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More than two decades ago, as companies increasingly turned to temp agencies to fill once well-paid blue-collar jobs, Illinois became one of the first states to regulate how staffing agencies may treat workers.

It wasn’t enough. 

Workers have since complained about systemic racial and gender discrimination by staffing agencies and the companies that contract them. In response, worker advocates have pushed lawmakers to add protections for temp workers, failing at times and winning at others.  

Some companies, they said, use temp agencies to hire workers so they can shield themselves from liability over working conditions, worker compensation or legal problems for employing undocumented immigrants.

“Workers are deemed to be exploitable,” said Kevin Herrera, legal director at Raise the Floor Alliance, a coalition of Chicago-area worker centers. “They are temporary in nature, there's no consequence for having a worker not work for you anymore because the idea is: there's this never-ending cycle of exploitable workers.”  

After experiencing setbacks during the pandemic, the industry is once again booming, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. As the industry grows, worker advocates said it is ever more important to fix some of the issues they have been fighting against, including racial discrimination, wage theft and permatemping. 

Related: Temp Workers’ Labor Rights, Explained

“The richest and most powerful companies in the entire economy completely depend on staffing agency workers,”  said Roberto Clack, the executive director of Temp Worker Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for and supports temp workers.

HISTORY

The Day and Temporary Labor Services Act was created to protect workers from exploitation over two decades ago. The law, then known as the Day Labor Services Act, required day labor agencies to clearly explain to workers the terms of employment, including the wages offered, the location where laborers would work and whether a meal or equipment would be provided.	

Lawmakers have updated the law several times since to further regulate the industry on issues ranging from allowable wage deductions to transportation regulations to pay stub requirements. 

In 2015, worker advocates proposed amendments to the law, including a requirement that staffing agencies keep records of the race, ethnicity and gender of workers applying for temp jobs. The proposal, which was opposed by the Staffing Services Association of Illinois, was killed by a then-powerful Latinx lawmaker, who argued the proposal hurt people in his community. 

Experts said the employment of Latinx and Black workers in the industry is not a coincidence. Companies, they said, prey on undocumented immigrants and people with a criminal record because they can be desperate for work and usually take any job they can get. 

“When we're talking about vulnerable communities, a lot of these employers understand that people have a hard time getting jobs elsewhere because of a criminal background, immigration status, and they exploit that,” said Clack of Temp Worker Justice. “It's wrong and it's racist.”

In 2017, worker advocates tried again to get agencies to report the race and gender of workers seeking jobs, not only those hired, as is the current requirement. While that effort failed, they won the passage of an amendment that prohibited temp agencies from charging workers for criminal background checks, credit reports or drug tests. The amendments also included language requiring agencies to “attempt” to place workers into permanent positions. 

Despite the expanded protections in the state law, worker advocates said many of the issues they set out to address persist.