ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical moment in which the TAW industry first packaged and sold flexibility for US employers. It shows the TAW industry was not only a beneficiary of this trend; it was an active player in creating it. The TAW industry's hard-driving campaign to sell flexibility for employers and institutionalize insecurity for workers was not contained within a small sector of the economy, as it had been in the 1950s when the industry only advertised temp work as a way for housewives to earn pin money'. Flexibility for employers was paramount, insecurity for workers were routine; indeed, they maintained that TAW workers expected job insecurity. Variously called contract staffing' and facilities management', this kind of outsourcing promised to let business managers avoid the headache' of employer responsibilities and give them undreamed of flexibility to help cope with any business condition'. TAW executives had begun promoting payrolling as early as the mid-1960s.
