Based on extensive fieldwork, CELSI senior researchers Olena Fedyuk and Tibor T. Meszmann explore the issue of temporary work agencies in a newly published article in Capital and Class.

Temporary work agencies in Central and Eastern European countries play a prominent role in supplying labour to manufacturing companies.

In Hungary, capital and labour mobility are supported by a regulatory environment that has provided fertile ground for the rise of temporary agencies.

However, workers’ consent to a precarious triangular employment relationship is also key to the growth and success of this sector.

Based on extensive fieldwork, CELSI senior researchers Olena Fedyuk and Tibor T. Meszmann explore this issue in a newly published article in Capital and Class.

Their study shows that temporary agencies and the vitality of the triangular employment relationship appear not only as sources of ‘mobility’ for workers, but also as mechanisms of individualised, opaque entrepreneurial risk-taking — which ultimately traps workers’ consent to remain in the sector.

Despite high turnover, many workers return to the over-exploitative sector, as it quickly provides short-term yet attractive income opportunities.

🔗 Capital & Class on ‘Trapping workers’ consent? Temporary work agencies’ role in reproducing labour power of non-local workers for Hungarian manufacturing companies’ available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03098168251342947?fbclid=IwY2xjawLF2B1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHgr9Ny9zuahdOtk7NZh7ILvTchjUWbWfwy3iW88so7M4O348GCRFHn0bJIjS_aem_YYLm6wVEILQebWSPIZ7jOw

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