Flexibilitetens främlingar : - om anställda i bemanningsföretag

Abstract

Temporary Work Agencies (TWAs) are an example of a trend towards flexibility in the labour market. By hiring staff from TWAs organisations can keep their staff numbers down. This however, refers to the client companies´ use or temps, and omits the intermediary, the TWA, which also needs various flexibility strategies in its activities. The main purpose of this thesis is to study the organising of TWAs supply of manpower to different clients companies, and how managers and temps experience their terms of employment, working conditions and relationships with regular employees at the client companies. Two qualitative case studies were conducted. In study one, interviews have been carried out with managers and temps in a TWA and a client company in Jämtland. In the second study, managers and temps in an international TWA in Sweden were interviewed. The results show that both managers and temps work under complex conditions and demands on flexibility. The managers shall, by flexible prioritising, satisfy demands from the TWA on profitability, demands from client companies´ for an adaptable workforce and temps need of employment and community. The results also indicate that temps have to balance between a position as stranger and outsider, and handle insecurity of the assignments duration and spatial location. They have to be able to manoeuvre between the power inequalities, stigmatisation and exclusion they encounter in working conditions and social interactions in client companies. To handle such situations the ideal temp and manager have to be able to vary between distance and nearness in spatiality and indifference and involvement in social relations.

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