America’s disposable workforce is growing. It comes with hidden costs

Below, Paul Osterman shares five key insights from his new book, Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment. Paul is a Professor Emeritus of Human Resources and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. What’s the Big Idea? The rise of disposable work is allowing companies to gain flexibility and cut costs while shedding responsibility for their workers. We need guardrails to keep that flexibility from coming at the expense of workers and the public. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Paul himself—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book. 1. Companies do not want employees Employers want to get out from under the obligations they owe their workforce. Companies want bodies to do the work, but they increasingly don’t want those bodies to be employees. Disposable workers are everywhere nowadays. The concierge who greets me when I leave my condo in the morning works for a contracting company, not the building. When I do an interview at a downtown office building, that building is being cleaned by contractors. The person indexing my new book is a freelancer. If I get into an accident, the nurse who might treat me in the emergency room is possibly a…