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Once contingent workers appear in a company, they multiply rapidly, taking the places of permanent staff. Says Manpower chairman Mitchell Fromstein: "The U.S. is going from just-in-time manufacturing to just-in-time employment. The employer tells us, 'I want them delivered exactly when I want them, as many as I need, and when I don't need them, I don't want them here.' " Fromstein has built his business by meeting these demands. "Can I get people to work under these circumstances? Yeah. We're the ATMs of the job market."
In order to succeed in this new type of work, says Carvel Taylor, a Chicago industrial consultant, "you need to have an entrepreneurial spirit, definable skills and an ability to articulate and market them, but that is exactly what the bulk of the population holed up inside bureaucratic organizations doesn't have, and why they are scared to death." Already the temping phenomenon is producing two vastly different classes of untethered workers: the mercenary work force at the top of the skills ladder, who thrive; and the rest, many of whom, unable to attract fat contract fees, must struggle to survive.
The flexible life of a consultant or contract worker does indeed work well for a relatively small class of people like doctors, engineers, accountants and financial planners, who can expect to do well by providing highly compensated services to a variety of employers. David Hill, 65, a former chief information systems officer for General Motors, has joined with 17 other onetime auto-industry executives (median salary before leaving their jobs: $300,000) to form a top-of-the-line international consulting group. "In the future," says Hill, "loyalty and devotion are going to be not to a Hughes or Boeing or even an industry, but to a particular profession or skill. It takes a high level of education to succeed in such a free-flowing environment. We are going to be moving from job to job in the same way that migrant workers used to move from crop to crop."
Many professionals like the freedom of such a life. John Andrews, 42, a Los Angeles antitrust attorney, remembers working seven weeks without a day off as a young lawyer. He prefers temping at law firms. Says he: "There's no security anymore. Partnerships fold up overnight. Besides, I never had a rat- race mentality, and being a lawyer is the ultimate rat-race job. I like to travel. My car is paid for. I don't own a house. I'm not into mowing grass."
But most American workers do better with the comfort and security of a stable job. Sheldon Joseph was a Chicago advertising executive until he was laid off in 1989. Now he temps for $10 an hour in a community job-training program. Says the 56-year-old Joseph: "I was used to working in the corporate environment and giving my total loyalty to the company. I feel like Rip van Winkle. You wake up and the world is all changed. The message from industry is, 'We don't want your loyalty. We want your work.' What happened to the dream?"