RITA DALY - October 14th, 2006.

To understand the "temp" industry today is to hear the story of eight Somali women whose experience has left them without jobs, references and, in their estimation, much to fear.

Five days a week — some for months, others for as long as two years — they clocked into work at the UPS package delivery plant off Jane St. in the north end of the city. Their jobs involved standing for hours high on a platform flipping boxes on a conveyor belt.

It was mundane work. But worse, it was work that denied them job security, basic employment rights and branded them second-class compared with permanently employed co-workers performing similar tasks on the warehouse floor.

Considered fringe labour for decades, so-called temps have become the nation's homegrown version of offshore labour.

Temporary workers are rapidly replacing permanent employees in almost every sector, often through employment agencies that pay up to 40 per cent less than permanent wages, offer few benefits and make a profit marketing labour to factories, warehouses, retail outlets, nursing homes and offices across the country.

Currently about 13 per cent — or close to 1.7 million — of Canadian workers are temporary, performing contract, seasonal, casual or agency work. But whereas one in 10 new hires was a temporary worker in 1989, that ratio has risen to one in five, according to Statistics Canada.

Temporary agencies have flourished as companies opt to hire cheaper labour from an unregulated industry and under what critics call outdated employment standards legislation. Temp agencies say their biggest challenge is trying to pay workers a decent wage when client companies don't want to bear the burden of higher costs.

The Somali women worked 22 hours a week at the United Postal Service plant. But their employer was actually a large North American employment agency called Spherion. In a business arrangement with UPS, Spherion Canada placed temporary workers in the plant and paid their wages.

The women earned about $1 per hour less than other unskilled unionized package handlers in the plant. They received no statutory holiday pay. And there was no opportunity for them to benefit from UPS health, dental and pension benefits.

Last summer they were abruptly let go, allegedly due to a lack of safety over their traditional Muslim attire while on the job. Up until then, the women say they wore their ankle-length skirts without it being a problem. But after a union drive resulted in the company hiring them on permanently, UPS told them they needed to roll up their skirts for safety reasons, they said in an interview.

After telling company officials that, because of religious reasons, they could not do so, they were let go.

"Only when the women were being hired on as permanent workers did UPS then start to look at the issues of health and safety," said Karen Dick, an organizer with the Workers' Action Centre, a grassroots advocacy centre for temporary and part-time workers.

The women were devastated. Dick claims neither UPS nor Spherion gave them any health or safety training. And, as other temp workers typically find, they received no termination pay.

UPS, reputed to have a strict health and safety policy, declined to comment on the case because the women have filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. An investigator recently recommended their case go before a tribunal.

Spherion Canada's chief financial officer Bernie Vogel also would not comment on the case, other than to say it deemed the workplace safe before placing the women and never had a health or safety problem in the plant.

"It was a shock for everyone because we thought we were going to keep our jobs forever," said Aniisa Cali, who worked at UPS for seven months.

"I asked why this was not a safety issue before. UPS said all those months we were not hired by them. We were hired by Spherion."

Critics say current employment standards legislation is failing to adequately address the vulnerability of temporary workers and is adding to the ranks of the country's working poor. Most of the women, some single parents, are now living on a reduced income of employment insurance or social assistance while having to support their children.

Meanwhile the temp industry, unlicensed and unregulated, has mushroomed.

Six years ago, temp work was a $1.5-billion industry in Canada. According to Statistics Canada's latest figures, the industry pulled in $4.4 billion in revenues in 2004, 60 per cent in Ontario.

There are now more than 500 temp agencies in Toronto alone. Some provide a valuable service, finding jobs quickly for new immigrants anxious for Canadian work experience or for skilled workers filling contract positions during a production surge.

"We feel this industry can provide so much opportunity," said Amanda Curtis, executive director of the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services.

ACSESS boasts a voluntary membership of more than 1,000 executive, permanent and temporary agencies. The association does not actively police its members, but it sets down a code of ethics and standards that members pledge to abide. Member agencies often exceed minimum employment standards, Curtis said.

But some agencies' sole purpose is to market unskilled labour. They negotiate the assignment and the workers' salary, then deduct their own unrestricted fee before deducting for income tax and statutory benefits such as Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance, injury compensation and vacation pay.

Critics say companies who hire temp workers are as much to blame for the workers' plight as the agencies because the firms avoid paying employee benefits and can dismiss temporary workers at will.

"Here you have an intermediary in the labour market making a profit off of placing people in jobs. For the worker, it's unstable, unpredictable work and wages," said University of Toronto sociology professor Cynthia Cranford, who has conducted research into the plight of vulnerable workers.

Agencies range from large and corporate to small and fly-by-night. Several agencies that owed wages to workers were found by the Workers' Action Centre to be operating out of apartments and basements.

"If you don't have a monitoring body, how do you shut these places down?" asked Dick.

The workers' centre, she said, is swamped with complaints from temporary workers who have lost their jobs and are still owed wages.

The Toronto Job Agency, which operates out of a Scarborough industrial unit, had workers sign a contract stating they will be charged $100 if they don't give a day's notice of any absence. The owner said this week it is used primarily as a scare tactic.

"It depends," said owner Jeff Ji, who places mostly Asian men in industrial jobs. "Maybe I charged two or three people in a year. If they don't work the date and they don't call me, I will charge."

Other agencies charge from $2 to $150 for registration, work supplies, security checks and transportation. Some take the first week's wages as a "placement" fee. Others have workers sign a contract stating they are "elect to work," a classification under the Employment Standards Act that entitles a person to refuse a job any time without repercussions — but also exempts them from receiving public holiday or termination pay. Labour activists say most workers sign the contract out of fear they won't get any work.

Douglas Yardley, a 54-year-old factory temp worker, refused to sign any such contract. But twice he complained to the labour ministry after two different agencies denied him statutory holiday pay. For one job, he worked full time for nearly three years at a steel plant alongside permanent employees who received holiday pay.

In each case, the temp agency argued he was not entitled to the holiday pay under the act. Yardley won both cases, in 2004 and again in May this year.

Both complaints cost him his job, however. After winning the first case, he said: "I was told the client company was no longer doing business with that agency. The plant foreman actually approached me just after I punched out and said I was being let go because of (the complaint)."

In the second case, Yardley said: "I was let go the same day I was told I was being let go." He is now working at a plastics company for an agency that is paying him stat holidays.

Another worker, Kelly Tom, 38, was shocked to discover an agency he once worked for had restricted his ability to obtain a permanent job at a market research company. The company had signed a restrictive clause with the agency that required a buyout fee if it wanted to hire him as a permanent employee within the year.

"I'd heard of this but I didn't believe it until it actually happened," Tom said.

"It's just a business relationship," she added. "It is fair practice and everyone is aware of it. It is not a secret."

When asked about such practices, Ontario Labour Minister Steve Peters said temp agency workers generally have the same rights as other employees under the current Employment Standards Act.

"The employment standards laws are there to protect those workers and certainly we're prepared to work to ensure they are," he said.

The labour ministry receives 15,000 to 20,000 employment standards complaints each year, but Peters said the Liberal government is determined to reduce that by targeting bad employers, including temp agencies. The ministry currently employs 144 employment standards inspectors, 20 of whom are on a dedicated team targeting 2,500 Ontario firms last year with surprise inspections, and another 2,500 again this year.

Based on ministry figures, however, that is still barely one per cent of the total number of Ontario employers and critics charge there has been no noticeable improvement in the way private firms treat temp workers or the way agencies operate.

"For the most part, it's still a system that relies heavily on a complaint in order to generate an investigation," said Ron Saunders, director of the Work Network of the Canadian Policy Research Network and a member of a Toronto task force calling for a new employment strategy for the working poor.

"And people who aren't in a union, who are low paid, they're not going to complain."

Temping was a lot different 60 years ago when American entrepreneur William Russell Kelly opened the doors to the first temporary employment agency in North America, sending squads of mostly young single women to fill short absences in clerical offices. The so-called Kelly Girls were hailed as a workplace revolution.

But temps were short-term labour back then. They never stayed in one place more than a few days or weeks before moving on. The flexibility suited employer and worker equally.

Today, it's a major means of survival for new immigrants, visible minorities and single parents who dominate the ranks of the working poor.

Some workers may still be assigned jobs lasting a few days or weeks. But, increasingly, temps are placed for months, even years. With little or no job security, they are the first to go when the economy slows.

"Temp work is not just for maternity leave any more. It's not to cover summer vacations. It's having a whole workforce you don't care about," said Deena Ladd, co-ordinator of the Worker's Action Centre, which is lobbying the government for tougher legislation to protect workers.

The centre wants provisions under the Employment Standards Act that would outlaw extra fees charged workers. It also wants any business agreement that hampers workers from being permanently hired and traps them in the cycle of agency work to be prohibited.

Temp industry representatives are opposed to anything other than self-regulation and point out that the province's former Employment Agencies Act, repealed in 2001, was never enforced. But, at the moment, even self-regulation doesn't exist.

"This industry prides itself in being a responsible employer, but if it's necessary to look at something like this we would be happy to explore it," said Curtis.

She noted extra fees charged workers are "frowned upon" by the industry.

"If a temporary worker feels they are being treated unfairly or improperly by a staffing firm, they can contact us," she said.

"It's not something we take lightly; it's something we take seriously."

Mary McIninch, ACSESS manager of government relations, said she has seen no evidence to suggest temp agencies are worse employers than any other sector. "Until my eyes see numbers, I wouldn't say this sector is any higher risk than the others out there."

When the Somali women lost their jobs in July 2005, they immediately called their agency employer, Spherion Canada. For five weeks, none received a call back or a copy of the Record of Employment needed to apply for employment insurance, said Dick.

Only after the Workers' Action Centre stepped in did the women receive their employment records. Spherion also agreed to pay their statutory holiday pay.

The women don't hold out much hope of ever getting their jobs back. None wants to go back anyway. They blame UPS and Spherion equally for the situation they're left in.

"All we want now," said Cali, "is for other people not to go through what happened to us."