To the editor:
More than four years ago I wrote a letter detailing unfair and unethical hiring processes at certain factories in our county. One factory’s policy involved assembly workers interviewing job seekers. My article implied that assembly workers would predetermine who that factory would hire.

Thanks to complaints, accusations and, more important, litigation, that situation has improved, if it exists at all.

Now I would like to focus on another issue in the hiring process.

Since temporary or staffing services got started in our area in the 1980s factories have hired these services to locate employees.

It works like this: The factory gets on the phone to a staffing service and notifies it that it has a big order coming out. The factory needs 20 job seekers who already have applications with the staffing service. The service notifies the job seekers.

We all know the process. Back in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and the early part of the last decade an employee wouldn’t have to wait very long to get hired full time with the factory itself. But in the latter half of the 2000s, and in this decade, that has changed.

A lady just told me the other day that she has been working at this factory under a staffing service for 10 years at minimum wage. The factory won’t hire her. When a staffing service sent me to a factory in Sardis in June, 2000, that factory made me one of its employees by November of that year. That was under six months. That led me to a ten-year career at that factory.

But nowadays people are in these factories working five and ten years for minimum wage under staffing services. These factories have no intention of hiring the temporary employees.
Formerly there seemed to be an unwritten rule that if an employee had been working at a factory for one year under a temporary service, he or she would be due to be hired by the factory itself.

That’s not the case today. I’m not talking about all the factories in our area. But attention needs to be focused on some.

Factories have the advantage. If five people get mad or frustrated because they are still working under a staffing service, then the factory calls the staffing service and asks for five more job seekers. Someone is always looking for a temporary paycheck to make ends meet in this difficult world.

Those who run our cities–Batesville, Sardis, Como, Oxford, Senatobia, Southaven–need to put pressure on these factories. Officials should look into the way factories are hiring, or should I say not hiring, these employees.

These temporary people have families, some large families, and they can’t afford insurance.
Let me leave you with this: Billy Bob and Jimmy Joe both do the same job. It includes unloading containers all day with boxes weighing over 100 pounds. Billy Bob works under a staffing service, making $7.35 an hour. Jimmy Joe works for the factory, making $12.50 an hour.

Thanks.
Bobby Bradford