Reader Letter: Temp agencies help keep wages low

People are quick to blame it on the minimum wage when they can’t afford a decent standard of living. Yet here are over 90 temp agencies in Windsor which gladly accept $20 an hour from an employer to pay a worker, who receives just $17 of that wage. How is this even legal?

They find you a job. They tell you the company will hire you if you are good. Then they drop you when you are close to working 1,000 hours. There may be temp agency workers who reply to this saying they do hire workers. Which two out of every 100 get hired full time? The rest get put back into a pool of unfortunate people who have no other way to get a job but through the temp agency. These companies will actually let you go on the Friday and call you back to report for work Monday, but you have to start over at zero. 

Temp agencies are stopping people from getting good paying jobs. They are in cahoots with the companies, so the companies don’t have to pay your benefits or anything else. You go there, you don’t miss a day, you show up on time and there is no chance they will hire you. But they won’t tell you that.

Harry Hubert, Windsor

Share Your Views

Send letters to the editor to letters@windsorstar.com. (Don’t send them as attachments; put them in the body of the emails.) Letters must include your full name, address and phone number. (We will only publish your name and the municipality where you live.) Letters must be fewer than 300 words. The Star reserves the right to edit, condense and reject letters.