The Temp Economy Quotes

“Selling the semi-permanent model of work was a major undertaking. It was a lengthy campaign that carefully and strategically introduced new concepts that built on each other over time.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“they sought to revitalize a nineteenth-century style of employment relations in which workers were considered liabilities rather than assets. It was a style in which a company's success was in opposition to workers' welfare rather than dependent on it.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“In encouraging women to seek self-fulfillment in work without dethroning domesticity, then, temp industry leaders went only so far as their own interests led them and no further.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“even before feminist critiques of domesticity entered popular discourse, national media frequently portrayed domesticity as exhausting and”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Temp industry leaders were just a few of the many to capitalize on this cultural convergence of gender, consumerism, and psychology.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Industry leaders capitalized on this tension between the reality of women working and the cultural pressure against it by offering temporary work as the perfect "compromise": Women would gain self-fulfillment through work without dethroning the domestic ideal.104”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“They exploited a sector of the labor force whose employment opportunities had been restricted by both cultural norms and discriminatory employer practices. As a result, temp work became women's work.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“these women were not working to pay for fur coats, as suggested by temp industry executives. They temped to pay household bills and to save for their children's education.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“temp executives were not simply selling a new category of pink-collar employment. They were launching a new way of organizing work that would help revitalize and spread the liability model to all workers, not just those on the margins.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“it is likely that Manpower showed greater deference to the more powerful industrial unions than it did to the significantly weaker unions in the white- and pink-collar sectors.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Manpower and other early temp agencies strongly resisted such classification in order to avoid the thicket of regulations surrounding the private employment industry.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“(And for those "girls" who were not married, temp industry leaders pointed out, temping "offers an added benefit.... They have a chance to `case the field' and work in as many offices as they wish in order to expose their charms to potential husbands.")14”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Drawing on the long-term marginalization of women workers as "mere seekers
of `pin money,'"" temp executives repeatedly emphasized the secondary nature of both temp jobs and temporary workers ("extra work for extra women").12”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“this Kelly Girl meeting was not an isolated event. It was part of a massive public relations campaign designed by the leaders of a "new" industry: temporary help.3”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Not only did more companies use greater numbers of temps; they used them to create a permanently two-tiered workforce: one group of workers that could expect decent wages, benefits, and training, and another that could not.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“even as they challenged the myth of domesticity by depicting work as the cure for "housewifeitis," they reinforced gender inequalities by emphasizing the secondary nature of temp jobs-and temporary workers”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“it reminds us that the meaning of work is created by people and can also be changed by people.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“531he location of a temp agency-in inner-city immigrant neighborhoods, for example-influences not only the resulting population of temps but also the job opportunities that are available (or not) to workers54”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Many studies have shown that temps are disproportionately young, female, nonwhite, immigrant, and less educated than their
permanent”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“according to Peck and Theodore, the temp industry has exerted downward pressure on labor standards for all workers in terms of wages, job security, and advancement, as well as diminished employment growth throughout the economy.44”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“recent studies suggest that, instead of using temps to fill in for absent employees or to meet short-term spikes in demand, employers are increasingly using temps as part of a long-term strategy to permanently "temp out" specific jobs or job categories.39”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“They have also sought to avoid worker protection costs by influencing the making of employment law itself.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Temp agencies typically charge businesses about twice the workers' hourly wages.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Knowing how a problem was constructed is the first step in understanding how to fix it.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“The liability model they sold became such common sense that, by the turn of the twenty-first century, it seemed reasonable to expect the value of a company to rise when its employees were fired.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“From the earliest days of mass consumerism, American companies have created a "need" for products where none existed.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Industry leaders were not just in the right place at the right time: They gave employers directions (and, perhaps, transportation) to the "right place," and when employers arrived, they were there waiting.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“This campaign to revitalize the liability model of work, along with the provision of temps to implement it, made the temp industry much more than a passive beneficiary of economic change.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“We are not exploiting people. We are not setting the fees. The market is. We are matching people with demands. What would our workers be doing without us? Unemployment lines? Welfare? Suicide?"27”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America

“Its unique contribution, I argue, was in modernizing the liability model of work and then delivering it in an easy-to-use package to thousands of businesses.”
― Erin Hatton, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America