In a ditch

摘要

Amid the "new economy" of the 1990s, Glenn Welstad and John Coghlan made their mark in an age-old, bricks-and-mortar business. The company they built, Labor Ready, was quickly dubbed "the McDonald's of day labour" and remains America's only national firm devoted to placing blue-collar temps. But like so many high-flying gambits of recent years, Labor Ready has fallen on hard times―and recession is only partly to blame. The firm recruits workers from unemployment offices, homeless shelters and through word-of-mouth, then sells their labour at a marked-up rate to public agencies and private companies, ranging from tiny businesses to Wal-Mart. Workers typically get the minimum wage for hard physical labour: digging ditches, tossing boxes and performing unskilled, often dangerous construction work.