One strategy or many strategies? : on the polyvalence of in-house employment forms based on the example of temporary agency work

Abstract

"Flexible employment is gaining ground. While it in no way represents the majority of employment relationships, it is nonetheless not so far away from this. After at least more than three decades of scientific and political debate on the erosion of normal working relationships, this issue constitutes a challenge for work policy more than ever before. Irrespective of its former numerical limitation to less than one million employees, temporary agency work provides a crystallisation point for political disputes about flexible employment: on the one hand, it is said to offer extraordinary powers for healing the labour market and flexibilising establishments (Bender 1997; Klös 2000; more recently, and somewhat more cautiously, Spermann 2011); on the other hand, it is seen as a source of increased risk of precarity for those affected and as a threat to social work standards - and even as a risk that the world of work will disintegrate altogether. The following article attempts to show that the use of temporary agency work is characterized by various strategy patterns, each with differing roles for temporary agency work within the in-house flexibilisation concert and with certain differences in respect to risks and opportunities for the employees affected. This then forms the basis for drawing conclusions about the actual work- and flexibility-policy role played by temporary agency work." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Promberger, M. (2012): Eine Strategie oder viele Strategien? Zur Polyvalenz flexibler Beschäftigungsformen im betrieblichen Einsatz am Beispiel der Leiharbeit. In: A. Krause & C. Köhler (Hrsg.) (2012): Arbeit als Ware : zur Theorie flexibler Arbeitsmärkte, p. 163-183.