Temp Labor in America: The Hidden Workforce Behind Consumer Goods

[00:00:00][Music] temp labor in a way isn't looked at as an industry what was that but it's a sector and it's an industry and the industry is dealing in moving human beings so instead of moving Tomatoes I move human beings [Music] around we live in a time when at the click of a mouse goods from around the globe can arrive convenient ly at our doorstep Mega retailers like Walmart and Amazon have created a seamless and efficient system to get our Goods to us quickly Amazon is a great example of of of what's possible last year during the busiest day of the Christmas rush customers around the world ordered more than 300 items from Amazon every second and a lot of those traveled through this building what's not seen are the people who actually make this possible kept out of the public eye are temp workers employed without benefits or Securities they play an integral role in keeping costs down and profits High many of these workers stay silent for fear of Retribution often having their livelihoods put in Jeopardy if they speak out hey bro don't qu that at me wanting to know more about this integral yet invisible Workforce we traveled across the country scouring warehouses temp agencies and temp towns in search of the people who make our world of same day delivery [Music] possible over 70% of our consumer goods come into the US from overseas unloaded at megap ports like the Los Angeles Long Beach Maritime terminal cargo ships carrying up to 12,000 containers dock here every day and the goods they carry are unloaded and brought to warehouses to be unpacked and sorted for the west coast and area an hour east of Los Angeles known as the Inland Empire which was once filled with horse ranches and citrus Groves is now Warehouse Central we're out in front of Schneider Logistics which exclusively serves Walmart they have over 2 million square fet of warehouse space here in the Inland Empire and it actually spans three different cities the Inland Empire has the largest concentration of warehouses in the world and they serve other retailers too like GE Nestle Home Depot and Kmart to name a few as retailers increase their online sales it's at places like these that the essential tasks of sorting labeling and loading the stuff we buy happens online sales are growing at a dizzying pace as consumers increasingly look to the web to make purchases in uh the big retails for instance we will probably see a lot of the behindth scenes workers actually being temps and the conditions in these warehouses can be deplorable because we as American consumers now myself included expect our Goods to be shipped to us just like that so what is it like working at a warehouse what are the challenges temp workers [Applause] face so we're meeting Javier here and we're going to hear from him what it was like working inside one of those massive warehouses Javier's job was to unpack and repack containers at a warehouse where goods were often moved within the span of a few hours what were you doing when you were at the warehouse and were there any grievances that you had working in those conditions Javier's problems with accountability and safety are common for warehouse workers and as the sector of employment expands more and more people are subject to this kind of treatment since the recession temporary employment has increased has added more jobs than any other industry in the United States the earliest leader of the temporary help industry was Elmer winter who founded and was the CEO of Manpower Incorporated Manpower is the largest temp industry from its founding in the late 40s through the 1990s in the early years of the temporary help industry they very much played on this idea that temp work was women's work in the public Arena all of the images that they sold of temporary employment was of these kind of white middle class um very feminine women one of the big things that changed that kind of set the context for these cultural ideological changes was really the rising Global competition basically employers had a choice about how to respond and one of those responses could have been to invest in workers and instead they took what policy makers call the low road and de invested in workers cut permanent employees and tempt out jobs temps are increasingly part of a profitable business strategy of corporate Giants last year Walmart the world's largest retailer had its best shopping season yet and Amazon continues to expand its warehouses and fulfillment centers even President Obama has gotten on board because this type of Labor is impossible to Outsource Amazon is a great example of of of what's possible last year during the busiest day of the Christmas rush customers around the world ordered more than 300 items from Amazon every second and a lot of those travel through this building what Obama doesn't mention in his speech is how many of these industries are using temp labor to get back on their feet in some distribution warehouses temps outnumber direct hires so in general the relationship between client company or the work site company a staffing agency in attempt Scholars have called this a triangular employment relationship so unlike the normal employment relationship which has two entities a worker and an employer this has three entities it's supposed to be clear who is responsible who is liable for the workers but in reality it's not always clear once we learn that staffing agencies are as important to the logistical system as warehouses we started to see them everywhere we followed the railroad tracks to Chicago the heart of the country's supply chain which is also a hot bed of the temp Staffing industry we're at the Centerpoint Intermodal Hub which is about an hour outside of Chicago and it's the only place in the country where six major cargo Rail lines intersect just like in California people unpack sort and label the boxes of goods that come off these trains many of the same problems afflict these workers and their grievances get lost in the ambiguous triangle between the worker the warehouse and the temp agency in Chicago there's yet another intermediary between the worker and anyone taking responsibility for safety labor brokers known as reros are often hired by agencies to do the Dirty Work of wrangling the workers to and from the warehouses we're on the side of the road um in the little village neighborhood of Chicago which is the largest Hispanic population in the US and we're waiting and trying to see reros who are basically dudes who shake up temporary workers for the warehouses here they're kind of another middleman in the whole system of getting temporary work in the US just want talk to for a second can I just talk to you for a second just want talk to you for a second talk you for one second 1 minute so we tried to talk to a rero who just picked up a worker in his van but he just sped off he didn't want to talk to us at all the reros didn't want to talk but they kept circling back because they had workers to pick up and money to make we tried to speak with them again excuse me can I just talk to you for a second with no luck these guys are doing basically everything they can to avoid us I we just want to talk to them um they're still picking up the guys that they're taking to the warehouses these temp workers who then pay them for the ride since we had trouble getting reros to speak with us we turned to members of the Chicago workers collaborative who offered to take us off the main drag and further into the neighborhood to a parking lot full of [Music] Ros I talked to a woman who got on and left and I asked her where she was going and she said to the shampoo place and I said have you ever seen uh the company name she doesn't know most workers don't know the name of the company even if they work there for five or six years R teras used to be a lot more open and like would talk to people about what they do but the staffing agency is basically told them like if you keep talking about what our business is we're going to stop using you so that kind of like intimidation trickles down even from staff engaging to rero rero to worker as the first round of workers left at about 5:00 a.m. we decided to follow the next shift of early morning temp workers to the warehouses we're on the side of the highway about an hour outside of Chicago um many of the warehouses that temp workers go to are located in this area so we're hoping to catch one of the reros on its way to the warehouse and follow it as it drops off workers yeah there's one right there it looks like there's like maybe 8 10 potentially more people in there workers are at the mercy of reros who often charge each worker for their ride in 2005 the Illinois state legislature made this form of coerced theft illegal but it still happens all the time we like the temp workers being shuttled didn't know where we'd end up but our journey which began Before Dawn brought us to Great kitchens a frozen pizza manufacturer that sells pizzas to Walmart Walmart has perfected Logistics to a frightening science but the way they do that is pitting subcontractors against each other to offer the cheapest contract at the end of this great chain of Logistics the temp worker barely hangs on their wages and Prospects blunted by the force of cost cutting so this morning we weren't really able to talk to too many workers at The Shape Up um understandably because a lot of them were threatened with not getting a ride if they did talk to us so instead we're going to talk to ISA who lives in cicerone and she's worked for a bunch of different temp agencies hello H is there a reason that the reros are in control of you getting to the warehouse how much do you have to pay a r to take you to the warehouse so you work eight hours a day and how much do you make every hour so at the end of every week I mean how much money are you taking home and so that would leave you with you know a little bit more than $1,000 a month is that enough are you able to survive are there any right teros like are there guys that you trust could you specifically tell us of an instance that you witnessed sexual harassment and what happened [Music] foree are you originally from the US do you regret coming to this country it sounds like things are really hard mexo [Music] for AA and many workers who aren't able to find legitimate Employment temp agencies are an imperfect necessity eing at a living means facing a battery of indignities one of the ways that you can tell the temp work is such a large player in Chicago is the sheer number of temp agencies that line the streets we went for a ride with Leon to learn more about how they operate the problem with temp labor is that it's set up to fail the workers at the bottom you have the client company at the top that gives out contracts to the staffing agencies in order to win that contract staffing agencies have to underbid other staffing agencies and by the time they win a bid they have underbid other agencies and the only way they can make even a small profit is by shorting workers hours charging them for rides getting kickbacks from check cashing agencies and temp labor in a way isn't looked at as an industry our argument is that it's a sector and it's an industry and the industry is dealing in moving human beings so instead of moving Tomatoes I move human beings around it feels to us like in the last 10 or 15 years that the idea of using a temp agency is no long longer something that client companies do a little here and a little there but it really feels like it's the new way that people work how do you operate in what might essentially be kind of like a post un landscape in a country that no longer like produces many of the things that we consume the theory for us doesn't hold water because the vast majority of temp laborers in our experience uh are at the poverty level or below and we're not going to rebuild the economy through part-time temp labor as we passed Ron Staffing Leon mentioned Carlos sentos one of the most extreme examples of how a worker can fall through the cracks in this triangular employment and a few years ago one of their workers was killed um when at a shampoo Factory uh several hundred gallons of water mixed with acid fell on him and he suffered third degree burns and even though his skin was peeling from the acid neither the Warehouse nor the temp agency would call 911 he was finally taken to seek medical care in a co-worker's van it took 98 minutes to get from his place of work where the accident occurred till he got to the emergency room and uh and then he spent 3 weeks suffering in the hospital he died it's like a Brave New World right war is peace Up Is Down left is Right Temp is perm if there is an injury on the job the temp company might say we're not at the work site we don't control what work that temporary worker is doing meanwhile the work side employer will say look we are not the employer of this worker how can we be held responsible for this injury while the conditions are harsh and the treatment borderline abusive these jobs are still highly sought after even qualified workers like Reggie Hudson a construction worker with 20 years of experience struggle to find work so Reggie uh you're looking for temp work today yeah yes I am has it been a problem getting temp work oh yeah I've been having bad experience with temp agency why do you think it is that you're not able to get temp work I feel that you know I've been discriminated uhhuh you know because of uh me being a black americ and so where are we going right now uh we're going to MVP right now mhm discrimination against employees is illegal but with this triangular employment relationship between the work side employer the staffing agency and the temp it can be quite difficult to even know that discrimination is going on well I went inside and you know they was saying they had work for people and that uh if you had Ste steel toes you know they'll send you out so you have steel toe boots and that's cuz you used to work construction right correct and how much were you making on Union construction shops like per hour uh $36 an hour $36 how much you going to make if you get called in tomorrow uh I think she said start off with like 12 $12 that's that's a big that's a big loss but I'm willing to to to do that and supply for my family so what do you think the chances are of like them saying to come better to call it 4:30 it's up for grabs there has been extensive research we see that most temp agencies who locate in cities are locating in the segregated immigrant neighborhoods rather than the africanamerican neighborhoods so just by where they're setting up shop they're seeking to recruit a particular kind of worker but then when African-Americans go to that staffing agency and put in their application they may not get called back unlike their immigrant or Latino [Music] counterparts the clustering of temp agencies in immigrant neighborhoods is most accute in New Brunswick New Jersey a small city outside of New York temp agencies Target workers who live here but send them to work an hour south where most warehouses are located like people we met across the country Margarita L's day starts well before the sunrise [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] for how much money do you make per hour and so is that enough to sort of make [Music] me and do you think that's I mean unfair essentially cuz you're you're working for these companies that make these things but potentially you can't buy a lot of [Music] them is there a message that you would have to people who don't know that this is how the goods that they buy get to them they're people like [Music] you it is now a misconception that temporary work is actually temporary we've definitely seen temps working for 10 years 15 years at one employer every day as though he or she were a regular employee retailers and Warehouse companies are responsible for making profit and while unpleasant one very effective tool is relegating workers to permit [Music] temps how many people want a full-time position go out do the type of work that gets noticed you want to be a career attemp you want to make a little bit of money maybe save enough money to buy a TV or buy a new phone or put your phone back on for a few weeks and then go disappear again okay you can have that life if that's what you want but if you want to get on the Carousel of opportunity you got to show up you got to be consistent you got to be committed to doing this what kind of work do you sort of mediate so our clients come to us and they tell us we have a project to work on or we need to staff up for the holiday season whatever the need may be my principal job is to make sure I provide them with quality workers if I have a corporate background and I understand that the key is wherever you serve your product it's got to taste the same look the same act the same like there are other places that continuously sort of do the wrong way and so what's the benefit of doing it the well I've heard I've heard some stories I've heard some situations and quite frankly they sadden me but I know in the industry there are people that choose to take shortcuts they may employ people that are not legally able to work in this country now I am not going to dispute the fact that there are companies out there in a Triad relationship between undocumented worker desperate worker as you referred to which is probably the appropriate terminology Staffing a agency taking full advantage of that situation client taking advantage of that situation this Mega billion billion dollar industry it's one of the largest Industries in the world do you think it's a net good to have more temporary workers just generally as as a labor force if the alternative is to have less people employed then I think it's an advantage to have more temporary workers can you tell us how many people you put to work today today we put out 427 people and we've been averaging between 4 and 500 remember we're seeing changes into the hierarchy of the temp labor experience for whatever reason companies are choosing to create this other sector of employment which is what I call steady temporary some staffing agencies are just meet markets process people get them in get them out the bottom line is we all have choices in this industry is my Workforce a commodity are they no different than a package of batteries on the shelf or are they a person a human resource that has the ability to not only endure but to develop and grow so could you tell us um roughly what percentage of temporary workers end up becoming direct hires from your agency absolutely we're tracking right now about one of every 50 people we send out gets converted over to a direct higher spot Lu that is swimming against the stream of the other activity okay that is offering opportunity and hopefully I'm building a trend that other people notice still the majority of the people sitting on those folding chairs aren't going to find that situation just because of situations that neither of us can change companies are made up of different levels of work they have their executive branch they have their middle management they have their Rank and file and they have what I call entry level unskilled there's always going to be in need for that group of individuals the Panama Canal is currently being expanded and will double in width meaning even bigger ships stuffed with more of the things we buy will be able to make landfall on the East Coast at Super Maritime facilities like the Elizabeth Seaport not only are more Goods coming into the country but other Industries like food are being roped into the same super warehousing system Amazon is primed to do to the grocery store what it did to the bookstore the online retailer has perfected Logistics to such a degree that it can not only feed our desires but can literally feed us we're in central New Jersey about an hour south of New York City and behind me you'll see the future home of Amazon Fresh a 1.2 million ft Warehouse that's going to be the Hub of Amazon's new grocery delivering service Amazon Fresh plans on offering same day delivery and what's crazy is that it takes places like this giant warehouses staff by temporary workers to make it possible for me to order cereal online and get it delivered the same day this whole area used to be farmland and you'll still be getting your food from here but instead of from farms it'll be from warehouses even though the logistical industry is set to expand that doesn't mean the conditions for workers will get any better for perms the prospect of joining the consumer economy that they support to their labor remains slim and last no I mean is there any kind of like psychological toll that takes on you do you feel unstable is it tough to just sort of not know and how much do you make per hour what is your hourly wage and if you work 40 hours a week you make $320 a week in in I mean this seems like a silly question in some ways but why is it that you came to the country in the first place well is the treatment that you get or the uncertainty that you have like even worse than you had expected it to be where no for we have unprecedented levels of insecurity of job insecurity and American workers today this is not just for temps and not just for contract employees but also for run-of-the-mill workers who feel highly insecure in their work lives even if they have a so-called permanent job and this is really because of this new cultural ideology about how uh how little workers mean to employers the fact of the matter is we do live in a capitalistic Society nothing will change that structure and that's good and it's bad in one way it might help a company's bottom line and be more productive but it's also eliminating jobs now whether all those people go for work okay so there's no solution to that situation the only solution to it and the numbers are a few out of the group we'll move up right that's just the way it is the economic growth of the US is pegged to the actions of the nation's consumers as the technology for delivering our Goods gets better and online sales continue to grow Warehouse work is becoming even more crucial but due to the spreadsheet efficiency of sourcing essential labor to Temp workers and the low margin squeeze throughout the supply chain an entire subclass of people many of whom are immigrants are being pushed to the margins of poverty what's worse is this kind of employment could be a stepping stone to the middle class but instead the very people who make our consumer economy the most advanced it's ever been are trapped in a permanently temporary existence in [Music] congruentes [Music] [Music] [Music]