Saturday, January 4, 2014

From Naomi Klein's No Logo,Chapter 10, 'Threats and Temps'

On page 249 of No Logo, Naomi Klein starts explaining how high tech companies have develeoped the use of 'contingency workers': 'The percentage of Silicon Valley workers employed by temp agencies is nearly three times the national average' (1998). And Microsoft, the largest of the software firms, didn't just lead the way to this part-time promised land, it wrote the operating manual.


about half the workers are officially employed by outside 'payroll agencies'... The only way to tell the temps from the 'real' Microserfs is by the color of their badges: blue for perms, orange for permatemps...
it's hard to rationalize legally that the person is not an employee unless they are an employee of someone else- in Microsoft's case, that someone else it the payroll agency...
Bob Herbold, COO (in 1997): 'Don't get caught with useless fixed assets' (page 251)

Interestingly, the next chapter, chapter 11 is 'Bredding Disloyalty' and starts with a picture of Bill Gates getting 'pied' (pages 258)

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