Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T01:10:15.261Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“You know we are not an Employment Agency”: Manpower, Government, and the Development of the Temporary Help Industry in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Chris Forde
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article looks at the early development of the temporary help industry in Britain. It focuses on the activities of one of the largest suppliers of temporary workers, Manpower, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on material from The UK National Archives, the article examines Manpower's efforts to gain access as a genuine employer to the state employment exchange network to advertise their temporary vacancies. The article reveals the incremental changes in attitude within the government towards Manpower's activities and argues that this gave the company a competitive advantage over other employment agencies, facilitating their development of relations with the government and the trade unions in Britain over the 1970s and 1980s. The main conclusion of the article is that explicit attention needs to be paid to the actions and strategies of agencies themselves in order to develop an adequate understanding of the growth and development of the temporary help industry.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 337 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Communication Workers Union. Working in Partnership — The Recognition Agreement between Manpower and the Communication Workers Union. London: CWU, 2005.Google Scholar
Fink, Daniel. Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers are Transforming the Way we Live. New York: Warner Books, 2001.Google Scholar
Finney, Martha, and Dasch, Deborah. A Heritage of Service: The History of Temporary Help in America. Alexandria, VA: National Association of Temporary Services, 1991.Google Scholar
Grieve Smith, John. Full Employment: A Pledge Betrayed. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1997.Google Scholar
Handy, Charles. The Age of Unreason. London: Business Books, 1989.Google Scholar
Harris, Jose. Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy, 1886–1924. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Henson, Kevin. Justa Temp. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Parker, Robert. Flesh Peddlers and Warm Bodies: The Temporary Help Industry and Its Workers. Camden, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Price, David. Office of Hope. London: Policy Studies Institute, 2000.Google Scholar
Vosko, Leah. Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of the Precarious Employment Relationship. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2000.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Burgess, John and Connell, Julia. “International Aspects of Temporary Agency Employment.” In International Perspectives on Temporary Work, edited by John, Burgess and Julia, Connell, 1–23. London: Routledge, 2004.Google Scholar
Casey, Bernard. “The Extent and Nature of Temporary Employment,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 12 (1988): 487–509.Google Scholar
Davidov, Guy. “Joint Employer Status in Triangular Employment Relationships,” British Journal of Industrial Relations 42, no. 4 (2004): 727–46.Google Scholar
Elger, Tony, and Smith, Chris “New Town, New Capital, New Workplace? The Employment Relations of Japanese Inward Investors in a West Midlands Newtown.” Economy and Society 27, no. 4 (1998): 523–53.Google Scholar
Forde, Chris. “Temporary Arrangements: The Activities of Employment Agencies in the UK,” Work, Employment and Society 15, no. 3 (2001): 631–44.Google Scholar
Forde, Chris, and Gary, Slater. “;Agency Working In Britain: Character, Consequences and Regulation,” British Journal of Industrial Relations 43, no. 2 (2005): 249–71.Google Scholar
Garsten, Christina. “;Betwixt and Between: Temporary Employees as Liminal Subjects in Flexible Organisations,” Organization Studies 20 (1999): 601–17.Google Scholar
Golden, Lonnie, and Appelbaum, Eileen. “What Was Driving the 1982–1988 Boom in Temporary Employment? Preferences of Workers or Decisions and Power of Employers,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 51, no. 4 (1992): 473–93.Google Scholar
Gonos, George. “The Contest over ‘Employer Status’ in the Post-War United States: The Case of Temporary Help Firms,” Law and Society Review 31, no. 1 (1997): 81–110.Google Scholar
Gonos, George. “Fee-Splitting Revisited: Concealing Surplus Value in the Temporary Employment Relationship,” Politics Society 29, no. 4 (2001): 589–612.Google Scholar
Grabelsky, John. “Temporary Employment Agencies: Strategic Challenges Ahead.” Seminar on Workforce Developments for Union Activists, Albert Shankler Institute and the New Economy Information Service, 29th May 2001, available at: http://www.newecon.org/GrabelskyRemarks.html Google Scholar
Heery, Edmund. “The Trade Union Response to Agency Labour,” Industrial Relations Journal 35, no. 5 (2004): 434–50.Google Scholar
Heery, Edmund, Conley, Hazel, Delbridge, Rick and Paul, Stewart. “Seeking Partnership for the Contingent Workforce,” in Assessing Partnership: The Prospects for and Challenges of Modernization in Employment Relations, ed. Martinez, Lucio Miguel and Mark, Stuart. London: Routledge, 2004.Google Scholar
Kipping, Matthias. “American Management Consulting Companies in Western Europe, 1920–1990: Products, Reputation and relationships,” Business History Review 73, no. 2 (1999): 190–220.Google Scholar
Kipping, Matthias and Kirkpatrick, Ian. “Professionalism without Professions: The Case of Management Consultants.” In Redirections in the Study of Expert Labour: Law, Medicine and Management Consultancy, ed. Daniel, Muzio, Stephen, Ackroyd, and Francois, Chanlat Jean. London: Palgrave, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Kunda, Vivien, Stephen, Barley and Evans, James. “Why do Contractors Contract? The Experience of Highly Skilled Technical Professionals in a Contingent Labor Market,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 55, no. 2 (2002): 234–61.Google Scholar
Laird, Karylee and Williams, Nicolas. “Employment Growth in the Temporary Help Supply Industry,” Journal of Labor Research 17, no. 4 (1996): 663–81.Google Scholar
Mansfield, Malcolm. “Flying to the Moon: Reconsidering the British Labour Exchange System in the Early Twentieth Century,” Labour History Review 66 (2001): 24–40.Google Scholar
McKenna, Christopher. “The World’s Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century,” Enterprise & Society 2, (December 2001): 673–9.Google Scholar
Osterman, Paul, and Diane Burton, M. “Ports and ladders: the nature and relevance of internal labor markets in a changing world,” in The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organisation, ed. Stephen, Ackroyd, Rosemary, Batt, Paul, Thompson, and Pamela, Tolbert. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Peck, Jamie andNikolas, Theodore. “Temped Out? Industry Rhetoric, Labor Regulation and Economic Restructuring in the Temporary Staffing Business,“ Economic and Industrial Democracy 23, no. 2 (2002): 143–75.Google Scholar
Purcell, John, Kate, Purcell and Tailby, Stephanie. “Temporary Work Agencies: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?” British Journal of Industrial Relations 42, no. 4 (2004): 705–25.Google Scholar
Segal, Lewis, and Sullivan, Daniel. “The Growth of Temporary Services Work,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, no. 2 (1997): 117–36.Google Scholar
Smith, Vicki. “The Fractured World of the Temporary Worker: Power, Participation and Fragmentation in the Contemporary Workplace,” Social Problems 45, (November 1998): 411–30.Google Scholar
Ward, Kevin. “UK Temporary Staffing: Industry Structure and Evolutionary Dynamics,” Environment and Planning A 35 (2003): 889–907.Google Scholar

Government Reports

UK National Board for Prices and Incomes. Office Staff Employment Agencies Charges and Salaries. Report No. 89, Cmd. 3828. 1968.Google Scholar
UK House of Common. The Employment Committee Session 1980–1981: The Work of the Department of Employment Group, Minutes of Evidence. 51–8.Google Scholar
UK House of Commons. Fourth Report from the Expenditure Committee: Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Employment and Social Services SubCommittee in Sessions 1972–1973 and 1973–1974. 115–7.Google Scholar
UK Parliament. Royal Commission on Labour 1891–94: Minutes of Evidence, Reports, Commissioners 1893–94, 34.Google Scholar
UK Parliament. Committee of Enquiry into the Work of the Employment Exchanges (Barnes Committee) Minutes of Evidence, Cmd. 1140, 1921.Google Scholar
UK Parliament. Certain Matters Concerning the Port Transport Industry (Devlin) Cmd. 2734, 1964–1965.Google Scholar
UK Parliament. Certain Matters Concerning Labour in Building and Civil Engineering (Phelps Brown) Cmd. 3714 – 5, 1968.Google Scholar