Contingent employment

Contingent work,casual work, or contract work, is an employment relationship with limited job security, payment on a piece work basis, typically part time (typically with variable hours) that is considered non-permanent. Contingent work is usually not considered to be a career or part of a career. Contingent work,casual work, or contract work, is an employment relationship with limited job security, payment on a piece work basis, typically part time (typically with variable hours) that is considered non-permanent. Contingent work is usually not considered to be a career or part of a career. Contingent workers are also often called consultants, freelancers, independent contractors, independent professionals, temporary contract workers or temps. One of the features of contingent work is that it usually offers little or no opportunity for career development. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the nontraditional workforce includes 'multiple job holders, contingent and part-time workers, and people in alternative work arrangements'. These workers currently represent a substantial portion of the US workforce, and 'nearly four out of five employers, in establishments of all sizes and industries, use some form of nontraditional staffing'. 'People in alternative work arrangements' includes independent contractors, employees of contract companies, workers who are on call, and temporary workers. The concept of what is now considered to be a job, where one attends work at fixed hours was rare until the Industrial Revolution. Before then, the predominant regular work was in agriculture. Textile workers would often work from home, buying raw cotton from a merchant, spinning it and weaving it into cloth at home, before selling it on. In the 1770s, cotton mills started to appear in Lancashire, England, using Richard Arkwright's spinning jenny and powered by water wheels. Workers would often work in twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. However, they would still often be paid on a piece work basis, and fines would be deducted from their pay for damage to machinery. Employers could hire and fire pretty much as they pleased, and if employees had any grievance about this, there was very little that they could do about it. Individual workers were powerless to prevent exploitation by their employers. {{Citation needed}}. However, the realization that all workers generally want the same things{{Citation needed}}, and the benefits of collective bargaining, led to the formation of the first trade unions. As trade unions became larger, their sphere of influence increased, and started to involve political lobbying, resulting in much of the employment law that is now taken for granted. Manufacturing has declined during the 20th century in the Western world. Many manufacturing organisations that employ large numbers of people have relocated their operations to developing nations. As a result, whenever they do hire staff in Europe or North America, they often need to be able to fire them quickly and keep costs as low as possible, to remain competitive. As a result, some employers may look for loopholes in employment law, or ways of engaging staff that allows them to circumvent union-negotiated employment law, creating what is now known as contingent work. By engaging contract workers, organizations are able to be agile and save costs. The contingent workforce acts as a variable workforce for companies to select from to perform specific projects or complete specialized projects. Also as organizations make efforts to be more agile and to quickly respond to change in order to be more competitive, they turn to the contingent workforce to have on-demand access to professionals and experts. Organizations also see the opportunity to reduce benefits and retirement costs by engaging the contingent workforce. However, there is risk involved in avoiding these costs if an employee is improperly classified as a contingent worker. Using the contingent workforce is also cost-effective in that using contingent labor allows for adjustments to employment levels and employment costs depending on what kind of expertise and labor is need and at what time it is needed.