Nobody smiled at Temp No. 378 at the Christmas party. Then again, everyone in the office treats Temp No. 378 as if she were invisible.
When temp secretary Leah answers the phone and says she is a temp, some of the company’s executives grumble and hang up.
Temp worker Kelly doubts if she will go to hell: She has already done time in data entry. Temp clerk Malcolm wonders why he must wear a badge that says “temporary.” Full-timers don’t wear badges.
And temp construction worker Bob stumbles off a scaffold, bruises himself, but doesn’t say boo, fearing he will get canned like the others, who are fired left and right.
Want to hear what it is like to sit at someone else’s desk, do someone else’s work, get foul stares from workers who fear you will steal their jobs, or drift for months, wondering if you have a job future?
Anger, loneliness, fear and occasionally some satisfaction–these are some of the feelings temporary workers face, and they emerge in the Best of Temp Slave, a collection of essays recently put out by Garrett County Press in Madison, Wis.
They were culled from a twice-yearly zine called Temp Slave that has become an underground hit.
Zines are low-budget publications in print or on the Internet. They are offshoots of fanzines, publications put out by devotees of stars and celebrities.
The author-editor of the Temp Slave zine is Jeff Kelly, who was drifting through yet another temp job three years ago, temping in a mail room in a Madison insurance company, expecting to go full-time. But his boss suddenly said he was out of a job. He was furious, frustrated and wanted to let it out. So he began Temp Slave, printing 25 copies and figuring nobody besides himself would read it.
But Labor Notes, a small leftist monthly in Detroit, mentioned it. In no time, Kelly, 38, who was writing under an anonymous name because he didn’t want to get fired, was contacted by newspapers and asked to be on radio programs to ruminate on the meaning of temp life.
Confessions, diaries and stories from temps ages 17 to 70 from across the U.S began to flow in. Nowadays, he receives over 1,000 submissions a year, but prints only about 50 articles, because he cannot afford to do any more. Contributors are paid in the “low double-digits,” he says with a laugh.
Studs Terkel, the storyteller of America’s workers, blessed Kelly with a generous blurb for his book. “Temp,” Terkel wrote, “is a euphemism for day laborer. George and Lennie are no longer merely ranch hands. They work in law firms, insurance companies and in your own workplace.”
The zine has been a financial flop for Kelly. Yet Kelly, who runs a machine full-time at a Madison factory, wants to continue it because of those who write to him about working mindless jobs without benefits for miserable wages. The “overriding theme” of what people are saying to him, Kelly says, “is that the workplace is changing and not everybody likes it.”
Point of view: Talking about how good things are, boss, we’d like to make a suggestion: Why don’t you find out what’s really going on? The latest results from a nationwide survey of managers and other employees shows a widening gap between them regarding wages, respect for management and bosses’ interest in workers’ well-being. The results come from a long-term project by Chicago-based International Survey Research Corp.
“It looks like management has a serious case of blowing sunshine up its nose,” says John Stanek, president of ISR. There’s always been an attitude gap, he says, “but it is getting more acute.”
Maybe one of the reasons for the growing disparity is the marked hike in managers who say they find it very difficult to balance work and personal responsibilities. The latest ISR survey showed nearly half of all bosses said this situation applied to them, up from one-third five years ago.
Looking at weight: After studying the figures, it was clear to Cheryl Maranto, a professor of management at Marquette University in Milwaukee, that the more female workers weigh, the less they earn. But this is not true for men. Why? She thinks it is because workplaces are much harsher on overweight women.
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She will present her research, which she did with Ann Fraedrich Stenoien, also of Marquette University, at a three-day convention, starting Saturday, of the Industrial Relations Research Association. Labor experts from the U.S. and around the world will be at the convention at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.
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Garrett County Press can be reached at 1-608-251-3921 or http://www.gcpress.com. Temp Slave can be reached at Box 8284, Madison, Wis. 53708. Stephen Franklin is at [email protected].