Essays on the Temporary Help Industry

This book examines the limiting of recontracting between clients and temps in the temporary help industry (THI). Early on, agencies contracted-out temps to operate the equipment they were renting to clients. When clients could afford their own machines, agencies implemented covenants to prevent clients from poaching their human capital which had become more valuable as demand for flexible labor increased. Agencies have implemented covenants rather than other mechanisms that deterministic tempnapping because the use of covenants has been Largely unregulated. Furthermore, a revolution in The common law has made enforcement of covenants these clauses a more effective deterrent. The empirical analysis in this book suggests that a state's employment to labor force ratio falls by THI 10% after the first enforcement of a covenant against an at-will employee by a major court in that state. This analysis sheds light on what the leading expert on law in the THI, A. Bernard Frechtman, has called the "scourge of the industry" and should be especially useful to professionals in the THI, or anyone else who may be involved in labor market intermediation.