Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship

Margaret Kechnie is head of the Women’s Studies Program at Laurentian
University and the co-editor of Changing Lives: Women in Northern
Ontario.

Nonstandard forms of employment are increasingly common as the Canadian
labor force undergoes radical change. Based on open-ended interviews the
author conducted in 1996–97 with workers, branch managers, and
industry representatives from five sectors of the work force, this
in-depth study documents the way in which temporary employment
relationships associated with the temporary help industry in Canada
evolved. Workers in temporary employment relationships, Vosko argues,
are increasingly treated like commodities by temporary help agencies. As
one interviewee puts it: “They don’t want me because I am good at
what I do. They want me because they can get rid of me easily.”

Vosko also sets out to revise a large but gender-blind body of
scholarship that has explored the nature of labor power as a commodity.
By examining the status of labor as a commodity in a capitalist labor
market and describing the gendered ways in which it has been dealt with
historically, she corrects a number of misleading assumptions that
traditionally informed our understanding of temporary work arrangements.
The study of temporary work arrangements, she believes, provides us with
important clues as to where the Canadian work force is headed and how
gender is informing its progress.