Temporary Agency Work in Australia: Towards a Basic Description

Temporary agency work is a familiar phenomenon in Australia, as in most other advanced capitalist societies. This paper describes the basic features of temporary agency work and its lack of regulation in Australia. It then seeks to pave the way for an analysis that can adequately grasp both the common features and the peculiarities of the Australian case. It focuses on two main themes the distinctive employment status of temporary agency workers in Australia and the risks of an evolution from labour supplementation to labour substitution. Temporary agency work is a familiar phenomenon in Australia. The phrase itself is somewhat unfamiliar, and alternative terms such as ‘labour hire’ (applied in blue-collar occupations), ‘temping’ (applied to clerical and secretarial variants) or ‘agency nursing’ (applied in nursing) tend to be more frequently used. In this paper, however, we stick with the more general term ‘temporary agency work’ that seems to be accepted as the mainstream terminology in Europe. Conventional definitions of temporary agency work suggest that it involves “a ‘three-way’ or ‘triangular’ relationship involving a worker, a company acting as a temporary work agency and a user company, whereby the agency employs the worker and places him or her at the disposition of the user company” (Michon, 1999). Similarly, it entails a situation “whereby the temporary agency worker is employed by the temporary work agency and is then, via a commercial contract, hired out to perform work assignments at the user firm” (Storrie, 2002, 1). The key conceptual distinction is between temporary work agencies and ‘employment brokers’ or ‘employment placement agencies’ (Mangum, Mayall and Nelson, 1985, 602; Gonos, 1997, 85), or what are sometimes called in Australia ‘placement services’ (Creighton and Stewart, 2000, 13). Like temporary agencies, employment brokers are involved in triangular relationships. But the substance of the relationship is different. An employment broker is a firm that alerts job seekers to the existence of a vacancy, screens potential recruits for the employer, accepts a fee for its service, and then quietly withdraws from the scene. By contrast, a temporary work agency enters two contracts: one with the workers for the use of their labour and another with a user (or host) company to supply labour services. The temporary work agency thereby remains in an ongoing relationship with both parties. The distinction between temporary agency work and employment broking is by no means always clear, and it has been the site of a lengthy (and ongoing) history of contestation in many countries. Moreover, it is often blurred in practice. This is partly because temporary agency work in its modern form arose out of the activities of employment brokers. Moreover, many individual agencies offer both functions. Nevertheless, it is essential to make the distinction, because it points to important features of temporary agency work and important implications of its trajectory of growth. The work of employment brokers is at the edges of the employment relationship – subordinated to the task of serving short-term, largely subsidiary