ABSTRACT
Temporary employment has become a common form of work in the Canadian economy. Recent statistics indicate that 12 per cent – or more than 1.5 million – of paid workers in Canada are considered to be temporary (Akyeampong 2001). Temporary work includes any arrangement in which workers are employed on an interim basis with a predetermined (although potentially flexible) completion date. These represent variations of the traditional bipartite relationship between employer and employee. It should be noted that agency work and temporary work are not synonymous. In Canada, agency work represents a specialised and very small subgroup of the broader category of temporary work. Agency work, for the purpose of this chapter, pertains solely to employment arrangements in which individuals are paid and retained by a service provider who contracts out individuals to third parties (usually) on a short-term basis. A unique element of this form of work is that there is a tripartite relationship between the worker, service provider (i.e. agency), and hiring organisation.
