Outsourcing at will
Subtitle: the contribution of unjust dismissal doctrine to the growth of employment outsourcing
By: David H. Autor
Contributors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics
Edition: Rev.
Series: Working paper series / Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics -- working paper 01-32; Working paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics) -- no. 01-32.
Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 27
Description: Over the past three decades, the U.S. Temporary Help Services (THS) industry grew five times more rapidly than overall employment. Contemporaneously, courts in 46 states adopted exceptions to the common law doctrine of employment at will that limited employers' discretion to terminate workers and opened them to litigation. This paper assesses the contribution of "unjust dismissal" doctrine to THS employment and finds that it is substantial - explaining 20 percent of the growth of THS between 1973 and 1995 and contributing a half million workers to THS in 2000. States with smaller declines in unionization also saw substantially more THS growth. Keywords: Temporary Help Employment, Contingent Work Arrangements, Employment Outsourcing, Wrongful Discharge Law, Employment Protection, Nonwage Labor Costs, Labor Unions, Contracts: Specific Human Capital.
Notes: Title from cover.

"August 2001.". "August 2001; revised from March 1999 ... This paper was previously titled: Outsourcing at will: unjust dismissal doctrine and the growth of temporary help employment"--Abstract.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [26]-[30]).

Abstract in HTML and working paper for download in PDF available via World Wide Web at the Social Science Research Network.