But then those permanent, full-time employees were expensive, and temps were comparatively cheap. Eventually, “rather than protecting the core workers, Manpower enabled them to be fired.”Hyman dates the beginning of this shift to the late 1960s, a time of stagnating profits. Hyman is a lucid stylist who usually manages to write his way through the deluge, but sometimes the information can feel like too much all at once. His ending, about the gig economy, is weirdly upbeat. Here, finally, is a book that encourages us to imagine a future that is inclusive and humane rather than sentimentalize a past that never truly was.

Source: New York Times August 22, 2018 17:48 UTC