Finding the Right Fit: How Alternative Staffing Affects Worker Outcomes

Evaluates implementation and activities at four worker-centered, social-purpose alternative staffing organizations, including worker profiles, jobs secured, experience with the ASO, earnings, and subsequent job status, and business clients' experience

What Kind of Labor Market Awaits Low-Income Workers?

This essay highlights changes in the context of the labor market for low-income people, particularly mothers. It briefly reviews labor market trends and policies. It then highlights the challenges faced by such workers. The essay argues for a shift in thinking and policy advocacy to encompass the world of work, and its domination by business imperatives and language, and thus better represent poor people’s concerns in the policy world

Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Policy Visions from the New Deal and Great Society

On April 10 and 11, 2007, the Center for Social Policy convened a conference exploring policy visions from the New Deal and Great Society and their implications for today’s policy thinking. Titled, Looking Back and Looking Ahead , this conference took place at the University of Massachusetts Boston Campus Center and the John F. Kennedy Library. The conference was designed as an opportunity for speakers and participants to reflect on the lessons learned from these two watershed eras of policy innovation and their implications for looking forward. Policy actors and experts participated in three panel discussions on the historical context of the two eras, socio-economic issues and policy of the times, and arguments for compensatory education policy. Each of the three panels was moderated by a facilitator. Following is a summary of the proceedings: the talks by the policy actors and experts; their responses and comments to the question and answer sessions, and the learning conversations among conference participants that took place in the breakout sessions following featured panel discussions. Presenters and participants were drawn from the fields of social policy, education policy, and history . They included former policy actors, representatives of civil society organizations (advocacy, public information, associations of public officials) and philanthropy, academics, and expert consultants

Allied Health Professions in the Health-sector Job Structure

This article reviews the characteristics of allied health professions in the U.S., Massachusetts, and Boston health sectors. These occupations are considered in the broader context of the multitiered job structure of the health sector and their gender and ethnic composition. The discussion includes surveys of vacancy rates and wage levels for selected allied health professions in Massachusetts hospitals. The article concludes with a more detailed, albeit national, picture of these occupations in the hospital sector per se, their demographic composition, and earnings level

Alternative Staffing Organizations and Skills: Linking Temporary Work with Training

This paper provides a brief research background on the field of alternative staffing and what we have learned about connecting job brokering activities with training and education opportunities. This includes drawing on recent research by the Center for Social Policy on the Alternative Staffing Demonstration II, 2008 to 2011, funded by the Charles Stewart (C. S.) Mott Foundation. The paper also offers several points for consideration in connecting temporary help workers to training opportunities. Specifically, it puts the role of alternative staffing in the context of the entry-level job market and discusses the value of staffing services from the perspective of job seekers, customer businesses, and the workforce development field. A number of examples are provided of training programs and partnerships that combine skills development with job brokering. Overall, we address two questions: 1) What do we know about connecting staffing services with training opportunities?, and 2) What are some promising examples of connecting ASO workers to skills training

Why Use the Services of Alternative Staffing Organizations: Perspectives from Customer Businesses

Organizations that aim to improve the experiences and employment chances of job seekers who face barriers to employment have, over the years, had to contend directly with potential employers and their requirements. This is particularly true for community-based job brokers that use a temporary staffing model, offering job access and immediate work to their service population.Alternative staffing organizations (ASOs) are worker-centered, social purpose businesses that place job seekers in temporary and "temp-to-perm" assignments with customer businesses, and charge their customers a markup on the wage of the position. These fee-for-service organizations can help job seekers who face labor market barriers gain work experience and access potential employers. Created by community-based organizations and national nonprofits, ASOs are often embedded within larger organizations that provide other employment, training, and human services to their community. The parent organizations may also be operating other social enterprise ventures. Businesses that contract ASOs for staffing services are customers that expect a service, but also represent an opportunity for employment and work experience for job seekers. Thus ASOs must operate with a dual agenda to serve both sides of the equation. In related publications, we have explored how ASOs operate as social enterprises and how the model fits within the goals of the parent organization. With detailed information from five well-established ASOs, and as part of two waves of a demonstration initiated by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, we have documented the employment experiences of workers placed in assignments and their employment status after leaving the ASO. In this paper, we address engagement with businesses and their perspectives on ASO services. This is a major issue for ASOs as well as for other workforce development organizations. ASOs engage with businesses while selling staffing services and monitoring worker performance. By the very nature of temporary staffing, they receive rapid feedback on worker performance and their services from customer businesses. As such, ASOs provide a window into how to connect to potential employers in order to access opportunities. Also, activities of ASOs shed light on how hiring takes place for entry-level jobs, and how customer businesses use ASOs to solve their entry-level hiring problems.This paper demonstrates what can be learned from customers of established ASOs about their reasons for using these services. Specifically, it explores how customer businesses use temporary staffing by ASOs, and for what purposes. What business needs do they meet with ASO services? What are their reasons for using an ASO over conventional staffing agencies? And finally, what causes customer businesses to use an ASO and retain the service over time?These concerns are salient for those organizations considering the creation of an ASO. They also are important for workforce development programs that need to become more active in engaging potential employers and that seek solutions for job seekers who need to connect to employment and need immediate income

An Alternative to Temporary Staffing: Considerations for Workforce Practitioners

The temporary staffing industry has become a fixture of the US economy in recent decades, and workforce practitioners are increasingly noting the prevalence of temporary jobs in the low-skilled labor market. To ensure that these jobs are a stepping stone for job seekers -- and to tap into additional sources of revenue -- a growing number of social service organizations have launched their own staffing businesses, known as alternative staffing organizations (ASOs)

The Social and Economic Costs of Employee Misclassification in the Maine Construction Industry

With this study, a cross disciplinary team of the Center for Construction Policy Research has taken a first and significant step in documenting employee misclassification in the Maine construction industry. This report documents the dimensions of misclassification and its implications for tax collection and worker compensation insurance. Misclassification occurs when employers treat workers who would otherwise be waged or salaried employees as independent contractors (self employed). Or as one report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor put it, misclassification occurs “when workers (who should be) getting W-2 forms for income tax filing instead receive 1099-Miscellaneous Income forms

"So Far From God, so Close to the United States", and yet…: Unexpected Differences in Modern Retail Jobs Between Mexico and the United States

La grande distribution moderne a créé une quantité importante d’emplois de premier échelon, dont beaucoup sont à bas salaire, au Mexique comme aux États-Unis d’Amérique.  Les structures et pratiques d’emploi du secteur composent des données importantes des processus qui créent et reproduisent les inégalités dans une économie. Grace à une étude internationale comparative, l’article explore le rôle des institutions et normes sociétales (liées et non-liées au travail) dans le domaine de la qualité des emplois. L’article compare les processus qui forment les emplois dans la grande distribution moderne de ces deux pays et s’appuie sur des études de terrain conduites durant les neuf dernières années. Les points de comparaison sont les trois dimensions de la qualité d’emploi : les heures de travail; les structures de rémunération; et la mobilité interne et externe. L’article montre que les institutions ont une empreinte visible sur les caractéristiques d’emploi dans la grande distribution. Les instances les plus simples consistent de cas où les institutions jouent directement sur l’emploi comme peut se voir avec les heures de travail. Cependant, les effets institutionnels indirects importent aussi, particulièrement ceux qui concernent les institutions de reproduction de la force de travail, telles que les systèmes de garde d’enfant ou les normes liées au rôle maternel dans l’éducation des enfants. Néanmoins, il reste encore une marge de manœuvre ample pour les choix et l’expérimentation de la part des managers de la grande distribution des deux pays.Modern retail chains generate large quantities of entry-level jobs, many of which are low-wage, in Mexico as in the United States. The sector’s employment patterns and practices make up an important strand among processes that generate and reproduce economy-wide inequality. Retail trade jobs also are emblematic of service work as a whole. With a cross-national comparative study, the paper explores the role of work-related and non-work related societal institutions and norms in affecting retail job quality. The paper compares the processes that shape modern retail jobs in the two countries relying upon sectorial field work conducted over the past nine years. Three dimensions of job quality are points of comparison: hours of work; compensation structure; and job mobility. The paper finds that national institutions have discernible imprints on the characteristics of retail jobs. The simplest instances are cases where institutions act directly on employment as occurs with hours of work outcomes. But indirect institutional effects are also important, particularly involving reproductive institutions such as child care systems and norms regarding mothers’ role in child rearing.  Still, ample room for managerial discretion and experimentation is found in both countries’ retail sectors