Rise of the temporary employment industry in Namibia: A regulatory ‘fix’

Abstract

The role of the temporary employment industry as an active intermediary in the job market can only be fully understood in the context of wider processes of restructuring and regulation at a particular time and place. In Namibia, the rise of poorly regulated employment relationships occurred in a context of expanding institutional and statutory regulation of the labour market. Here the temporary employment industry thrives within the interstices left by the limits in regulatory coverage. Nonstandard jobs are premised on a selective decoupling of the employment relationship from statutory, and hence almost invariably also collective, protective measures. The mediating role of the employment agency between the client firm and the temporary labourer allows management to evade or dilute the protections that insulate permanent employees from competitive pressures in the external market. As such, temporary agency employment constitutes both a regulatory ‘fix’ for the dilemmas associated with the deployment of labour and a mechanism for the social reproduction of a nonstandard labour supply. However, the role of labour market intermediary varies depending on whether an agency is located at the top or the bottom of the temporary employment industry.

Keywords:

• temporary employment
• labour market, flexibility
• regulation
• casualisation

Notes

1. In addition to a documentary study of publications emanating from government, trade unions and employers’ associations, the research involved 91 in-depth, partially structured interviews. The list of respondents include the general secretaries of the major trade union federations as well as their affiliates; regional organisers and shop stewards from the largest industrial unions; human resource managers from the leading industrial sectors; trade union researchers and management consultants; office bearers from the national employers’ federation; and senior officials in the ministry of labour. Interviews were conducted during the following periods: October–November 1998, July 2000, June–July 2002 and September–October 2007. Some of the respondents were interviewed more than once over these research periods.

2. The standard versus nonstandard employment classification is based on a regulatory and entitlement norm (Mückenberger 1989). As such, ‘nonstandard’ is a less ideologically loaded and a more precise term than ‘flexible’ or ‘peripheral’ labour. The primary concern is not the nature or length of service, but rather the broader issue of lack of entitlement.

3. These deviations include the duration of the contract, the duration of the work, the place of the work, the replacement of a bilateral by a triangular relationship, and the content of the worker's obligation in terms of the availability to work (Veneziani 1993).

4. While the rate of unionisation in 2004 stood at 25.6%, there are significant variations in this regard. For instance, trade union density is roughly twice as high in urban areas as in rural areas and the rate of unionisation of men is about one-and-a-half times that of women (Ministry of Labour 2004, 60).