“You know we are not an Employment Agency”: Manpower, Government, and the Development of the Temporary Help Industry in Britain
本文利用英国国家档案馆资料，研究1960-70年代临时工巨头Manpower如何争取进入国家就业交换网络发布招聘广告，揭示政府态度转变如何赋予其竞争优势，并推动与政府和工会的关系发展。
This article looks at the early development of the temporary help industry in Britain. It focuses on the activities of one of the largest suppliers of temporary workers, Manpower, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on material from The UK National Archives, the article examines Manpower's efforts to gain access as a genuine employer to the state employment exchange network to advertise their temporary vacancies. The article reveals the incremental changes in attitude within the government towards Manpower's activities and argues that this gave the company a competitive advantage over other employment agencies, facilitating their development of relations with the government and the trade unions in Britain over the 1970s and 1980s. The main conclusion of the article is that explicit attention needs to be paid to the actions and strategies of agencies themselves in order to develop an adequate understanding of the growth and development of the temporary help industry.