Use of Temporary Workers Popular with Suppliers
Kathy Reiss, OESA

Given the uncertain nature of automotive production volumes and personnel needs, the OESA Legal Issues and Human Resources councils jointly conducted a short survey on the use of temporary workers to support manufacturing activities.

“Temporary” was defined as an employee hired as a contractor through a third party agency for a limited time period and/or working on a specified project.

Of the 27 survey respondents, all indicated that temporary workers were used in some capacity within their organizations. The breakdown of functional areas is shown in the chart to the right with 78 percent using temporary employees in production activities, 70 percent in professional/administrative, 50 percent in engineering and a handful of temporary employees in building/equipment maintanence and other areas.

All respondents indicate a third-party agency is used to hire temporary workers with one-third of respondents having written policies governing the hiring and use of temporary workers. The majority of companies (56 percent) do not place time limits on the use of temporary workers. However, of the 11 that do have limits, all are less than one year in duration with seven of these being six months or less.

The staffing service providers play an important role in hiring, payroll, benefits and management of temporary employees. Companies leave many of the human resource related functions and activities of these personnel to the third-party agencies and work closely to ensure company policies and procedures are followed by all.

For additional information on OESA councils, please contact Michelle Maki for the Legal Issues Council at 248.952.6401 ext. 229 or mmaki@oesa.org and Karen Bohannon for the Human Resources Council at ext. 230 or kbohannon@oesa.org.

Kathy Reiss can be reached via e-mail at kreiss@oesa.org.