Doug
The actual problem with temp work is a mandated lack of security. The benefits are (of course) a big part of the problem but, as a perpetual temp. here at Cornell, it's the fact that your job comes up for review every 3 months or so. To be fair, this univeristy does offer temp workers benefits after 6 months, but the policy makers seem to be quite happy to use this as a trial period both for you and for the job you're doing. Almost everyone who doesn't hold a higher level administrative position in the office I work in went through the temp trial. I find it hard to believe that the "half" of temp workers don't want non-contingent work. This might be more true in urban areas where it is possible to find other jobs with real benefit packages and permanent positions while temping, but this is blatently not true in more rural places where the most notorious temping companies are still the best game in town. LL Bean, for example, hires more than one half of its work force seasonally as temps. Employment runs from July to December (the holiday season). It is true that LL Bean offers amazing benefits for its full time employees, but the company tends to draw people back year after year with the promise of a benefit package to come. I worked in the shipping factory last year (in Freeport , ME.). There were people there who were returning for their third and fourth season in the dim hope that they would finally be hired as regular employees.
I'm not an expert in this, but it strikes me that this is also an excellent way for companies like LL Bean to controll labor and minimize disputes. Temping seems to me one of the more grim examples of David Harvey's model of core and periphery employment in a system of flexible acumulation.
not an expert jason