1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910798570403321

Autore

Van Arsdale David G.

Titolo

The poverty of work : selling servant, slave and temporary labor on the free market / / by David Van Arsdale

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Leiden, [The Netherlands] ; ; Boston, [Massachusetts] : , : Brill, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

90-04-32351-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (227 pages) : illustrations, tables

Collana

Studies in Critical Social Sciences, , 1573-4234 ; ; Volume 90

Disciplina

331.12/8

Soggetti

Employment agencies

Unemployed

Temporary employment

Precarious employment

Slave labor

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preliminary Material -- A Perfect Marriage: Flexible Employment Standards and the Staffing Industry -- Inside Employment Agency Labor: Participant Observation Experiences -- Exchange Alley: The Origins of Employment Agencies -- From Slave Agency to Temporary Help: The Historical Development of Employment Agencies -- The Poverty of Work: Shifting from Jobs that Solved Poverty to Jobs that Make It -- Preventing the Reproduction of Deprived Employment Statuses among Temporary Laborers -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

In The Poverty of Work , Van Arsdale goes inside the world of temping and discovers a type of work dreadfully insecure yet growing rapidly. Furthermore, through a comprehensive historiography, he illustrates how employment agencies moved from England to North America during the colonial period, where they sold workers into many deprived employment statuses, including indentured servitude and slavery. Van Arsdale contends that had the history of employment agencies been better understood, they would have likely been abolished with slavery, or at the very least, more tightly controlled by government. Today, left



largely unregulated, employment agencies are powerful corporations generating astonishing revenue by selling flexible, on-demand temporary workers. Unfortunately, this labor is trapping millions in a cycle of unemployment, despair, and poverty.