Temps Concentrate on the Bottom Line : Trends: More and more workers are taking temporary jobs in the recessionary '90s. Both employers and employees can benefit.

By JEANNE DUGAN COOPER

Dec. 6, 1992 12 AM PT

NEWSDAY

For Simone Heard, the bombshell dropped on a sultry Tuesday morning in July. She had reached the bottom of a heap of documents she had been typing and sorting for days, and she triumphantly turned the work over to her supervisor.

“She took it and said, ‘This is it for you,’ ” Heard recalls. Heard wanted to cry but simply nodded. “I tried not to show any emotion. But I was very, very upset. I felt very demoralized.”

Heard felt entitled to neither an explanation nor a dramatic departure. After all, she had been hired as a temporary worker three months earlier and knew that the job could end in one day or one year.

The 22-year-old immediately set out to find a permanent position with security, health benefits and vacation pay. But the job market was an ocean of unemployed people and a puddle of work, so she soon went back to the temporary track.

People have been working as temporaries for decades, often drawn by choice to the kaleidoscope of duties and employers. “I do it for the flexibility,” says Bob Weston, a New York City actor who tours with a drama company half the year and works as a temporary the other half.

But the recession has spawned a new breed of temp: those who want permanent jobs but cannot find them. Tens of thousands of people across the United States are taking short-term jobs because they can find nothing else. “For many, temping is better than the alternative,” says Bruce Steinberg, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Temporary Services, a trade group in Alexandria, Va.

“The bill collectors don’t care if you can’t find a permanent job,” says Desiree Cain of Kings Park, N.Y. That’s why she took a job last month as a temporary assistant controller, earning half the salary she had in her former, permanent job and working without benefits.

Employers, meanwhile, are capitalizing on the rich pool of talent and filling traditionally permanent positions with temps, giving a boost to short-term jobs at a time when permanent positions continue to disappear. “In the face of a soggy economy, this is one of the major growth sectors of the American labor market,” says Samuel Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since 1972, the number of people working for temporary agencies has increased more than 400% to about 1 million, according to the National Assn. of Temporary Services. Analysts say the figure--about 1% of the nation’s labor force--could be three times as high if it included a growing legion of temporary workers hired directly by corporations.

Many companies are hiring temps largely because business is improving, but they’re not convinced that the recession is over. By avoiding permanent employees, companies save about one-third of the cost of hiring a new employee and cushion themselves against the cost and legal problems involved with shedding permanent labor if business dips again.

“Companies are taking on temps when they get a boost in work and don’t know if it’s a lasting proposition,” Ehrenhalt says.

Some worker advocates and most unions say temping is a last resort that forces people to settle for less pay and fewer hours without health benefits, sick days or vacations.

“I had a stockbroker with a master’s degree working as a temporary helper from 12 to 8 a.m. on the mail machine,” says Joseph Mendocino, human resources director for Access Direct Systems in Farmingdale, N.Y. “He had two children and had to put food on the table. It is very, very scary.”

More than 10% of the direct mail company’s 200 employees are temporary workers, Mendocino says, because it’s the most cost-effective way to handle the peak-and-valley business.

On the flip side, temporary industry representatives say short-term jobs are an attractive way to work flexible hours, gain skills and even land a full-time job. Temporary agencies offer free training and often chip in for health benefits and pension plans and give vacation pay and sick days to employees who work a certain number of hours a year.

Gone are the days when temp jobs were confined to clerical posts and assembly lines. Employers are using temps the same way they used just-in-time inventory on assembly lines. “They only use what they need and pay for only what they use,” says Frank Ligouri, chairman and chief executive of Olsten Corp., a major temporary services company based in Westbury, N.Y.

Employers range from retail outlets and hospitals to giants like IBM, General Motors and the International Monetary Fund. Temps are working as clerks at stores, as bank tellers and proofreaders, accountants, nurses and credit analysts. Some companies are using temporary agencies to handle entire departments so they can focus on their core businesses.

“Temping has become a management tool to operate lean and mean--that’s the way of the ‘90s,” says Edward Grant, president of TempForce. “When things are good, companies tend to over-hire. When they’re bad, they tend to over-cut. More and more companies I talk to say they’ll never over-hire again. Instead, they’re using temps.”

According to a study funded by the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department, 63% of women are temping because they can’t find permanent jobs.

“Employment agencies insist women are still temping because they want to, but there’s no evidence to support this,” says Maureen Martella, a Temple University researcher who conducted the study of 96 temporary clerical workers in Philadelphia.

In 1987, Desiree Cain had a five-minute commute to a solid assistant controller’s job where she alone garnered the average wage of a Long Island family. But in July of last year, her employer, A&M; Instrument Co., moved from New York to New Hampshire.

Cain drew up a resume, thumbed help-wanted ads and aggressively looked for work. A year later, when she had failed to find a job and the end of her unemployment benefits came into sight, she went to Accountemps, an agency that specializes in placing financial employees. She was working within three days. “It had never occurred to me before to temp.”

Cain is earning $10 an hour--about half her old salary--has no health benefits and commutes about three hours round trip to work because she moved. But, she rationalizes, “the ‘80s are over. You have to lower your expectations. Reality is here.”