From Temp Trap to Union Jobs: Building Pathways for Workers with Criminal Records

During a factory organizing drive, the Steelworkers in Chester, South Carolina, saw how criminal legal barriers were undermining its organizing efforts. Many of the workers had felony records and were afraid of losing their jobs, while others in the community were barred from getting these jobs in the first place.

So the union established a worker center, the Chester Worker Empowerment Center, that now provides record-sealing and expungement support, among other offerings.

Unions like this one are beginning to recognize that there is no path to transforming the conditions of work in this country without addressing the impacts of incarceration.

Each year, the 114 million people with criminal records power the American economy. They load trucks, stock shelves, fix roads, prepare food, and build cities. They are the invisible backbone of the industries that keep this country running.

The dominant narrative is that people coming home from jail or prison “can’t find work.” The truth is more insidious: people with records are working—often in the lowest-paid, most dangerous jobs in the country, precisely because they have records.

The carceral system orders people to work, while setting them up to fail. About 80 percent of people released from state prisons nationwide are placed on supervision, such as probation, which mandates employment while making steady work nearly impossible through requirements like random drug tests and mandatory in-person check-ins during business hours.

THE TEMP TRAP

That’s where the blue-collar temp industry comes in. Temp agencies promise what other employers won’t: fast placement with no background checks, a ride, a badge, and quick pay. When bills and court fees pile up, they are one of the few doors that open quickly enough. In South Florida, roughly 70 percent of people returning from prison or jail go to temp agencies to find work.

Temp agencies aggressively recruit people with records at probation offices and jails, negotiate agreements with reentry organizations and halfway houses to provide work for people enrolled in their programs, and then pocket federal subsidies such as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which are meant to incentivize second-chance hiring.

Temp work spans nearly every industry, but people with records are typically funneled into temp jobs at construction sites, warehouses, food processing and light industrial facilities, and manufacturing shops. Employers, meanwhile, use temp agencies to bypass background checks, shift legal liability, dodge unions, and drive labor costs as low as possible.

And despite the name, this work is rarely temporary. Many workers remain in the same job, through the same agency, for years or decades—what we call the Temp Trap.

The temp industry is part of a larger transformation of the labor market over the last 50 years, from long-term, direct-hire jobs with benefits and high unionization rates to jobs that are short-term and precarious, with lower wages, fewer protections, and more barriers to collective action.

The industry’s explosive growth has moved in lockstep with the rise of mass incarceration over the same time period. If we want a stronger labor movement, we have to address the impact of incarceration on the labor market by:

(1) Raising standards in the temp industry, and
(2) Building real pathways for workers with records into union jobs.

These objectives reinforce each other. Raising standards in the temp industry is in unions’ interest, because temp agencies undercut unionized contractors with cheaper, disposable labor and drive a race to the bottom. And expanding pathways into union jobs gives workers an alternative to exploitative temp jobs.

RAISING TEMP STANDARDS

Across the South, aggressive preemption laws block cities and counties from raising standards through local ordinances, while hostile state legislatures make statewide reform nearly impossible.

That means the strongest strategy is to organize where the real power lies: at the workplaces themselves, through enforceable agreements that employers cannot preempt away.

Traditional union drives targeting a single temp agency don’t work. Temp agencies control dispatch and payroll, while host employers control job sites, schedules, workloads, and the actual conditions workers experience.

In any major metro area, dozens of temp agencies compete for contracts with host employers; if one raises wages, host employers simply flip to a cheaper competitor. In short, host employers dictate contract terms.

That is why we have to target both temp agencies and their clients together, taking a page from SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign model.

BUILDING TEMP COMMITTEES

Breaking the Temp Trap starts with building lists of workers across blue-collar temp agencies.

Accessing temp workers is notoriously challenging: worksites are isolated, co-workers have weak ties, few unions exist to facilitate contact, and workers are dispersed, transported by agencies, or fearful of retaliation due to records or immigration status.

As a result, in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Leon counties in Florida, Beyond the Bars is training members to salt (get jobs in) temp agencies and worksites, pull contacts from reentry programs and halfway houses, canvass using publicly available jail-release records, and map worker networks across sites and neighborhoods.

From there, we are building temp committees where workers across multiple agencies track violations, compare conditions, and develop collective demands. These committees become engines for leadership development and escalation.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

The work then expands outward to the host employers that actually control conditions. We are mapping out corporate networks that connect temp agencies to major warehouses, construction contractors, and manufacturers; engaging temps and direct hires in wall-to-wall organizing; and identifying firms most vulnerable to pressure.

GOAL: MULTI-EMPLOYER STANDARDS

Workers can escalate collectively through coordinated complaints, OSHA and wage-and-hour filings, media exposure, and direct action at both temp agencies and their corporate clients, while also developing capital strategies to increase leverage.

Host employers can be pushed to adopt high-road practices, including refusing to contract with agencies with major violations; providing real pathways to direct hire; ending permatemping and abusive placement fees; adopting fair-chance hiring policies; giving temps the same safety training and protections as direct hires; guaranteeing owed wages if an agency withholds them; and embedding labor-standards codes of conduct into temp contracts.

The goal is to win multi-employer standards, common wages, benefits, safety protections, and fair-chance hiring rules, so companies cannot undercut each other by racing to the bottom.

PATHWAY TO A UNION JOB

Because temp agencies are often the only option available to people with records, building alternative pathways to stable, dignified employment is essential. The best way to do this is with unions—the only large-scale, dues-funded membership organizations that have the mandate and capacity to transform work.

Unions can partner with worker and reentry organizations to create pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs tailored to the challenges of reentry.

In New Orleans, UNITE HERE’s Education and Support Fund launched a training program to place formerly incarcerated workers into union jobs in the hospitality industry.

In Washington state, Ironworkers locals partnered with the Trades Related Apprenticeship Coaching program to fast-track incarcerated women directly into union apprenticeships, removing intake delays that often push people into low-wage work upon release.

In New York City, Laborers (LIUNA) Local 79 recruits formerly incarcerated workers into union apprenticeship programs in the building trades. The union also advanced legislation at the city and state levels to bring transparency and accountability to “body shops,” temp agencies in the construction industry that target workers who are on parole.

And in Providence, Rhode Island, Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 328 and Co-op Rhody are collaborating to support the launch of several unionized, worker-owned cannabis dispensaries that provide union jobs for formerly incarcerated workers, creating a rare model that links reentry with employee ownership.

Unions can also push businesses to prioritize temps for direct-hire positions and incorporate fair-chance hiring policies into their business practices, making it easier for workers to get hired into union jobs in the first place.

In coalition with other organizations, SEIU Local 26 pushed Target, one of the largest property owners in Minneapolis where it organizes janitorial and security workers, to adopt “ban the box” policies to protect workers from hiring discrimination based on a criminal record.

SUPPORT MEMBERS WITH RECORDS

Many unions already include large numbers of members with records—in sanitation, construction, warehouses, food service, and more.

Unions can collect demographic data about their members’ records and offer benefits tailored to their needs, such as record-sealing and probation-termination support or transportation and legal assistance to help members maintain stable employment. They can also ensure that workers covered by their bargaining unit can meet supervision and court requirements without risking termination.

32BJ SEIU’s South Florida Cleaning Contractors Agreement ensures that immigrant workers can comply with their legal obligations without losing their jobs or seniority, an approach that could be adapted to workers navigating criminal court and supervision requirements.

Other locals include contract language that protects workers from being disciplined or fired solely because they were arrested or incarcerated.

ORGANIZE TEMPS FROM WITHIN

Finally, unions can organize temp workers from within. Unions as well as non-unionized workers engaged in organizing efforts can request information from employers on their use of temps, the agencies they deal with, and their service agreements with temp agencies, which employers are legally bound to comply with.

Unions can form temp worker committees, monitor the use of temps in their shops, invite temps to union meetings to open lines of communication, negotiate contract provisions that mandate conversion to direct hire after 60 days, monitor shop-floor treatment, hold social and educational events for temp workers, and petition the National Labor Relations Board to accrete temps into existing units.

In 2022, IUE-CWA and the Steelworkers joined with other labor and community organizations in an Alabama-based coalition to negotiate a community benefits agreement with a factory in Anniston, Alabama. At the time, the plant had a significant temp workforce, so the agreement contained requirements that helped workers with criminal records get hired directly, the first effort of its kind in the country.

Within two years, the workers had unionized and won a strong new contract that increased their pay up to 38 percent.

By raising standards in the temp industry and building pathways for workers with records into union jobs, we can create a labor market where stability and dignity aren’t reserved for the few. If we fail to organize these workers, we surrender the terrain on which the future of work, and the possibility of freedom, is being built.

Maya Ragsdale is co-executive director of Beyond the Bars, a Florida-based organization of workers with records building power together. For more organizing strategies and public policy recommendations, see Beyond the Bars' full report, The Temp Trap, based on two years of intensive field research supplemented by analysis of employment and correctional data and a review of existing literature.