In the January 18, 2010 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, writers Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin, Moira Herbst and Carol Matlack penned an article titled “The Disposable Worker”. This negative article painted a picture of temporary workers as abused and undervalued by the corporations who work with them. These writers could not be further from the truth.
Peter Cappelli of the Wharton Business School laments that “the brutal recession has prompted companies to create Just-In-Time labor forces”, where companies hold all the power and “all the risks are pushed to employees”. Professor Cappelli is partially correct in that companies ARE moving to Just-In Time human capital supply chains, but for different reasons. Cappelli and the writers paint a picture of greddy corporate executives taking advantage of temporary workers to fatten their profits and bonuses. Except for the Gordon Gekkos of the banking/investment industry, this is not true. Whether we Americans like it or not, the world is not standing still and companies around the world are producing products and services at costs lower than the United States. In the past, we could ignore their footsteps because of their shoddy workmanship and poor quality, BUT NO MORE. We need to develop less expensive quality sources of labor and the U.S. Temporary “nonstandard” Worker is our greatest resource.
The writers also state that 26% of U.S. workers are nonstandard who are “easy to shuck off when unneeded” and includes temps, independent contractors, part-timers, and freelancers. Because the writers are ‘Stuck In The Past”, they missed the point that the American workforce has changed and workers no longer work their entire life for the same company with a lifetime pension and 100% benefits forever. Those days are gone !!!
Americans are an independent lot of people that would rather depend upon themselves than any company or government. We prefer to manage our own careers, use our 401k to save for our own retirement, pay our own way through college and choose what doctors we see. When you think about it, the Temporary “nonstandard” lifestyle is a better fit for the American free spirit than wearing a corporate blue suit every day.
At first, I thought the writers were members of the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters with their antiquated view of the American worker. The fall of the American auto and steel industries should be proof enough that the unionized approach to unbending work rules, the normalization of the American worker and 1960’s style pensions/benefits are no longer competitive in today’s integrated global economy. The flexible Temp model is the business model of the future that can help raise Americans back to the peak of economic power and improved wages for all workers.
The problem with the Land of Layoffs that America is currently experiencing relates to the fact that companies of any size are terrible at predicting their workforce needs over time and have never invested in workforce planning technologies to improve that situation. We have spent billion on improving the just-in-time delivery of parts to our factories to reduce waste and rework, BUT we have not spent an equal amount of time and money to better understand and manage our Human Capital Supply Chains. Maybe NOW is the time for that change.
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