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Employers defend their new labor practices as plain and simple survival tactics. American companies are evolving from huge, mass-production manufacturers that once dominated markets to a new species of hub-and-network enterprises built for flexibility in a brutally competitive world. The buzz phrase at many companies is "accordion management" -- the ability to expand or contract one's work force virtually at will to suit business conditions.
Boardroom discussions now focus on what are called "core competencies" -- those operations at the heart of a business -- and on how to shed the rest of the functions to subcontractors or nonstaff workers. Managers divide their employees into a permanent cadre of "core workers," which keeps on shrinking, and the contingent workers, who can be brought in at a moment's notice. Most large employers are not even certain at any given time how many of these helpers are working for them -- nor do they usually care. Says a manager: "We don't count them. They're not here long enough to matter." Some analysts wonder whether America's celebrated rise in productivity per worker (2.8% last year) is all it seems to be, since so many of those invisible hands are not being counted. So profound is the change that the word core has evolved a new meaning, as in "she's core," meaning that she is important and distinctive because she is not part of the contingent work force.
No institution is immune to the contingent solution. Imagine the surprise of a Los Angeles woman, seriously injured in an auto accident, when she recently asked a radiology technician at the hospital about a procedure. "Don't ask me," he snapped. "I'm just a temp." In Appleton, Wisconsin, the Aid Association for Lutherans is using temps to keep track of $3.6 million in relief funds for victims of Hurricane Andrew. The State of Maine uses temps as bailiffs and financial investigators. IBM, once the citadel of American job security, has traded 10% of its staff for "peripherals" so far. Says IBM administrative manager Lillian Davis, in words that would have been unimaginable from a FORTUNE 500 executive 20 years ago: "Now that we have stepped over that line, we have decided to use these people wherever we can."
Indeed, managers these days can hire virtually any kind of temp they want. Need an extra lawyer or paralegal for a week or so? Try Lawsmiths in San Francisco or Project Professionals in Santa Monica, California. Need a loan officer? Bank Temps in Denver can help. Engineers? Sysdyne outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. CAD/CAM operators? You don't even need to buy the equipment: in Oakland, California, Western Temporary Services has its own CAD/ CAM business, serving such clients as the U.S. Navy, the Air Force, Chevron, Exxon and United Technologies. Doctors and nurses? A firm called Interim in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, can provide them anywhere in the country. Need to rent a tough boss to clean up a bad situation? Call IMCOR, a Connecticut-based firm that boasts a roster of senior executives expert at turnarounds. Says IMCOR chairman John Thompson: "Services like ours are going to continue to flourish when businesses change so rapidly that it's in no one's interest to make commitments. Moving on to the next place where you're needed is going to be the way it is. We will all be free-lancers."