America's Second-largest Employer Is a Temp Agency 541
cold fjord writes "From the Examiner: '...the second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a temporary work provider. ... part-time jobs are at an all-time high, with 28 million Americans now working part-time. ... There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs. Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing. ... Temp jobs made up about 10 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, but now make up a tenth of the jobs in the United States. In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary.' The NYT has a chart detailing the problem."
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they'll just all follow suit with Wal Mart and make sure nobody ever gets enough hours to tip over that threshold.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every American is the beneficiary of the government in some way or form so we all have conflicts of interest. It's not like these workers can somehow vote in a way that impacts their compensation or that they are all that well paid compared to the private sector in the first place.
Re:Out with the old... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, temp can mean anything
Temp only means one thing, "we're cheating you out of benefits".
Re:lack of unions and workers rights (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all for naught anyways. Our population and technology has out paced job growth. We need to realize there simply wont be any more jobs for the majority of the population as time marches forward. Unions wont matter, free markets wont matter. The only thing that will matter is how governments will deal with rationing out services to their population. Eventually everything will just be entirely automated, so we will have to deal with a lot of free time to continue our educations and explore the world. Stuff like arguing over unions, capitalism, socialism is pointless. We're on the cusp of it all being entirely irrelevant.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, I get my salary from the rest of the population, too. If people didn't purchase my companies products I assure you I wouldn't get paid once the cash reserves dried up.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but in your case the rest of the populace gets to choose whether to buy your stuff or not.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, to be honest, this is the making of (D) politics and policies. The world doesn't work like those that live in ivory towers believe. While trying to help th "little guy" by passing things like ObamaCare, have dramatically changed how the little guy is employed. No longer able to find full time work (thanks Reid/Pelosi) because employers cut back "full time" employees to part time, and from 40 Hours to 25 hours a week to avoid increases in costs due to ObamaCare.
Then all the liberals start whining about how "unfair" it is that employers try to save their businesses by not incurring new taxes (aka ObamaCare). Well who didn't see this coming? Well, Reid and Pelosi didn't. Probably, because they didn't read the bill until after it was passed. And that is what you get when you don't read something before you vote on it.
So, if you want to blame anyone, blame those that tried, and failed, to fix a problem by making it worse than it was before. Oh, and delay the implementation of ObamaCare until after the next election. If you voted for these clowns, you're getting the idocracy you so deserve.
Re:ObamaCare, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies shouldn't have to worry about providing insurance to workers, regardless. They should be able to focus on the cost of running their business with static expenses. Countries like Denmark has some of the highest individual entrepreneurship rates in the world. Why? Because the government takes care of providing health care to everyone, as well as all schooling through college. Obviously these are all funded through higher tax rates, but it leaves a lot of unknown headaches from businesses and manages to provide everyone an opportunity to succeed.
Re:It Will Only Increase Because of Obamacare (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
Single-payer health care would definitely be a way to fix this.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then all the liberals start whining about how "unfair" it is that employers try to save their businesses by not incurring new taxes
Yeah, because it's just oh so great that the businesses are "saved" by pissing on their employees and not providing them with adequate health care coverage.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Obamacare is a Republican idea. That's the reason that it's a byzantine maze of profiteering middlemen: Republicans love their corporate welfare.
Liberals originally wanted single-payer system like that found in most civilized countries.
Re:Lack of commitment (Score:4, Insightful)
Having worked in IT for over a decade now, I can say that computers do suck. I don't know anyone with my amount of experience that isn't burned out to the point of having no soul left. Problem is, being burned out, motivation is extremely low so that makes it difficult to find something you WANT to do. Then the effort of retraining. The risk of quitting, finding a new job. So you stay in IT because, hell, at least you know what to do and it brings in a pay check.
If anyone has a good solution please let me know.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:lack of unions and workers rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Feudalism.
Entertainment and Servants. The rest starve.
Re:Economy Needs To Transition (Score:4, Insightful)
These are mutually exclusive. Welfare programs have to be paid for by taking money from somebody. If you're reducing the amount people work, you're cutting their pay (ask all the government workers who now have mandatory furloughs; less working hours is a cut in pay), and then on top of that you're asking to take more money from them to provide money for people who are not working.
They are only mutually exclusive if productivity never increases. Our society has been able to function more or less effectively even when the rich get the lion's share of the benefits of productivity increases because the average person has also had their standard of living increase. But once automation really sets in to the point where the middle class is not necessary for our modern economy (like 98% of civilized human history), the wealthy will either have to start mass murdering protestors or start giving the newly unemployable masses a good quality of life.
We have seen a strong expansion of the upper middle class over the past few decades (which almost didn't exist before the 80s). I see this continuing until there are three clear classes: lower class, upper-middle class, wealthy. The upper-middle class and wealthy will have to give the lower class a standard of living high enough to prevent revolt, which will probably mean part time jobs and welfare programs.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:1, Insightful)
Dont like what you wanted? Maybe you should have read the bill before passing it.
Re:lack of unions and workers rights (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
Democrats overwhelmingly voted for it.
The Democrats wrote it.
The Democrats pushed for it.
The Democrats voted for it.
The Democrats single-handedly passed it.
Yet you are now already calling it a Republican bill, even before its been fully implemented. Seems to me that Democrats never want to take responsibility for the shit they do.
Before you go on some diatribe about the bill being similar to the one passed in Mitt Romney's State of Massachusetts, that State is damn near as Democrat as it gets. You dont get to escape responsibility by pointing out that a State notoriously run by Democrats implemented it first. The Democrats own the health care bill lock, stock, and barrel. Its all yours.
Admit that you guys fucked up really badly, or be proud of it. Dont try to blame others for the shit you did.
Re:lack of unions and workers rights (Score:2, Insightful)
Go work in a factory or in food service for a couple of weeks and you'll get it.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's why it originated from that well-known Republican state, Massachusetts.
No, it originated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
An individual mandate to purchase insurance is indeed just about the only possible way to try to awkwardly cram "free marketness" onto health insurance.
Completely false. Obamacare was passed with Dems having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and having control of the House. If they wanted single-payer, they would have made single-payer. They wanted Obamacare instead, as a hand-out to their friends in the health care industry.
You're mistakenly conflating Democrats with Liberals. There are many Democrats in tossup districts, who probably figured it would be better to fix healthcare with Republican ideas, so as to fend off challenges by Republican rivals. What Democrats probably didn't count on was that the Republican base is so incredibly ignorant, that they could be trivially reprogrammed to think what were once their own party's market-driven, individual-responsibility policies are now radical socialist handouts to slackers.
Re: lack of unions and workers rights (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me stop you right there chief. You are sorely mistaken. About most everything you said. Much of the blueprint for Obamacare came from Romney's work in MA. Romney is a Republican, and it was very much a compromise effort.That being said, real liberals (not Obama) want health care to be a fundamental right, and single payer is the most popular method for achieving the practical side of this. Republicans want health care to be a choice, a market commodity. Obamacare was an attempt to get more people covered, and slightly widen patient rights (eg coverage for people with pre-existing conditions). Additionally, the biggest mistake you can make is to consider Dems liberals. They are centrists, with a few liberals and a good chunk of conservatives (google blue dog democrats) rounding out party composition.
Re:It Will Only Increase Because of Obamacare (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely agree. Obamacare is very business unfriendly. A Canadian style system where the employer bears no specific responsibility because healthcare is paid out of general taxes would be much more business friendly. Toyota, for one, certainly thought so when a major reason they put a plant in Canada instead of the US was Canadian healthcare. Republicans should also value maximizing the benefit for the money spent, and Canadian healthcare, which costs only 2/3 of the US, certainly qualifies as a savings.
So why aren't Republicans, with their concerns for business friendliness and cost effectiveness, pushing for Canadian style healthcare? It's an obvious win-win.
Re:lack of unions and workers rights (Score:5, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with "your time" it has to do with being on your feet and doing physical labor for 60hrs+, the physical toll that has on the body and trying to discourage employers from scheduling those kinds of shifts by making it cheaper to hire more people instead. Lastly, your employer isn't required to pay you overtime or give you comp time, but they certainly can if they so choose. Mine does. It's up to you to chose a job that fits your lifestyle. You have a white-collar job even if you don't really believe it. The people doing the manual labor in this country need special protections that you and I do not. What you and I find irritating, may injure or even kill someone working in a factory.
Re:Corporate executives are smart. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: lack of unions and workers rights (Score:5, Insightful)
My brother retired from a supermarket where he was the meat market manager. About 6 months later he found himself sitting on the couch gaining weight and decided to get a job to have something to do. He got a part time job at another store and worked there about a year before quitting. The reason? His part time job went from 30 hours a week to 60. They were working him to death and he couldn't get them to let him take time off. He had to quit to go fishing.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It Will Only Increase Because of Obamacare (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding? "Job Creators" will be the first people to whine about the corresponding tax increases to cover that kind of scheme.
People like to think money for this kind of stuff just comes from some magical pocket universe somewhere. That's not the case. Spain and Greece are great examples of this.
People need to get over this idea that the idle rich are "job creators".
It's the people who make products and provide services who create jobs and support the economy. For the most part, these people are not rich enough to be paying the top tax bracket.