CUED

Feature:

Workplace Safety in Atlanta's Construction Industry: Institutional Failure in Temporary Staffing Arrangements
June 2003; Chirag Mehta, Sara Baum, Nik Theodore and Lori Bush

Abstract
Data on workplace injuries, safety concerns, and provisions for safety equipment and job training suggest that workers supplied by temporary staffing agencies to building and construction contractors in the Atlanta metro area work in substandard safety conditions. Agency-supplied temps cite inadequate job training and insufficient provisions for safety equipment as reasons for their safety concerns. Temporary agency workers in Atlanta’s building and construction industry experience substandard safety conditions in part because non-standard employment arrangements between building contractors and temp agencies undermine the efficacy of regulatory forces designed to improve workplace safety standards. This study examines the working conditions experienced by temp workers supplied by temp agencies to building and construction contractors in the Atlanta metro area and examines factors that influence these conditions. The results of this study are based upon primary data collected via surveys of workers, temporary staffing agencies, and building and construction contractors in the Atlanta metro area. Researchers surveyed 301 building and construction contractors and 24 temp agencies. In person surveys of 100 workers and in-depth interviews with 11 workers were conducted during the same time period. The primary goals of this study include:

1. To document the extent to which building contractors in the Atlanta metro area use temporary staffing agencies to fill job assignments and to describe the segment of the staffing industry that supplies temporary construction workers;

2. To understand and analyze safety conditions for agency-supplied temps who work regularly in the construction industry; and

3. To investigate factors that explain why agency-supplied temps experience substandard safety conditions at construction worksites

CUED Publications:

Contingent Work

• A Fair Day's Pay? Homeless Day Laborers in Chicago; (February 2000)
• Contingent Work and the Staffing Industry: A Review of Worker-Centered Policy and Practice; (October 1999)

Other Publications:

Contingent Work Research Clearinghouse

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