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Bringing Gramsci back in: labor control in Italy's new temporary help industry Francesca Degiuli and Christopher Kollmeyer Work Employment Society 2007; 21; 497 DOI: 10.1177/0950017007080011 The online version of this article can be found at: http://wes.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/3/497

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Work, employment and society Copyright © 2007 BSA Publications Ltd® Volume 21(3): 497–515 [DOI: 10.1177/0950017007080011] SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore

Bringing Gramsci back in: labor control in Italy’s new temporary help industry ■

Francesca Degiuli University of California, USA

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Christopher Kollmeyer University of Aberdeen, UK

ABSTRACT

This article examines the labor control processes being implemented in Italy’s recently developed temporary help industry.The social science literature generally predicts that voluntary forms of labor control require genuine compromises between management and its workforce. Based on interviews, observational fieldwork, and analysis of industry documents, the authors compare this expectation against the details of the Italian case. Overall, they find that management is attempting to build consensus not by granting temporary workers meaningful concessions, as the literature would generally suggest, but rather by reframing temporary work as a viable opportunity for upward social mobility, and reinforcing these ideological messages with coercion when needed.These findings suggest that ideological power may play a larger role in the labor control process than previously recognized, and that Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony deserves greater attention from scholars studying such matters. KEY WORDS

Gramsci / hegemony / labor control / temporary help industry

Introduction

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ocial scientists have long understood that all economic systems must develop certain capacities to align the actions of individual workers with the specific goals of their employers. Scholarship on this subject describes the dynamics

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of ‘labor control regimes’ – those historically contingent but fairly enduring methods by which management exerts control and imposes discipline over its workers. During the industrial era, labor control regimes were typically formal, bureaucratic, and underpinned by various forms of coercion. More recently, however, forms of labor control have become increasingly outmoded because more and more companies have adopted less bureaucratic organizational structure. This, in turn, has forced management to rethink the methods by which it directs and influence’s the behavior of its workers. While not fully understood by social scientists, it does appear that contemporary methods of labor control place greater emphasis on getting workers to adhere voluntarily to the policies set by management (see, for example, Barker, 1993; Burris, 1993; Sennett, 1998). Being interested in this subject, our study analyzes the labor control practices being implemented in Italy’s recently developed temporary help industry, which was established in 1997 after the government legalized temporary work. The Italian case offers an excellent opportunity to investigate such matters, because for various historical reasons, Italians have generally been suspicious of non-standard forms of employment. Nonetheless, despite this cultural obstacle, Italy’s new temporary help industry is growing rapidly, fuelled in part by its ability to attract low-wage workers into the uncertain world of temporary work. To examine empirically how labor control operates under these circumstances, we draw primarily on structured and semi-structured interviews with management in the temporary help industry, but we also include other sources of data, such as unstructured interviews with temporary workers and union officials. Since our data emphasize the views and actions of employers, our analysis focuses on the structural characteristics of the labor control regime being implemented by management, not the responses that workers have to these policies.1 To explain the characteristics of this emerging labor control regime, we extend theories developed by Gramsci (1929–35/2000) and Burawoy (1983, 1984, 1985). Despite their differences, both scholars asserted that voluntary forms of labor control, which are often called ‘hegemonic regimes’, require meaningful compromise’s that result in shared prosperity between management and its workers. For instance, Gramsci argued that Henry Ford’s decision to pay his workers above market wages was a crucial step in gaining their acceptance for the monotony of assembly line work. Similarly, Burawoy held that workers consented to the economic leadership of large corporations under monopoly capitalism largely because the latter was instrumental in helping to establish and fund the welfare state. Our analysis of Italy’s newly developed temporary help industry, however, does not support this view of hegemony. Instead, we find that management is attempting to build hegemony primarily through ideological means. This finding is noteworthy, we believe, because it offers new theoretical insights into how labor control functions in a flexible work environment, and because it illustrates a case in which ideological hegemony, typically associated with highly paid professionals, is being attempted in an industry dominated by low-wage workers.


Bringing Gramsci back in Degiuli & Kollmeyer

Theoretical perspectives on hegemonic labor control Below, we describe two influential perspectives on labor control. Each perspective describes different circumstances under which workers will voluntarily embrace the workplace policies and goals set by management.

Labor control through workplace and state policies Through his scholarship on ‘factory regimes’, Burawoy (1983, 1984, 1985) developed a seminal perspective on labor control. Extending Braverman’s (1974) deskilling thesis, Burawoy showed that labor control regimes are constructed not only through workplace policies enacted by management, but also through public policies enacted by the state. Or, in Burawoy’s words, the characteristics of any labor control system are determined by policies enacted through ‘the labor process’ (meaning firm-level policies governing the organization of work) and through ‘the political apparatuses of production’ (meaning state-level policies regulating various aspects of the economy). Drawing on case studies of factories in both capitalist and socialist economies, Burawoy identified two ideal-type labor control regimes under capitalism – ‘the despotic regime’ in which workers begrudgingly comply with management’s policies, primarily because they fear losing their jobs and being left without a source of income, and ‘the hegemonic regime’ in which workers willingly comply with management’s policies, primarily because they believe that cooperation serves everyone’s interests (Burawoy, 1985). In effect, then, Burawoy suggested that labor control is built upon some combination of market coercion and shared prosperity between management and its workers. Based on this typology, Burawoy argued that Marx and other critics of early industrialism mistakenly assumed that market despotism was a universal feature of capitalism. Instead, Burawoy convincingly demonstrated that highly coercive forms of labor control were historically linked to structural conditions associated with the industrial revolution and its attendant liberal state. Consequently, when monopoly capitalism emerged in the mid-20th century it created economic conditions that were more conducive to hegemonic forms of labor control. Here Burawoy highlighted the state’s willingness to intervene on behalf of the working class – for example, by legislating worker-friendly labor regulations and providing social welfare benefits – as being a decisive factor in the shift from coercive to voluntary forms of labor control. To end his historical analysis, Burawoy argued that the continued viability of the hegemonic regime cannot be taken for granted. He pointed out that, as capital becomes more mobile and labor markets become more flexible, management gains new and powerful means of disciplining their workers. This, in turn, makes management less willing to uphold the social welfare compromises that underpin hegemony. The full maturation of these structural changes, Burawoy predicted, will create what he calls ‘hegemonic despotism’, a form of labor control in which management gains the upper hand by collectively threatening labor


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unions in particular, and the working class in general, with closing down entire factories and moving the affected jobs elsewhere (see also Sallaz, 2004). In the case of temporary work, however, hegemonic despotism is more likely to be achieved not by closing down factories and reopening them overseas, but rather by re-establishing the rights of employers to dismiss uncooperative workers without the oversight of government or trade unions.

Labor control through ideological power A less utilized perspective on labor control emphasizes the use of ideological power to generate consent within the workplace and other spheres of economic life. This perspective is derived from Gramsci’s (1929–35/2000) now famous argument that ideological power represents a crucial means by which elites maintain their domination in highly stratified societies. While jailed for dissent in the 1920s by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, Gramsci sought to understand why large numbers of working-class people in Europe and North America embraced capitalism, even though this economic system placed them in a subordinate social position, and even though other economic systems, such as social democracy and communism, were viable alternatives to capitalism at that time. The answer to this question, Gramsci concluded, is that the dominant class justifies their privileged socioeconomic position through ‘hegemony’, which he defined as an ideological, cultural, and moral leadership over allied and subordinate social classes. Purportedly, the dominant class constructs hegemony by exerting daily influence over the ideas, values, and norms promoted across civil society – for example, by influencing the ideological messages espoused by churches, community groups, political parties, the media, schools and universities, and trade unions. As a result of this ideological leadership, Gramsci held, consensus could be achieved around otherwise contentious issues, because subordinate social groups had internalized many of the norms and viewpoints of elites. However, in a lesser known aspect of this argument, Gramsci maintained that ideological power alone cannot build hegemony. He advanced this argument, for example, while analyzing the manufacturing processes pioneered by Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. During the 1920s, the Ford Motor Company perfected the mass-production system by adopting a series of organizational innovations, such as consolidating the production process into a single plant, dividing the labor processes into routine tasks, introducing the moving assembly line, and creating economies of scale through the mass production of standardized goods. At least initially, the benefits of these organizational changes, which created a system Gramsci called ‘Fordism’, were distributed unequally. On one hand, Fordism increased the profit-making potential of industrialists by heightening labor productivity and reducing per unit costs, but on the other hand, it replaced the cherished job autonomy of erstwhile craft workers with the monotony of assembly-line work.



For Gramsci, the potential for Fordism to provoke widespread social conflict presented an interesting theoretical question for Marxism: how did Henry Ford and other leading industrialists of the 1920s develop consent for the mass production system? According to Gramsci, hegemony was achieved through a two-pronged strategy. First, to provide a financial incentive to cooperate, Ford shared some of his newfound prosperity by paying his assembly-line workers five dollars for an eight-hour day, a wage that was well above the market rate for similar work. This provided the material foundations for hegemony. Second, Ford also sought to align the attitudes and behavior of his workers with the needs of the mass-production system. To be effective, the high-wage strategy required workers to spend their extra income on the output of the massproduction economy. If this occurred, then the high-wage strategy would help balance consumer demand with an ever-growing output of goods. However, if the additional income was spent on alcohol, prostitution, and idleness – not uncommon pursuits for the working class of that era – then the high-wage strategy would undermine labor productivity by diverting the energies of workers away from productive activities. For this reason, Gramsci argued that Fordism required nothing less than a new working class, one that embraced middle-class cultural sensibilities, such as the pursuit of personal fulfilment through family life, workplace achievements, and consumer goods. To promote this cultural change, Ford hired legions of social workers, who regularly visited the homes of his employees, encouraging them to adopt appropriate ways of living (see discussion by Harvey, 1990: 125–9). These actions, Gramsci insisted, should not be interpreted as the anachronistic behavior of a paternalistic corporation, but instead as a cutting-edge social experiment, in which Ford sought to align popular culture with the interests of his company in particular and those of monopoly capitalism in general. The ideological hegemony that underpinned this cultural change, Gramsci famously wrote, was ‘born in the factory’ but required ‘only a minute quantity of professional political and ideological intermediaries’ to generalize it throughout society (1990: 278–9). The end result, he claimed, was a national culture increasingly organized around the needs of the mass-production economy. Seemingly, recent economic changes have made ideological power an even more important element of hegemonic labor control. Over the last two decades, many corporations have flattened their organizational structures and pushed important decision-making capacities down to lower-level employees. These new organizational forms, however, are often incompatible with traditional forms of labor control. This has consequently forced management to develop new modes of controlling and influencing the behavior of their workers. In general, what have emerged are forms of labor control in which workers, for various reasons, voluntarily regulate their own behavior (e.g. Barker, 1993; Burris, 1993; Sennett, 1998). The crucial process in these hegemonic regimes is that, since these new organizational forms often blur the lines between workers and managers, many workers eventually internalize the norms, values, and goals of management. As this occurs, explicit and bureaucratic forms of labor control become less necessary, because workers begin to emulate the normative behavior of management.


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Of course, this type of labor control has limitations. First, as argued by Vallas (2003, 2006), the loosening of bureaucratic controls can create unintended opportunities for workers to contest management and alter workplace policies in their favour. Based on observations of companies using team-based management strategies, Vallas found that labor control regimes that grant workers greater autonomy can produce results that differ considerably from management’s original intentions. This occurs, he maintains, because the autonomy inherent in team-based management strategies also creates opportunities for workers to confront and resist workplace policies they find objectionable. Second, these new hegemonic regimes have limited applicability. They seem most effective in organizations using team-based management strategies (Barker, 1993; Ezzamel and Willmott, 1998; Graham, 1995; Grenier, 1988; cf. Vallas, 2003), or in organizations employing highly educated and highly paid professionals (Covaleski et al., 1998; Kunda, 2006; Oakes et al., 1998; Perlow, 1998). Thus, it is not known whether hegemony of this sort could be achieved in the temporary help industry, with its preponderance of low-wage workers, who have limited and varied contact with management.

Background on the Italian case Due to the numerous legal rights and protections traditionally afforded Italian workers, the recent creation of a temporary help industry in Italy represents an ideal case for analyzing how business interests can elicit consent for non-standard forms of employment. Unlike governments in Britain, the USA, and other countries with liberal market economies, the Italian government has customarily placed significant regulations on the use of labor. These protective attitudes toward labor are deeply entrenched in Italian political structures and cultural norms. In fact, this cultural disposition even pervades the constitution of the republic itself, with the first article of the Italian constitution stating that ‘Italy is a democratic Republic, founded on labor’, and the fourth article stating that all citizens have the right to work, and that the government must actively produce ‘the conditions for making that right effective’ (Turatto and Tronti, 1989). Since its passage in the 1970s, the Charter of Workers’ Rights has been the bedrock of worker-friendly labor regulations in Italy. This wide-ranging legislation regulates many aspects of worker–employer relations, including the rules for compensating, promoting, and firing workers. Consequently, the Italian labor market has developed a set of trade-offs largely unfamiliar to workers in Anglo-dominated countries. On one hand, due to rigidities inherent in highly regulated labor markets, Italy typically suffers from higher rates of unemployment, especially higher rates of long-term unemployment, than countries with liberal market economies. Yet on the other hand, due to these same regulations and social protections, Italian workers with jobs typically enjoy modestly higher



wages, better social benefits, and more job security than their counterparts in liberal market economies (see Freeman, 1994). For the average Italian worker, this has meant that their jobs, while not necessarily satisfying, have traditionally lasted for a lifetime and benefited from wages and regulations set through tripartite negotiations among trade unions, employers, and government ministries (Degiuli, 2005). Over the last few decades, however, this system has been liberalized. During the mid-1980s, critics of this labor market system began to exert powerful influence over the Italian political system. Describing Italian labor markets as excessively rigid and incompatible with an emerging global economy, an alliance of big business and conservative politicians began petitioning the state to increase the flexibility of national labor markets. Among their numerous aims, these reformers sought to legalize temporary work, which had been outlawed in Italy for several decades. In 1993, an initial attempt to legalize temporary work failed due to strong opposition from trade unions, but several years later, a second attempt eventually succeeded. This latter attempt yielded Patto per il Lavoro, a tripartite pact intended to promote employment and spur economic growth by liberalizing certain labor market regulations. One of the emerging reforms was law 196/97– a piece of legislation passed in 1997 that legalized temporary work, something that other continental European countries had done in the mid-1980s, and something that has been standard practice in the USA since the 1920s (Kalleberg, 2000: 346). After clearing these legal obstacles, a temporary help industry was quickly established. To date, the Italian government has granted business licenses to 70 temporary agencies, which operate a combined 2028 branch offices across the country (Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali, 2005). Despite its rapid expansion, the temporary help industry in Italy has faced formidable cultural barriers. The most general cultural barrier has been the widespread perception that temporary work infringes upon a longstanding social contract. Unlike their counterparts in liberal market economies, Italians have typically viewed work as a social right, guaranteed by the state, rather than as an open-ended and ever-changing opportunity generated by prevailing market forces. Thus, for many Italians, temporary work seems like an inferior attempt by the government and corporations to fulfil their social obligation to find jobs for workers. But perhaps the largest cultural barrier is the fact that temporary work reminds many Italians of caporalato – a practice, starting in the late 1950s, in which northern Italians found short-term jobs for immigrants coming from southern Italy in exchange for a commission (Degiuli, 2005). As this practice became more widespread and more exploitative, the government eventually outlawed the for-profit intermediation of work altogether. As mentioned above, this prohibition was repealed in 1997. Yet, despite its new legal status, many Italians still view this type of work as illegitimate and exploitative.


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Data and research methods The data for this study were derived from interviews with industry management and staff, and to a lesser extent, from interviews with temporary workers and union representatives. The interview process began in the spring of 2000, when the Italian-speaking author contacted nine temporary agencies operating in Italy: Adecco, E-Work, Italia Lavora, Lavoro Temporaneo s.p.a., Obbiettivo Lavoro, Randstad, Start, Synergie and Vedior. With the aim of constructing a heterogeneous sample, she selected temporary agencies based on their size, length of operation, and their country of origin. Specifically, of these nine agencies, five are large multinationals (Adecco, Randstad, Start, Vedior, and Synergie); three are smaller, domestic agencies (E-work, Italia Lavora, and Lavoro Temporaneo); and one operates as a non-profit company (Obiettivo Lavoro). Next, she established contacts with branch offices in three major cities – Turin, Milan, and Rome. This geographic diversity helped ensure that the sample includes agencies doing business across a variety of industries.2 Later that summer, the Italian-speaking author conducted 25 in-depth interviews with managers and staff members from these nine temporary agencies. The interviewees held a variety of positions in their firms, ranging from district managers and branch supervisors to public relations specialists and staffing representatives. All of the interviews were conducted with either structured or semi-structured interviewing techniques – the latter technique being used, when needed, to prod the interviewees beyond basic recitations of corporate mottos and well-known facts. Most interviews lasted between 90 and 120 minutes, and each was conducted in Italian and translated into English by the Italian-speaking author. Additionally, unstructured interviews were conducted with 10 temporary workers and two trade union representatives. We desired more interviews with workers, but all the temporary agencies we contacted, except Randstad, were unwilling to provide us access to their employees. Privacy laws, they claimed, prevent them from disclosing information about their employees. Despite the lack of help from the temporary agencies, the Italian-speaking author did identify and contact several temporary workers. Most of these workers, however, were unwilling to be interviewed. Based on their short statements, it appears they believe that such actions would be viewed negatively by the temporary agencies and the client companies, and that it could even adversely affect their future employment opportunities. Other sources of data were used as well. The Italian-speaking author observed numerous interviews between the staffing representatives and prospective temporary workers, and she also collected various written materials, ranging from small brochures available at branch offices, to information available on agency web sites, to substantial research reports commissioned by the temporary agencies themselves.



Structures of labor control In what follows, we describe the structural characteristics of the labor control regime emerging in Italy’s temporary help industry. In particular, we highlight three organizational practices that encourage temporary workers to extend their best effort on any given assignment.

Creating a ‘new culture of work’ We find that the temporary help industry is expending considerable energies to depict job instability as an ordinary aspect of work life. As intimated above, the Fordist economy of the mid-20th century emphasized a set of social relations – built around collectivism, mutual commitments, and stable routines – which most Italians embraced or at least accepted. This understanding of work, however, clearly conflicts with the requirements of a flexible economy. Instead of stability in one’s work life, individuals must now accept frequent changes and the fluctuating economic fortunes that this brings about. Especially for temporary workers, an acceptance of this situation is particularly important. Yet according to Carlotta R., a staffing representative for E-work, most Italians fall far short of meeting this basic requirement. She states that: We need to hire people who are serious about temporary work, because often people with good experience are not flexible enough. They are not appropriate because they still long for long-term employment. Or there is still the worker that wants the job close to home, or they don’t want to do overtime. Temporary work is not like that, you need to adapt … We need people that want to work, that are not afraid of change, that are willing to adapt. It means that if yesterday I was an office manager, tomorrow I may be a receptionist, then the day after tomorrow I may eventually go back to being an office manager … There needs to be a motivation, availability, flexibility, and the ability to adapt because if a worker goes to a job he or she will not have a month to adapt. They will have to do it in a couple of days.

As one of its top priorities, the temporary help industry has sought to promote a new understanding of work. From web sites to pamphlets, from career fairs to on-site meetings, from public gatherings at football matches to private gatherings at university employment offices, temporary agencies have spread positive messages about their industry, and how it can provide opportunities for workers and companies alike. A common theme of these messages, we find, is that people should adopt new mentalities about work. Temporary agencies often claim that the era of job stability is over, and that Italians should embrace a ‘new culture of work’, in which motivated individuals can achieve upward social mobility while enjoying greater levels of personal freedom and choice. For example, a pamphlet published by E-work states that ‘with E-work, workers will appreciate the freedom of choosing, of acquiring new experiences, the opportunity for training, to decide where and when to work’. Similarly, Adecco, a multinational temporary agency, makes the following statement on its web site:


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This year more than 3 million people will work for Adecco, 600,000 every day, each of them trying to find a new equilibrium between work and personal activities. This is a new phenomenon in a world where the traditional idea of the long-term job is substituted by an entrepreneurial spirit.

As these statements illustrate, the temporary help industry often encourages workers to view themselves not as passive recipients of jobs meted out by paternalistic corporations or government bureaucracies, but instead as entrepreneurs who can actively create their own job opportunities. The unemployed, we find, are often targets of this discourse. Here the temporary help industry seeks to frame unemployment as a personal choice rather than a structural problem afflicting nearly all contemporary economies. For example, Lavoro Temporaneo states on its web site that To leave the anonymity of unemployment is your duty! In this ‘new culture of work’, it is the duty of the individual worker to take the matter into his or her hands and to find the best possible job that best matches his or her skills. Workers are unemployed only if they want to be.

Examined through Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony, this discourse can be interpreted in at least two ways. First, it clearly serves the interests of temporary agencies, who want individuals to see their services in a favorable light, but it also serves the overall interests of capital, who want workers to accept flexible labor market practices in general. Consistent with Gramsci’s (2000: 278–9) claim that ideological hegemony is often ‘born in the factory’ but requires ‘only a minute quantity of professional political and ideological intermediaries’ to become generalized throughout society, temporary agencies are seeking to realign Italian cultural sensibilities about work with the new realities of the economy. Second, this discourse also helps to establish a voluntary system of labor control. This occurs because the perceived causes of job instability, which are shaped in part by cultural attitudes and ideological frames, appreciably affect a person’s response to this situation. For example, if workers see job instability as arising from public policies that promote the interests of business over the interests of workers, then they will likely resist these changes through collective action. Conversely, if workers view job instability as an inevitable aspect of contemporary employment, one emanating from forces originating beyond the control of corporate or government leaders, then they will likely accept it as an unavoidable situation. By spreading this latter understanding of job instability, temporary agencies are helping to convince reluctant workers that personal initiative and self-motivation, rather than collective political action, are the best responses to these economic changes.

Creating prospects for permanent employment Gramsci insisted that ideological power alone could not build workplace hegemony. In particular, he held that if management wants the support of its



workers, it must make meaningful concessions to them as well. The temporary help industry, however, appears to be deviating from this well-worn formula for hegemony. Instead of receiving outright and legally binding remuneration in exchange for their cooperation, something that characterizes traditional tripartite labor agreements, temporary workers are merely granted the uncertain prospect of earning a permanent job in the future. The trial period sits at the centre of this process. Here staffing agents describe any given temporary assignment as being a permanent position, albeit one with an extended probationary period in which the client company evaluates the skills and work ethics of several temporary workers before making a permanent hiring decision. Under Italian labor law, businesses cannot use trial periods when filling permanent positions, because it circumvents existing regulations on the hiring and firing of workers. Nonetheless, client companies can easily skirt this prohibition by hiring temporary workers, and then placing them through a de facto probationary period before hiring them permanently. Despite its illegality, some temporary agencies openly tout the trial period as a valuable service they provide for their clients. Renato Z., the branch manager of a multinational temporary agency, describes temporary work as an effective way to decide if [the client company] likes a specific person. It may take you six months or a year to decide if you like a worker. This is particularly true for lowerlevel positions. In these cases, a month or two doesn’t tell you enough about the worker. I understand that this may be a distortion of the law, but this is the way it works.

Similarly, Adriana T., a public relations coordinator for a multinational temporary agency, argues that client companies who use temporary workers can weed out undesirable individuals from their applicant pool. She describes an example of how this might work: There are [temporary] workers who are hired for a month contract and end up doing two weeks of sick leave. It seems incredible but it’s true. In this way, out of the 10 workers that we send them, they may see three that are good and they can hire them directly, at no extra cost. It is obvious that they will not hire the ones that stayed home for two weeks.

Importantly, by touting the trial period, temporary agencies can portray themselves as job placement firms (Gottfried, 1991; Rogers, 2000). At the centre of this practice is what Rogers (2000: 67) calls ‘the myth of the full-time job’ – the widespread notion, cultivated by temporary agencies, that any given temporary assignment could become a permanent position with the client company. Renato Z., a branch supervisor for a multinational temporary agency, explains how the trial period can benefit temporary workers: It provides time for the worker to show that he or she is valuable, and if the company renews the contract a second time it means that they may have an interest in him or her. In the long run they could hire the worker.

Likewise, Rossella B., the area coordinator of an international temporary agency, claims that


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[the trial period] is the way in which we present temporary work to our prospective employees. It is important that the workers consider this kind of work in such a perspective. It is something more that they gain, a new opportunity. Employers can get to know them and like them.

To further develop the image of job placement firms, temporary agencies often claim special expertise in matching individuals with particular jobs. At least while in the public’s eye, this can be a point of great pride for employees of temporary agencies. For example, Marcella B., the area supervisor of a multinational temporary agency, told us that before becoming a supervisor I had experience as a staffing representative. Through that experience I have learned that we, as temporary agencies, have two clients: on one hand businesses and on the other workers. They both deserve the same quality service. In other words we are a business that has only duties and no rights.

Similarly, a web site maintained by the temporary agency Start declares that in each one of our agencies, you will be able to meet our human resources experts eager to learn about your skills and your aspirations. Our job begins by listening to your expectations and continues by identifying your potential; for us, each worker is different, as different are his or her aspirations. On this basis we will be able to find you a job with a company that best matches your characteristics.

Furthermore, in an open letter, the President of Lavoro Temporaneo claims that particularly for us, Lavoro Temporaneo s.p.a., temporary work is an incredible opportunity. Our company, through our agencies well distributed across the nation, put at your disposal the best human resources professionals to present you with the opportunities offered by the job market and to evaluate with you the profession that best suits you.

Such messages are clearly intended to portray temporary work as an effective means of finding permanent employment. Yet they also enable temporary agencies and their client companies to gain additional control over temporary workers. This occurs because the trial period encourages individuals to extend their best effort on each assignment, and at times, to even tolerate undesirable working conditions as well (Gottfried, 1991; Rogers, 2000). The handful of temporary workers interviewed in this study all confirmed that, in an effort to impress the client company, they have skipped breaks, accepted dangerous tasks, or worked through illnesses and injuries. In an example of the latter, Marco R, a temporary assembly line worker, recounts his first day on the job and his reaction to a workplace injury he sustained: They told me to move a bunch of metal sheets from one bench to another. They did not tell me how sharp they were. I guess that while carrying them I must have pressed them too close to my belly because when I put them down I realized that they had cut through my shirt and that my stomach was bleeding. I didn’t know


Bringing Gramsci back in Degiuli & Kollmeyer what to do and I was afraid to lose the job, so I went to the locker, changed the shirt and cleaned the wound as well as I could, put some cotton and tape on it and went back to work. Later on that night when I went home I asked my wife to disinfect it and when she took off the tape we saw a pretty intense spurt of blood. My wife brought me to the doctor who told us that I had cut an artery. He told me to rest for a week, but the day after I went back to work.

This finding is consistent with earlier research. Smith (1998), for example, finds that many low-wage temporary workers in California’s computer industry perform at exceedingly high levels, with some even performing management-like duties, such as solving complex problems arising on the production line. These displays of personal initiative, she argues, arise primarily from temporary workers’ desire to earn permanent positions with the client company. Of course, to produce its intended effect, the trial period cannot merely be a myth. On this subject, we find that temporary workers do find permanent employment with client companies, but that their chances are typically overstated. Internal figures supplied to us by one temporary agency indicate that between 20 and 25 percent of their workers eventually find permanent employment with one of their client companies. A report produced by an American trade association arrives at a slightly higher figure, 33 percent (cited in Rogers, 2000: 68). It should be noted, however, that neither report indicates how long it took to find permanent positions, nor whether the permanent positions constituted ‘good jobs’, as defined by Kalleberg et al. (2000), or merely another type of non-standard employment, such as part-time or fixed-contract work. Unfortunately, reliable data on this subject remains elusive.

Restoring market despotism According to interviews with several branch supervisors, client companies are easily convinced that temporary workers, despite their high direct costs, can increase a company’s profitability. Since temporaries can be hired and fired as needed, the client company can easily adjust the size of its workforce as market conditions change. This, in turn, enables the client company to avoid sunk costs associated with unneeded workers. Describing this aspect of temporary work, Kalleberg writes that temporary agencies, in effect, provide their clients with a reserve labor army, which helps them to avoid sunk costs associated with ‘overstaffing positions with expensive, full-time, permanent workers who may not be utilized’ (2000: 347). Furthermore, since temporary agencies cover the cost of payroll taxes and fringe benefits and perform certain human resource functions, the client company may reduce some of their indirect labor costs as well. For example, Adriana T., a public relations coordinator for a multinational temporary agency, makes the case that we are convenient because in the end we cost less. With us [the client company] only pays the hours that the temp actually works. The fixed costs almost don’t exist. We are the ones who pay for sick leave after the third day.


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Importantly, we find that numerical flexibility also plays a role in the labor control process. Ultimately, a client company’s ability to alter the size of its workforce quickly rests on the legal right to dismiss temporary workers without the oversight of government bureaucracies. Such a capacity not only allows client companies to reconcile the size of their workforce with the prevailing demand for their products, but it also allows them to exert additional control over the temporary members of their workforce. As noted earlier, Burawoy argued that the threat of being fired and left without a means of support underpinned the market despotism of early industrial capitalism. He also argued that globalization may produce similar outcomes, because it allows businesses to threaten entire groups of workers with the prospect of having their factories closed down and their jobs sent overseas. Likewise, we find that temporary help industry also contains an element of market despotism, since it helps to re-establish the rights of employers to dismiss uncooperative workers without government oversight. This restoration is only partial, however, because permanent workers cannot be dismissed in this manner. Nonetheless, at least for temporary workers, the re-emergence of market despotism is an omnipresent part of their work lives. Illustrating this situation, Paola B., a temporary worker, states that some of her temporary co-workers have been dismissed for seemingly arbitrary reasons: I have seen other girls before me having to leave the job for no reason at all, from one day to the next just because they had a problem with a manager. Sometimes for a stupid reason, just because they didn’t have good chemistry.

The ability to dismiss temporary workers in this manner surely affects the distribution of power within the workplace. By intensifying the already precarious nature of temporary employment, the ability to fire temporary workers on a whim leaves them nearly bereft of structural power in the workplace. If they express concerns about their working conditions, or if they try to gain union representation, they are likely to be replaced with someone new. For example, Adriana T., a public relations coordinator for a multinational temporary agency, states that temporary workers possess the legal right to join trade unions, but they rarely do. She comments that by law we are obliged, when we sign the contract, to ask if they want to join the trade unions, but I’ve almost stopped because I hardly ever find anybody that wants to. They are afraid that the employers will see it negatively. Plus they don’t think it’s worth it. Trade unions help only those who have a job, not those that are trying to get one.

Valentina M., a trade union representative, expresses a similar view by saying that temporary workers are so easily replaced. This is the real problem. As an employer, why should I bother keeping people that in the future can cause me problems? I say thank you, good-bye, and try another one.

Cleary, the precarious nature of temporary work contracts makes it difficult, if not almost impossible, for trade unions to organize this sector of the



workforce. As a result, the introduction of temporary work in Italy should further weaken organized labor, especially if the temporary help industry continues to grow.

Conclusion and discussion Over the last few decades, the growing use of non-standard employment practices in many advanced capitalist countries has engendered a large body of social research, some of which focuses on how labor control operates under such conditions. Being interested in this latter subject, we have sought to understand how labor control functions in Italy’s recently developed temporary help industry. Through interviews, observational fieldwork, and industry documents, we detail management’s attempts to induce cooperation and commitment from its temporary workers largely through ideological means, even though Italy’s temporary help industry is dominated by low-wage workers, whose consent was previously secured through reasonable wages and generous social protection. Although our data emphasize the views and actions of the managers in temporary agencies, rather than also focusing on workers and how they respond to these policies, we believe our data nonetheless provide valuable insights into our subject matter. Prominent theories on hegemonic labor control inform our empirical analysis. Based on theories developed by Burawoy and Gramsci, one would reasonably predict that workers would voluntarily accept the risks associated with temporary jobs only if they received some type of offsetting concessions, such as above-market wages or additional benefits. This, however, has not been the case in Italy’s temporary help industry. Here we find little evidence suggesting that the structure of temporary work represents a compromise solution to the desire, arising primarily from businesses, for greater labor market flexibility. Nor do we find much evidence suggesting that labor control rests heavily on coercion. Instead, it seems that ideological power plays a crucial role in aligning the perceived interests of temporary workers with those of temporary agencies and their client companies. In particular, we find that labor control in Italy’s temporary help industry centres on three organizational practices. The first practice involves temporary agencies seeking to characterize job insecurity as a normal part of everyday work life. To accomplish this, temporary agencies repeatedly tell prospective and current temporary workers that a more flexible labor market system has irrevocably replaced the previous one, but that the new system actually offers better opportunities for individual career advancement, as long as one works hard and embraces personal initiative. The aim of this discourse, temporary agencies openly state, is to help create a ‘new culture of work’ in Italy. This discourse, we believe, makes temporary agencies the ‘ideological intermediaries’ of neoliberals in Italy. The second practice involves the more specific task of describing temporary work as an effective way to find permanent employment. Consistent with


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previous research, we find that staffing agents often describe temporary assignments as being de facto permanent jobs, albeit ones in which the client company will evaluate a person’s skills and work ethic before making a permanent hiring decision. While many individuals do eventually find permanent jobs in this way, upward of 30 percent according to some estimates, this practice also plays an important role in the labor control process, because it encourages temporary workers to extend their best efforts on each assignment. The important point here, however, is that this type of hegemony rests not on a material compromise between management and its workforce, as the literature generally anticipates, but rather on the hope of being hired permanently and thereby avoiding the perils of temporary work altogether. The third practice reinforces hegemony with coercion. The laws underpinning the temporary help industry in Italy, like elsewhere, give client companies the legal right to hire and fire temporary workers as needed. In obvious ways, this legal right helps client companies to enhance their profitability. Less obviously, however, it also gives management an effective means of disciplining recalcitrant workers. If a temporary worker performs poorly or causes difficulties, for example by complaining about working conditions or seeking union representation, he or she can be quickly fired and replaced with someone new. This capacity resembles what Burawoy termed ‘market despotism’: the ability of management in early industrial capitalism to exert control over its workforce by threatening to fire uncooperative workers and leaving them without a source of income. We believe that, in their totality, these three organizational practices constitute a labor control system in which ideological power plays a prominent role. As cited above, recent studies of post-bureaucratic organizations have drawn similar conclusions. However, unlike our analysis, these studies primarily focus on manufacturing firms using team-based production strategies, and on firms employing highly educated and highly paid professionals. Importantly, these two scenarios blur the lines between managers and workers, thereby creating opportunities to inculcate workers with the norms and values of management. The situation we analyzed, however, is very different. In the temporary help industry, most workers earn modest wages. Plus, their worksites and job tasks are constantly changing, making close and sustained contact with management unlikely. These two factors make the temporary help industry an unlikely candidate for an ideologically based system of labor control. Yet it is being attempted nonetheless. This leads us to suspect that ideological power can help influence the behavior of workers across a wider range of workplaces than previously recognized. Of course, our findings must be kept in perspective. Since we had limited contact with temporary workers, we cannot speak definitively about the degree to which hegemony has actually been achieved. It is possible that temporary workers are questioning or rejecting management’s claims, and that we did not observe this. Instead, based on our observations, we believe that management’s claims about the benefits of temporary work, and inevitability of job instability, are being perceived as basically accurate statements by current and prospective temporary workers. This situation, however, could quickly change if management’s claims



diverge from the everyday experiences of temporary workers. For example, if people come to believe that temporary work offers few opportunities for career advancement, then management’s ideologically based hegemony is likely to fail. Such an outcome would, in turn, force management to adopt more traditional modes of labor control. A more accurate understanding of this situation, and how it unfolds over the long term, will require additional research.

Notes 1

2

Ideally, our research design would analyze both the structure of labor control being implemented by management and how workers alter this system through their responses to it (see Vallas, 2006). But since workers in the temporary help industry are dispersed across innumerable and ever-changing worksites, and since our primary theoretical interests lie with the desire of temporary agencies to promote cultural change about work in Italy, this approach was not feasible for our study. Turin’s economy is oriented toward manufacturing; Rome’s economy is oriented toward services; and Milan’s economy is a mixture of both.

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Francesca Degiuli Francesca Degiuli is a doctoral candidate in sociology, with emphasis on global studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie at the intersections of gender, globalization, immigration and work, and they are driven by broad questions about the theoretical linkages between political economy and culture. She is presently completing her doctoral dissertation, Laboring Lives:The Case of Eldercare Work in Italy, an ethnographic study that examines the job of home eldercare assistance in Italy. Address: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Christopher Kollmeyer Christopher Kollmeyer is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Aberdeen. He received a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was a faculty fellow in the Global and International Studies Program from 2003 to 2005. His interdisciplinary research focuses on topics in global and comparative sociology, economic sociology, political sociology, media studies, and social theory. Address: Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Old Aberdeen AB24 3QY, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Date submitted May 2006 Date accepted April 2007


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