Who's the boss?

摘要

Fedex, Walmart and McDonald's are among America's largest employers. Yet many of the people who drive FedEx's delivery trucks, staff Walmart's warehouses and serve McDonald's hamburgers are not their employees. Instead, they work for subcontractors, franchisees or themselves. Flexible work arrangements have long been a hallmark of America's ever-shifting economy. Lately, though, they have drawn more criticism. Earlier this year David Weil of Boston University published "The Fissured Workplace", which argues that many employers have met competitive pressures by splitting off functions to subcontractors, vendors and franchisees, where workers' wages and benefits stagnate. On September 3rd the oecd, a club of rich countries, fretted that a divide is opening between secure, permanent jobs and insecure, ill-paid temporary ones.