The Effects of Temporary Services and Contracting Out on Low-Skilled Workers: Evidence from Auto Suppliers, Hospitals, and Public Schools

We examine why employers use temporary agency and contract company workers and the implications of these practices for the wages, benefits, and working conditions of workers in low-skilled labor markets. Through intensive case studies in manufacturing (automotive supply), services (hospitals), and public sector (primary and secondary schools) industries, we define the circumstances under which these workers are likely to be adversely affected, minimally affected, or even benefitted by such outsourcing. Adverse effects on compensation are clearest when companies substitute agency temporaries or contract company workers for regular employees on a long-term basis because low-skilled workers within the organization receive relatively high compensation and employment and labor law or workers and their unions do not block companies from such substitution. Often, however, organizations only contract out management functions or utilize agency temporaries for brief periods of time, with little direct effect on in- house, low-skilled workers. Moreover, employers often use temporary agencies to screen workers for permanent positions. Because temporary agencies lower the cost to employers of using workers with poor work histories or other risky characteristics, agencies may benefit these workers by giving them opportunities to try out for positions they otherwise might not have had.temporary, contingent, contract, workers, low-skilled, Houseman, Erickcek, Kalleberg, Upjohn

Some scandinavian contributions to the field of technology and organization of work

Der Autor berichtet über soziologische Untersuchungen - vor allem aus Norwegen und Schweden - zu den Bereichen Neue Technologien und Arbeitswelt. Er diskutiert dabei näher die folgenden Tendenzen: Schwerpunkt der Untersuchungen ist der organisatorische und technologische Wandel im Arbeitsleben; der Mangel an vergleichenden Studien ist auffällig; die Macht- und Eigentumsstrukturen als Basis des Wirtschaftssystems werden zunehmend kritisch diskutiert. (psz

The Role of Temporary Help Employment in Tight Labor Markets

This paper examines the reasons why employers used and even increased their use of temporary help agencies during the tight labor markets of the 1990s. Based on case study evidence from the hospital and auto supply industries, we evaluate various hypotheses for this phenomenon. In high-skilled occupations, our results are consistent with the view that employers paid substantially more to agency help to avoid raising wages for their regular workers and to fill vacancies while they recruited workers for permanent positions. In low-skilled occupations, our evidence suggests that temporary help agencies facilitated the use of more "risky" workers by lowering their wages and benefits and the costs of firing them. The use of agency temporaries in both high- and low-skilled occupations reduced the pressure on companies to raise wages for existing employees, and thereby may have contributed to the stagnant wage growth and low unemployment observed in the 1990s.temporary, labor, markets, part-time, contingent, Houseman, Kalleberg, Erickcek

Combining Aspect-Oriented and Strategic Programming

Properties such as logging, persistence, debugging, tracing, distribution, performance monitoring and exception handling occur in most programming paradigms and are normally very difficult or even impossible to modularizewith traditional modularization mechanisms because they are cross-cutting. Recently, aspect-oriented programming has enjoyed recognition as a practical solution for separating these concerns. In this paper we describe an extension to the Stratego term rewriting language for capturing such properties. We show our aspect language offers a concise, practical and adaptable solution for dealing with unanticipated algorithm extension for forward data-flow propagation and dynamic type checking of terms. We briefly discuss some of the challenges faced when designing and implementing an aspect extension for and in a rule-based term rewriting system.publishedVersio

The politics of science funding: we need to think about science and knowledge production in a more practical light

Government funding of science has become an increasingly prominent issue in the United States. Examining the current debate and its consequences, Arne L. Kalleberg interviews Gordon Gauchat about his recent article, “The Political Context of Science in the United States: Public Acceptance of Evidence-Based Policy and Science Funding.

Making Slicing Mainstream How can we be Weiser?

By now, the concept of program slicing has been known in the research community for around 25 years. As a research topic, it has enjoyed a fair share of popularity, evidenced by the number of articles published on the topic following Mark Weiser\u27s seminal paper. However, outside research circles, program slicing appears to be virtually unknown. In this report, we take the premise that program slicing is both technically relevant, and has a sufficient theoretical foundation, to be applied in practice within the software industry. With this premise in mind, we ask ourselves, ``what are the mechanisms by which we as a community could make program slicing mainstream\u27\u27

Ytringsfrihet, demokratiteori og demokratiet som uferdig prosjekt

Grunnlovens paragraf 100 om ytrings- og informasjonsfrihet ble revidert i 2004. Ytringsfriheten fikk en prinsipiell demokratiteoretisk begrunnelse, og det ble lagt vekt på statlig tilrettelegging for åpen og opplyst meningsdannelse. Denne artikkelen gir først et overblikk over de demokratiteoretiske prinsipper den nye grunnlovs­paragrafen skal fremme. I andre del dokumenteres det at arbeider av en av samtid­ens ledende sosiologer og sosialfilosofer (Habermas) hadde vesentlig betydning for den reviderte forståelsen av ytringsfrihetens begrun­nelse og funksjoner i grunnloven til et av verdens eldste og mest stabile demokratier. I tredje del drøftes spørsmålet om hva slags teori om demokrati som ble tydeliggjort og forsterket i Grunnloven. Det er demo­kra­tiets diskursive (deliberative) aspekt, ytringsfriheten – styring basert på åpne og opplyste offentlige diskusjoner (diskurs) – som fremheves som overordnet element i samspillet med individuelle rettigheter og flertallsstyre. I siste del rettes blikket normativt mot noen av de utfordringer diskursiv demokrati­teori stiller samfunn og samfunnsforsk­ning overfor. Demokratiet er et historisk prosjekt som fortsatt kan og bør videre­utvikles, på forskjellige nivåer (lokalt, nasjonalt, internasjonalt) og områder (politikk, økonomi, sivilsamfunn)