Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406070113
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER|
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Again.
She's lost count of how many times that's happened in the past 11 years.
But she's been with the same company for most of those 11 years. How's that?
Wheeling, 41, works through Adia Personnel Services, an international employment service with an office in Roanoke.
The job she is losing this time will be more difficult to give up than the others. She has been a secretary for the construction contractor doing work at Yokohama Tire Co. The job has lasted for more than a year and it pays better than most: $6.50 an hour compared to, typically, $5 an hour.
"Like anywhere else, you got to keep a roof over your head, you got to do what you got to do," Wheeling said. "So I've always had a part-time job on the side. You got to have something to fill in the gaps."
Filling in the gaps is how temporary services found their niche, but the agencies have used that niche as a wedge and their employees now make up a large portion of the work force in some cities.
The three categories of contingent workers - temporaries, part-timers and contractual workers - comprise the fastest growing sector of the labor market. Virginia Tech sociology professor William Snizek says 1993 figures show contingent workers make up a third of the country's work force.
Criticism from academics and questions from the media have increased as the number of temporary employees has grown. Time magazine last year ran a commentary called "The Temping of America," in which it calculated contingent workers would make up half of the work force by the end of the decade.
Though that prediction may seem far-fetched, Atlanta-based Norrell Services just has to look out its headquarters window to see that it could come true. Sylvia Raye, development coordinator with Norrell, says Atlanta has more than 300 temporary agencies. Roanoke has about a dozen.
Norrell calculated that the Roanoke Valley needed yet another agency, and last month encouraged its Blacksburg franchise owner to set up a second operation in the valley. Raye estimated 18 to 20 percent of the valley's work force has some sort of non-permanent job.
To get away from their Kelly Girl stereotype, the agencies now shy away from being called "temp services." Most prefer "personnel services."
Even if the stigma remains, the agencies contend their services and workers permit client companies to hire fewer full-time workers, saving money in payroll and benefits, such as health care and insurance.
Lynn Miller, who owns Adia franchises in Roanoke, Lynchburg and Altavista, says the bashing of temporary services is invalid.
"The criticisms we're getting from the media is these people going in are mistreated ... they go in at lower pay rates," Miller said. "We don't pay as well as full time, but we're close."
Whatever the drawbacks, businesses in Western Virginia as well as the rest of the country have latched onto temporary workers as a means of staying flexible.
Companies have learned that hiring workers through one of the services means they can lay off employees as soon as a business downturn hits. And from a public relations aspect, sending workers back to an employment service isn't nearly as messy as announcing the layoffs of full-time employees.
Some time this fall, crunch time will hit at Elizabeth Arden Co.'s manufacturing and shipping operations in Roanoke. The international cosmetics and fragrance maker couldn't handle the pre-Christmas workload without temporary hires.
Elizabeth Arden's temporary work force, in fact, will likely outnumber its permanent workers, as it did last year. Plant Manager Don Hergrueter says Elizabeth Arden will hire as many as 900 workers through Manpower Temporary Services, while the manufacturing and logistics operations employ about 800 people full time.
"It would be a major, major problem for me" without the temporaries, Hergrueter said. "I really have to take care of the peaks through the temporary agency. We have to support a business cycle, and any opportunity that does arise we will increase our permanent work force."
Sixty or more workers from Manpower have been given full-time jobs during the past two years, he said. But Elizabeth Arden would be overstaffed during its lean months if it hired more permanent workers.
But with the flexible work force comes a concern: quality. "Not everyone is easily trained that quickly," Hergrueter said.
The five dozen or so workers hired full time by Elizabeth Arden show another turn in the evolution of personnel services. Many companies are now hiring temporary workers for what amounts to tryouts for permanent jobs. If a temporary worker doesn't perform well, the company sends him back to the agency.
Tim Poch, who owns Interim Personnel franchises in Roanoke and Covington, says the new use of personnel services is called "temporary-to-full-time" employment.
"If we can see down the line that we need fewer workers in an area, we may use temporaries in the time being," said Debbie Meade, human resources director at the Roanoke Times & World-News. "It also gives you a chance to look at people before you hire them to see what they can do."
The newspaper uses temporary workers in its composing room, its mailroom and its subsidiary operation, Pinpoint Target Marketing, which delivers magazines and advertising to homes.
Meade said it is a perception and concern among employers that temporary workers may not be as loyal as full-time workers. But Virginia Tech's Snizek and James Madison University sociologist Reba Rowe Lew has found no major difference in loyalty among 400 temporary and permanent workers at a state-run organization.
"Surprisingly," Snizek said, "temporary workers reported slightly greater job satisfaction than did permanent workers."
The two sociologists suggested that present unstable work conditions for all employees might explain the similarities. They also suggested temporary workers who were trying to prove their worth to be hired full time might have something to do with the similarities.
Some temporary workers, Snizek said, don't even want to be hired full time.
"It's kind of like being a substitute teacher," he said. "You don't want to put up with the same class and lunchroom duty and chaperoning the homecoming dance. You get the variety of teaching a third-grade class one day, a kindergarten class at another school the next day."
Wheeling is one of those temporary workers: "The reason I've liked it is for the flexibility; now that I am married, I can always say, 'I'm not going to be here Friday, you've got to find someone to fill in for me.'"
As the personnel agencies have come to employ more and more people - the nationally franchised agencies in the valley each typically employ 300 to 400 people - the number of optional benefits they offer employees have expanded. Most of the national companies pay $200 to $400 a year in vacation pay to workers who put in 1,500 to 2,000 hours a year with the service. Some offer optional health-care benefits, although Adia's Miller says only about 2 percent of its employees nationwide sign up for the coverage.
"If you're making $5 an hour for production work, there's not a lot in the budget to pay for health care, not with a house and two kids," Miller said. "They think they'll hang on till they get a full-time job."
Miller says only a small part of the blame for workers without health care can be laid at the door of employment services. The agencies provide only about 5 percent of the contingent work force, she says.
The contingent work force will increase only as the country moves more into a service economy, Snizek said. Even now, 73 percent of the national labor force works in the service sector. Snizek says these workers could create a burden on the economy when they retire.
"That's going to come to roost in the decades to come," he said, "as these people with several part-time jobs retire and don't have anything but Social Security."
COUNTING THE TEMPS|
HOW MANY 627 temporary-personnel agencies in Virginia employ 42,953 temporary workers.
PAY The average weekly wage for a person working for a personnel service is $239.
IN ROANOKE Temporary service employment in the Roanoke Valley is 2,764 by the most recent official count. However, the VEC estimates that number has grown to about 3,600.
IN U.S. Nationally, the number of people employed through temporary help services in 1993 grew by 21 percent over 1992.
TOTALS More than 1.6 million people were employed through temporary services in 1993.
DOLLARS The temporary help industry in 1993 increased its payroll by 17.5 percent (over 1992) to $19,661,000.
\ Sources: Virginia Employment Commission and the National Association of Temporary Services
by CNB