Temporary Work, Agencies and Unfree Labour: Insecurity in the New World of Work, edited by Judy Fudge and Kendra Strauss. Routledge, London, 2013, 218 pp., ISBN: 978 0 415 53650 9, £80.00, hardback.
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12113 |
| Author | Danielle Jaarsveld |
Temporary Work, Agencies and Unfree Labour: Insecurity in the New World of Work,
edited by Judy Fudge and Kendra Strauss. Routledge, London, 2013, 218 pp.,
ISBN: 978 0 415 53650 9, £80.00, hardback.
Many scholars from a range of fields and disciplines, such as industrial relations, law,
sociology and economic geography, have tried to explain how employment relation-
ships are changing and what this means for the workforce, and whether national-level
labour and employment protections that are based on full-time employment relation-
ships are still relevant. These efforts reveal the movement of jobs from advanced
economies to developing economies with lower wages and fewer labour and employ-
ment protections, the increase in non-standard work arrangements, and the migration
of labour from developing economies to advanced economies.
In this edited volume, Judy Fudge and Kendra Strauss bring together insights from
multiple disciplines to explore the experience of the non-standard workforce, the role
of temporary employment agencies and other labour market intermediaries, and the
regulatory realities faced by the non-standard workforce across several countries.
The strengths of this contribution are numerous. First, it offers the opportunity to
learn more about non-standard work in countries that have received relatively less
research attention: South Africa (Benjamin), Namibia (Benjamin) and China (Xu).
Second, several theoretical models emerge from this volume to help organize obser-
vations about how the changes in employment relationships are connected to a
broader system of regulatory changes, the evolving role of labour market intermedi-
aries and increasing access to a global labour market. For example, Coe and Ward
analyse five country case studies (e.g. Australia, Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic
and Japan) to investigate the emergence of distinctive national temporary staffing
markets. They develop a useful conceptual framework for understanding the role of
national, transnational and non-governmental organizations in the evolution of
variation in temporary staffing markets across countries.
Third, several chapters highlight how the definition of non-standard work is
expanding to include the international relocation of labour to fill caregiving jobs or
harvesting shellfish while at the same time creating new meanings for precariousness
in the employment relationship. An exemplar case is the Filipino caregivers in British
Columbia (Fudge and Parrott), who encounter difficulties in accessing labour and
employment protections because of their lack of knowledge about their rights and fear
of reprisal, job loss and threat to their immigration status should they challenge their
employers. A recent case of an employer in British Columbia requiring their Filipino
caregiver to relinquish her passport as a condition of employment illustrates how
vulnerable women are in this relatively unregulated labour market. In a similar vein,
Strauss illustrates the vulnerability encountered by 23 Chinese migrants hired by
gangmasters in 2004 to harvest shellfish in the UK who lost their lives when they
drowned while trying to do their job. Their plight led to the passage of the
Gangmasters Licensing Act to prevent such tragedies from happening.
Fudge and Strauss, with the numerous excellent insights generated from this edited
volume, successfully highlight the plight that many (e.g. workers, regulators and
public policy makers) are facing as they try to navigate the changing contours of the
increasingly global labour market and the challenges of accessing protections to help
support them. These challenges are being encountered by both low-skill and high-skill
employees. Similar to the case in the USA involving workers brought in on H1-B
visas, the discourse often revolves around a labour force shortage, which is resolved
with access to offshore sources of labour, which in turn are brought into a country
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166 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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