Doyle This sounds very naively put to me. I've worked as a temp., office, and manual labor and there are parts of the job process which are ok. I like trying out a work site to see what it is like. But what choices do I have in the situation, I mean being a temp usually is bottom of the barrel in terms of choices that are offered. I've witnessed in my time how the various range of wages, and benefits have continually narrowed down in these situations. Full time FTE has degraded every year that I've experienced it. Really, people who are like Louis Proyect, as independent contractors, aren't what I would call temps. Go sit over with the lawyers and doctors in their camp Louis. You are too distant from my life experiences to get the point. Temping is where you enter the job market, and where the dead end of jobs are. Every job out of temping is slightly better. But you pay a price for getting a little more by the rules you have to follow. It always seems to me that young people think temping is ok, and can't see what it feels like to be a worker thirty years later with nothing but the next days wages to look forward to. Too many Berkeley elites who don't understand working speak up about temping.
Doyle I don't like being enmeshed in a particular job site system. I mean the rules of the game as it were. The rigid fixed order that goes with every little petty site. But after awhile they all blend together. I like the sense that I can pick and go everywhere. I like the sense that when you think some boss has your number, and you just can't wait to kill them, you go on to the next job, and all the previous lies fade into memory. Gives one the sense that solutions are not just about getting angry and punching the boss until they take you off to jail. I've seen that happen often enough.
Doyle I most don't like the inability to establish stable relations with other workers. I've been hired from a temp job into a site, and only after a lengthy period did I finally fit in with the other workers. I like that I know what it is like in all kinds of work situations. Would I get rid of temping, yes, because the shits in charge used temping to undermine regular jobs so there wasn't anything left for us ordinary workers. I would say workers ought to have rights to move about in jobs if it makes sense. Don't pin them down to a site for the rest of their lives like a bunch of slaves. But if people want to do that, I mean stay in one place, that is ok.
Doyle I haven't worked temp in years. I guess ten. But I ain't choosy, I do what it takes to survive, and I'm proud to be in the working class. regards, Doyle Saylor