[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 around.
[Music]
We live in a time when at the click of a
mouse, goods from around the globe can
arrive conveniently 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 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 point that at
me. Wanting to know more about this
integral yet invisible workforce, we
traveled across the country, scouring
warehouses, temp agencies, and temps in
search of the people who make our world
of sameday delivery possible.
Over 70% of our consumer goods come into
the US from overseas, unloaded at mega
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, an 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. Uh they have over 2 million
square ft 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 behindthescenes 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 face?
[Applause]
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 rise in 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 policymakers called the low road
and deinvested 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 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 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, and a temp
scholarship call this a triangular
employment relationship. So unlike the
normal employment relationship which
just 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 learned 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, where yet
another intermediary has arisen.
van drivers called Riteros who do the
dirty work. Temp agencies
won't talk to you for a second.
[Music]
Yeah, there's one right
[Music]
there. Uh, it looks like there's like
maybe 8, 10, potentially more people in
there.
[Music]