In the United States one can always count on the pundits that are trying to sell a certain mindset to come up with all sorts of reasons of why being a gig worker is so wonderful, such as trying to sell the story, that somehow young people, feel empowered by not actually having a traditional employer-employee relationship, as well as appreciating the flexibility of working their own hours; so then in essence they are doing their own thing on apparently their own terms. Then there are those other workers, known as temporary workers, or “temps”, that work at established companies but they are not directly employed by those companies, but instead have come into their job through a placement agency or similar; in which oftentimes they end up doing the same sort of work that full-time employees do, but they don’t get the benefits, the pay, the recognition or the security of being a direct employee of that company. Now, at least when it comes to temps, they know for a certainty that they are getting the short end of the stick, for if they were placed into an employment situation by a temp agency, then that agency is making their money off of the difference between the pay rate so charged to the employer, as compared to the amount of money so being earned by that temp.
What seems to be lost in translation, in our modern age, though, is the fact that temp work or gig work, is something that really didn’t exist back in the day. Rather, it used to be, that employees were directly employed by their employer, because employers typically desired to have a stable workforce, and in order to have that, this necessitated that the employer make a fair commitment to those that they so employed. Nowadays, though, employers have gotten far more committed to the bottom line and therefore far more focused upon making money and exclusively money above just about anything; so that many employers have deliberately looked at their employee workforce and figured out that there are those that need to be directly employed, and then there are those that can be outsourced, subcontracted, or hired on strictly as temps. The main advantage for employers in reducing their permanent and direct employment base, besides the money being saved or earned, is the flexibility of essentially having a “just-in-time” workforce, in which because these others are not directly employed, they can essentially be treated differently than “real” employees, and so used strictly at the discretion and convenience of the company.
Maybe all of the above is okay, maybe this is just a legitimate part of capitalism, but it is important to recognize that those companies that do not hire directly as employees those that they previously would have, are going to have a different cost structure, then those companies that feel that they have an obligation to treat their employees in a manner which respects them as valued people, and have built that mindset into their business model. The bottom line is that companies that outsource their business to foreign countries which have significantly reduced labor costs, or utilize temp agencies, which thereby relieves those companies of having to be responsible for healthcare and other benefits, are going to have a cost structure that typically would make them more profitable than similar companies that do not treat their employees in that manner. That signifies that the losers in the job market are going to be those that are not making a living wage or have security in what they do, which includes a lot of temp and gig workers, of which therefore they aren’t likely to be able to live a quality life in this the richest country in the history of the world.