declining-Wages-Jobs-Built-Middle-Class.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">According to NELP</a>: "About 14 percent of auto parts workers are employed by staffing agencies,” and these workers on average make 29 percent less than those employed directly by auto parts manufacturers.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Only a tiny percentage of temp workers get health care or other benefits and temp workers earn an average of <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-temps-who-power-corporate-giants-are-getting-crushe" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">25 percent less</a> than equivalent permanent workers as the temp agencies pocket the difference. Taxpayers are being asked to subsidize this low-road model when temp agencies provide workers for state and federal contracts.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Repeat Violators Keep Profiting from Federal Contracts</font></h2><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12925#sthash.JYAlE1uh.dpuf</font></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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