Mobility and Power in Temp Work

Authors

Andrew Elmore

Abstract

Labor mobility is an underdiscussed determinant of temp worker power. Drawing on original interviews with professional and blue-collar workers who work as and alongside temps, this Article shows how businesses use staffing agencies to restrict the labor mobility of contingent workers. Staffing agencies limit worker mobility by imposing user- and worker-side contractual restraints while misrepresenting themselves to temp workers as their sole employer. They also exploit state-imposed mobility limitations by recruiting foreign nationals and people leaving incarceration and channeling them into their most precarious work. This enables clients to dismantle internal labor markets and to fill staffing shortages without raising the wages of permanent employees. Used this way, staffing agencies can magnify gender, racial, and economic inequality, drive down workplace standards, and trap vulnerable workers in low-wage, dangerous work.

Centering labor mobility in temp work has important doctrinal and practical payoffs. Temp worker mobility is often concerted in ways that are protected by the National Labor Relations Act and protected from staffing agency misrepresentations by consumer protection laws. Improving work standards where contingent work is common will require removing unnecessary state-imposed mobility limitations that trap vulnerable workers in precarious work. Collaborative workforce development programs, finally, can mitigate the harmful effects of staffing agencies in these sectors by improving access to training and direct hiring across the perm-temp divide.

Rights

© 2025 Brigham Young University Law Review

Recommended Citation

Andrew Elmore, Mobility and Power in Temp Work, 51 BYU L. Rev. 79 (2025).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol51/iss1/6