The Impact of Temporary Work Agencies on the Politics of Work

The last decades of expansion of labour hire has changed the politics of work in Norway. In the 50s and 60s Temporary Work Agencies (TWAs) were granted status as employers, and were able to continue operating, despite strong resistance from important employers' associations. A general ban on TWAs in 1971 made this matter a government responsibility. Despite the ban, TWAs continued their activities and in the late 1970s hiring out of labour received increased attention. During the 1980s and 1990s employers within the Norwegian Confederation of Employers mobilized for a more "flexible" working life. In 2000 their claim gained acceptance, as the ban on temporary work agencies and private mediation of labor was lifted. LO supported this change of legislation. Employers' associations do not resist TWAs today, rather arguing that TWAs play an important role in ensuring flexibility and as stepping-stones for workers. Unions are critical, and have both nationally and internationally argued in favour of strict regulation. Few attempts have been made at organising agency workers. Unions particularly stress "permanent employment without pay between assignments" as a barrier. Organising is further complicated by union structures and the system of industrial relations, resting as they do on members belonging to locals and on rights to codetermination. Few TWAs belong to employers' associations. Labour migration is an important topic in the project. The project has a sending country perspectives in its study of intermediaries in labour migration from Latvia to Norway. With an abundance of workers wanting to work in Norway this entails a buyer's market, and there is strong competition with other Central and East European countries. Being subject to more regulations than intermediaries operating in other countries in the region, Latvian intermediaries seek ways of escaping or adapting to them. Their strategies include posting workers instead of operating as ordinary TWAs, using informal ways of intermediation, adjusting rest regimes and promoting circular migration. Swedish nurses, on the other hand, have considerable control and power over their situation. Interviews with Swedish nurses suggest that they choose to work for TWAs as a kind of "cherry picking". The nurses enjoy a high degree of support and choice through their affiliation with the TWAs. To a large extent, the nurses can choose when, where and how long they wish to provide their services. The nurses also claim that working for TWAs in Norway makes work-life balance easier. Moreover, our study suggests that Swedish nurses have enhanced their structural power in Sweden by working as well paid temporary agency workers in Norway. A good example is campaign for higher wages in 2011. A study of warehouses shows that client companies have different strategies for using TWAs, including substituting permanent workers on leave, seasonal adjustments, ensuring flexibility during restructuring,"try-and-hire" and establishing a flexible buffer of labour power. Working conditions vary greatly between workplaces, and this is partly explained by the strategies of client companies. It also seems that agency workers experience higher productivity requirements compared to permanent workers. Agency workers with positive experiences express loyalty and a desire to stay in the client company, while those who have negative experiences of uncertainty express dissatisfaction and a desire to leave the client company even though they might not always feel able to. Agency workers with weaker connections to the workplace, for instance on short-term assignments, express estrangement from the client company, often because they keep circulating between workplaces or because they are less dependent on work.. The survey conducted in 2016 shows that it is much more common to express a sense of belonging to the client company. Permanently, directly employed workers at the warehouse workplaces are ambivalent about labour hire. Some express support for the strategy of establishing a flexible buffer because this strengthens their job security. On the other hand, labour hire has also meant higher turnover, which affects the work environment negatively.These circumstances may divide permanently, directly employed workers from agency workers, and may complicate unionisation. However, permanently employed workers also show concern for unfair treatment of agency workers, which constitutes a basis for building solidarity. Link to the international project conference in June 2017: http://www.hioa.no/Aktuelle-saker/Konferanse-Hvordan-paavirker-bemanningsbransjen-norsk-arbeidsliv-og-arbeidslivspolitikk Web-page: https://blogg.hioa.no/tempagencies/

Globalization of the economy in general, and of the politics of work in particular, constitute major challenges to the Norwegian welfare society. We analyze this aspect of globalization by analyzing the significance of temporary work agencies (TWAs) in the Norwegian labour market and in labour migration. Their activities raise concerns regarding national and transnational regulation, cross-border business relations and migration of TWA workers. TWA growth in Norway and the increase in migrant labour power in this sector arguably signal structural implications for the politics of work. New political strategies on the part of unions are called for when sectoral organization and full-time permanent employment are challenged by TWAs, fuelled by flexibility strategies of companies. The Nordic model, a triangle bringing together state, employers' associations and unions in an orderly social dialogue is increasingly being challenged by economic actors occupying intermediary and ambiguous positions in this political map. In order to grasp the global character of the mechanisms involved, the project entails a comparative component by developing linkages to international research and data. Furthermore, since TWAs are transnational actors, we propose an in-depth study of the recruitment of workers to Norway, focusing on Latvian and Swedish workers. The research design is qualitative. The project is designed with four independent but mutually informative components. So far, research conducted on TWAs has been carried out solely by social scientists, and has not included appropriate methods for analyzing changes over time, and we have thus included a PhD in history in order to shed light on the responses of unions and employers' associations as an expression of, and in light of, historical, social, cultural and economic changes in the post-war period.