For the last two decades, Brisa Chavez, of Cicero, has found work through staffing agencies.
Like many immigrants, the single mother has been able to find work through temp agencies because they require less paperwork and less schooling than being hired by a company directly, she said.
“Unfortunately, we are also more at risk of suffering abuse in the workplace,” she said.
Chavez said she had experienced sexual harassment, wage theft and verbal abuse while doing temp work but could not afford to leave those jobs. She usually works in factories, working in packaging or running machines, and typically makes minimum wage, she said.
Now, a new law aimed at strengthening legal protections for temp workers could help Chavez and others like her who are subject to low pay and exploitation because of their employment status, advocates say.
The legislation, signed Friday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, amends the state’s day and temporary labor services law to require workers employed by staffing agencies to be paid the same as company employees they work alongside in comparable jobs once the temp workers have worked for a company for 90 days.
It also makes it easier for temp workers to sue over alleged violations of the law. While in the past only the state’s labor department could do so, “interested parties” such as workers’ centers or unions now also have standing to sue.
The amendments also make it harder for companies to use temp workers as strikebreakers, advocates say, and require staffing agencies to institute safety protections, such as additional training, for temp workers.
“I hope that this new law encourages workers to speak up against those injustices and that the workplaces, instead of punishing us for speaking up, can take accountability for their actions; punish those responsible for the abuse and change their toxic culture,” Chavez said.
According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate, more than 189,000 Illinoisans were working in the temp industry in May 2022, the most recent date for which data is available. The American Staffing Association estimates the total number of people who took on temp work in the state throughout the entire year was a much higher 984,200 because of a high rate of turnover in the industry.
On average, workers in the temp industry in Illinois made $21.39 an hour in 2022, according to labor department data. Average wages for temp workers vary widely by industry; workers in transportation and moving materials jobs, who made up nearly half of all Illinois temp workers in May 2022, made on average $15.57 an hour. Positions included in that category are truck drivers and manual laborers, among others.
According to a report from the University of Illinois School of Public Health, wages for temp workers in Illinois who worked in transportation and moving materials or production jobs in 2020 were between 72% and 80% of wages paid to workers hired by companies directly.
In cleaning and grounds maintenance jobs, temp workers made around 90% of what directly hired employees did. And in food preparation and serving, temp workers made 106% of what directly hired workers made, though the report’s authors note that average wages in those sectors have a low baseline.
Many people who find work through staffing agencies are undocumented or formerly incarcerated people who have trouble getting hired with companies directly, said Jose Frausto, executive director of Chicago Workers Collaborative, a workers’ center that pushed for the legislation.
“It’s been really hard for them to find jobs,” Frausto said. Staffing agencies know, he said, that temp workers who are in the country without legal permission or formerly incarcerated are not likely to complain about working conditions. “And that’s a way that they take advantage of them, because they know they’re so, so vulnerable.”
State Rep. Edgar Gonzalez Jr. and State Sen. Robert Peters, both Democrats from Chicago, sponsored the bill in the legislature, where it passed both houses during the spring session.
Gonzalez, who represents Little Village, said he had heard from constituents working for temp agencies who said they had not been paid for their work or had been paid late, as well as workers who had been sexually harassed on the job.
“It’s a huge win for our communities,” Gonzalez said of the legislation. “Many of them have expressed how they felt like they were second-class workers.”
According to a 2021 report from Partners for Dignity & Rights on racial discrimination in the temp industry, 49% of Chicago-area temp workers were Latino and 36% were Black as of 2019.
Though staffing agency industry groups remained officially neutral on the law, they told the Tribune they have concerns about how it will be enforced as they await guidance from the labor department.
The American Staffing Association sent a letter to Pritzker in June asking him to delay enforcement of the law until the labor department has issued guidance and provided the opportunity for agencies to comment on its regulations.
“Staffing agencies have no reasonable way of knowing how to comply, especially with the new equal pay provisions,” the letter said.
Dan Shomon, spokesperson for the Staffing Services Association of Illinois, said temp agencies are concerned about instituting the amendment’s equal pay provision because they need pay data from their client companies in order to do so.
“This is a lawsuit bill,” Shomon said. The Illinois association, like the national association, remained officially neutral on the bill.
In a statement after the bill was signed, Shomon said the association still had “serious concerns” about implementing the law, particularly the equal pay provision.
“We are hopeful this and other issues will be fixed by the (Labor) Department in administrative rulemaking,” Shomon said.
In a statement, Labor Department Director Jane Flanagan said the agency planned to file proposed administrative rules “early next week” and would also issue an advisory to day and temporary staffing agency licensees informing them of the law’s requirements.
Flanagan said the agency would continue to work with stakeholders “to implement these changes and assist with compliance” in the coming months.
Neil Dishman, an attorney at Jackson Lewis who has advised both staffing agencies and companies that use staffing agencies on the potential effects of the law, said at the end of July that some temp agencies had already begun the process of asking for pay and benefits information from client companies.
“The staffing agencies are going to have an obligation to ask for the information. The statute creates an obligation for their clients to provide it to them,” he said.
Norman Green, a former Chicago temp worker who now works in violence prevention, took temporary jobs on and off for two decades, largely in meat factories.
Green, 40, who worked temp jobs to support his children, said he would sometimes get assignments that only lasted a couple of days. He sometimes borrowed money to get to and from jobs, he said.
And when a staffing agency sent him to a job, he wasn’t guaranteed work; he could be sent home after waiting for an hour or two, Green said. Sometimes, agencies would want to do drug tests or background checks on Black workers but not on Latino workers, he said.
“I really lost faith in the way they mistreat people,” he said.
Now, Green said, his kids and friends who seek work at staffing agencies are treated in the same way he was.
“We just can’t give up,” he said.
