Part 4: A Roadmap for Action

We’re knocking on doors, finding people who’ve been affected, and bringing them into the movement. Because the truth is, a lot of us don’t know our rights. We don’t know the laws that could protect us. And if we don’t know, we can’t fight back. But together, we can change that. We can educate each other, stand up for fair pay, and make sure no one gets left behind. 

- Thomas, Beyond the Bars member

As explained earlier in this report, for many workers reentering the labor market after incarceration, temp agencies are the only doors that open. But that does not mean those doors should lead to jobs defined by precarity.

Lawrence, a Beyond the Bars member, worked at labor pools for years because of his record. Like many others, he woke up at 3:30 a.m. to reach the labor pool by five, hoping to get work. If he didn’t, he went elsewhere, piecing together hours where he could. “I can tell that they look down on [us],” he said, describing how temp workers often get the hardest, most exhausting jobs. “They treat [us] below the rest of [them].”

After years of instability, Lawrence went to prison. When he was released, he was connected with another member of Beyond the Bars, Anthony, who is also a former temp worker. Anthony helped him secure a permanent job as a construction laborer. His new job isn’t perfect, but he’s learning new skills and getting consistent hours.

What makes Lawrence’s story powerful isn’t luck or personal grit, but the role Beyond the Bars played in filling the gap the system leaves, creating the connections, solidarity, and pathways that should exist for everyone. And if members like Anthony could place returning workers like Lawrence directly into union jobs, the impact would multiply: stronger wages, safer conditions, and real worker power. That’s the standard Beyond the Bars is fighting to build: a future where every worker can move from precarity to permanence through solidarity, not luck, where stability, skill-building, and dignity are expectations, not exceptions. 

For now, temp agencies remain an unavoidable part of the picture for workers with records. But their dominance is not inevitable. The next sections explore concrete ways to raise standards within the temp industry, reduce its grip on the labor market, and expand pathways for workers with records into stable, union jobs.

A Long-Term Roadmap for Reining In Temp Agency Abuses

Creating an economy that works for everyone requires dismantling the policies and practices that funnel workers with records into the temp industry. The recommendations below outline a roadmap for structural reform, even in difficult political times, by advancing strategies that leverage administrative and private-sector action, alongside legislative reforms where the political landscape allows them.

The first set of reforms would reduce workers’ reliance on temp agencies by removing the structural barriers that prevent people with records from accessing stable, full-time employment. The second would improve standards within the temp industry by ensuring temp agencies compete based on the value of the service they provide, not simply on their ability to cut corners and skirt the law.

Reducing Workers’ Reliance on Temp Agencies

• Partner with unions to create pathways to stable employment. Unions should expand access to job readiness, training, and apprenticeship programs tailored to workers reentering the workforce, negotiate collective bargaining agreements that include fair-chance provisions, and offer reentry benefits to their existing members who have records. (Discussed below.)
• Reform state supervision policies that coerce employment through the threat of incarceration. Push prosecutorial, public defender, and state supervision offices to end supervision conditions that punish people for losing or leaving exploitative jobs, require check-ins during work hours, and impose unaffordable program fees. Recognize employer reports to supervision officers as potential retaliation, and ensure that workers under supervision can safely exercise their labor rights.
• Expand employment opportunities for workers with records. Advance public policy reforms that expand fair-chance hiring and occupational licensing access, reform negligent-hiring liability and insurance laws, and strengthen record-sealing statutes. 

Improve Standards in the Temp Industry

• Partner with unions to include temp workers into their own structures. Unions should include and advocate for temp workers within their own structures, such as forming temp worker committees within locals, inviting temps to participate in union meetings, and petitioning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to accrete temps into existing bargaining units or form new ones. These actions would not only strengthen solidarity between temp and directly hired workers but also help dismantle the structural divisions that suppress wages and erode worker power across industries. (Discussed below.)
• Engage in strategic campaigns targeting temp agencies and host employers that set industry standards to hold them accountable for temp workers’ conditions and raise standards across the industry. Temp workers and advocates should engage in strategic campaigns that push temp agencies and host employers to adopt high-road practices. (Discussed below.)
• Recognize host employers as joint employers and hold them jointly liable for violations. Because host employers direct temp workers’ daily labor, courts and regulatory agencies should presume joint employment and enforce equal responsibility for wage theft, discrimination, and unsafe conditions.166
• Encourage insurers to crack down on workers’ compensation fraud. Insurance companies have leverage to combat fraud and misclassification.167 They can require pay-as-you-go policies tied to real payroll records, conduct regular audits of temp agencies, and advocate for public policy reforms that deter employers from hiding injuries or underreporting wages.
• Strengthen state and federal workplace protections. Florida must modernize and enforce the FLPA to guarantee basic rights for temp workers and eliminate pay and benefit disparities between temps and directly hired employees. At the federal level, passing the Restoring Worker Power Act would codify equal pay for equal work, mandate safety training, and prohibit exploitative placement fees that trap workers in “permatemp” cycles. (Discussed below.)
• End anti-competitive practices that lock workers in precarity. Ban placement  fees, non-compete clauses, and blacklisting practices that prevent temp workers from securing direct employment or moving between agencies. Prosecuting temp agencies and client companies that use these illegal tactics is essential to restoring mobility and fairness in the labor market.
• Close loopholes in workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance systems. Current systems allow host employers to outsource risk. Workers’ compensation premiums are calculated based on an agency’s overall record, not on the specific worksites where injuries occur. Tying premium rates to individual worksites would remove the incentive to contract out dangerous jobs.
• End federal handouts that reward temp agencies. Limit the ability of temp agencies and their clients to exploit tax credits and subsidies, such as the WOTC, which expires December 31, 2025. Any reauthorization should require longer retention periods, wage and job-quality standards, and transparency measures to ensure public funds support real economic opportunity, not revolving-door exploitation.

What Can We Do Right Now?

While structural change will take time, there are immediate steps we can take in Florida and beyond to raise standards and build momentum for reform.

Partner With Unions on Pathways to Stable Employment for Temp Workers With Records Who Are Reentering the Workforce

Because temp agencies are often the only option available to people with records reentering the workforce, building alternative pathways to stable, dignified employment is essential. One of the most powerful ways to do this is by partnering with unions, the only large-scale, dues-funded membership organizations in the U.S. with the capacity and mandate to transform work.

One way to accomplish this is by partnering with unions to develop job-readiness, pre-apprenticeship, and apprenticeship programs tailored to the specific challenges people face when reentering the workforce. This includes collaborating with organizations that support people with records to identify barriers to entry into existing apprenticeship programs, test new approaches, create referral partnerships between reentry organizations and union training programs, and track placements into union jobs.

Second, unions can also create pathways into union jobs through the collective bargaining process. This includes negotiating provisions that prioritize temp workers for direct-hire positions, incorporate fair-chance hiring language such as Ban the Box policies, establish mechanisms that allow workers to meet supervision requirements without risking termination, and ensure members who are arrested do not automatically lose their jobs. Embedding these protections in union contracts not only expands opportunity for workers with records but also strengthens unions by bringing more of the workforce out of temp work and under collective representation.

Third, many unions already include members with records across both the public and private sectors—in sanitation and roadwork, warehouses, construction, food service, restaurants, and more. Unions should collect demographic data on members’ prior involvement with the carceral system and develop benefits tailored to their needs. This could include piloting record expungement clinics, offering probation termination assistance, and providing legal or transportation supports that help members maintain stable employment and advance within their unions.

Finally, unions can take concrete steps to include and advocate for temp workers within their own structures by forming temp worker committees within locals; inviting temps to attend union meetings; negotiating contract provisions that automatically convert temp workers to direct hires after 60–90 days; monitoring shop-floor treatment of temps alongside union employees; and petitioning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to accrete temp workers into existing bargaining units or form new ones.

Organize Temp Workers Across Temp Agencies in a Particular Geography

Temp agencies are at the center of the system, and that’s where organizing must begin. While host employers control job sites, temp agencies control dispatch, payroll, and day-to-day access to work. They are the first point of contact for temp workers and the gatekeepers of opportunity.

By organizing temp workers across temp agencies in a selected geographic area, workers can build the skills and confidence to identify violations, document unsafe or illegal practices, and begin developing collective demands. This base-building work lays the foundation for broader campaigns that engage host employers and other stakeholders to reshape industry standards.

Organizations can begin by taking the following steps:

• Engage in proactive list-building by continually developing and expanding contact lists of current and former temp workers across agencies. Accessing temp workers is often challenging and time-intensive—especially where worksites are hard to reach, coworkers have weak ties, few unions exist to facilitate contact, and workers are dispersed, transported by temp agencies, or fearful of retaliation due to records or immigration status. In these contexts, organizations can:
  • Implement salting strategies by having staff or members intentionally take placements through targeted temp agencies and host worksites to gather information, build relationships, and strengthen organizing and campaign research;
  • Obtain contacts from service providers, including reentry programs, workforce development organizations, and halfway houses, that serve a high volume of formerly incarcerated people;
  • Canvass using public records available through county databases that list individuals recently released from jail, including their names, last known addresses, and dates of release. These records can help identify and reach out to workers with records who may be seeking employment through temp agencies; and
  • Conduct network mapping by working with current members to trace and contact other temp workers within their social and professional networks.
• Conduct know-your-rights trainings focused on temp agency practices such as transportation fees, illegal deductions, unsafe dispatch conditions, and discriminatory or harassing behavior;
• Establish temp committees that meet regularly to track problems across multiple job classifications, agencies, and industries. These committees serve as incubators for leadership development and strategic coordination;
• Support workers in filing collective (instead of individual) complaints, including on wage theft, discrimination, health and safety, and harassment. Even where collective claims are limited by federal or state policy, local remedies may still be leveraged.
• Map corporate relationships between temp agencies and host employers with workers’ input to identify the most significant, leverageable, or reputationally vulnerable targets. Use this mapping to guide campaign strategy, focusing not only on “bottom-feeder” agencies with the worst violations but also on larger, more stable firms that set industry standards and host employers that are major corporate targets in their own right.
• Build alliances with other organizations that work with guest workers, reentry populations, and other contingent workers to share strategies and amplify pressure on the most exploitative agencies.

Engage Host Employers Who Contract with Irresponsible Temp Agencies

While organizing temp workers must be central to any movement for change, an effective strategy also requires engaging host employers through strategic corporate campaigns. As described earlier in this report, host employers ultimately dictate contract terms, pay, and conditions and often use temp agencies to shield themselves from liability, even though they are the ones directing workers’ day-to-day labor and setting workplace standards. Host employers, along with trade associations such as the ASA, form the powerful lobbying networks that sustain the legal and political framework favorable to the temp industry.168 And unlike most temp agencies, many host employers are household names with reputations and brands they seek to protect.

Alongside other tactics, strategic campaigns should center on wall-to-wall organizing and solidarity among all workers in a shop or regional industry, both temps and direct hires. This approach builds power that is harder for employers to defeat.

High-road practices that host employers can adopt include:

• Decline to use temp agencies with a track record of labor violations or significant pending violations.
• Provide well-defined pathways for temp workers to obtain direct employment with the host company.
• Limit the use of permatemping and refuse to sign contracts with overly burdensome placement fees.
• Adopt fair-chance hiring policies for workers with records. Many Beyond the Bars members have reported that companies are willing to employ workers with a record through a temp agency, but would not consider that same individual as a direct hire, even after they have performed well doing the same work as a temp.
• Ensure that temp workers receive the same safety training as directly hired employees, and that they have clearly defined remedies to address safety, wage theft, and other employment concerns.
• Accept responsibility for ensuring temp workers receive any wages or benefits owed if the temp agency is unable or unwilling to pay.
• Adopt codes of conduct that govern temp agencies’ labor practices and build those into the temp agency contracts. Explore other sorts of contractual arrangements that incentivize high-road labor and business practices.

Strengthen Florida’s Labor Pool Act

Florida already has one of the few state laws in the country that directly regulates temp and day labor agencies: the FLPA. As discussed earlier in this report, the FLPA provides basic protections, such as limits on transportation fees and requirements for timely payment, but its enforcement mechanisms are weak, and many of its provisions have not been updated in decades. Strengthening the FLPA would bring Florida in line with emerging national standards and ensure that workers in this state receive the same level of protection as those in other jurisdictions.

In recent years, states such as Illinois and New Jersey have passed important legislation that represents the leading edge of public policy efforts to hold temp agencies accountable.

• The Illinois Day and Temporary Labor Services Act, first passed in 2006, was amended in 2024 to include sweeping new provisions, including requiring that temp workers employed for at least 720 hours in a year receive equal pay and benefits for equal work. Workers also have the right to worksite-specific safety training, a written statement with detailed pay information, and additional protections such as the right to refuse an assignment due to a labor dispute and prohibitions against charging workers for transportation to the job site. The equal benefits requirements have not yet been implemented, but their validity was recently upheld by a federal court.169 
• New Jersey’s Temporary Workers Bill of Rights, passed in 2023, contains similar provisions for equal wages for all workers who do substantially the same work, regardless of whether they are employed by a temp agency. The New Jersey legislation also includes prohibitions on certain fees (transportation, check cashing, background checks, etc.), includes the right to refuse assignments during strikes, and establishes a temp worker’s right to accept a permanent position with a client, among other things.170

Building on these models, Beyond the Bars supports modernizing the FLPA to create stronger protections for workers. Recommended improvements include removing placement fees so workers can transition into permanent jobs without interference, requiring all labor pools to register with the state to ensure transparency and accountability, and incentivizing private enforcement by allowing attorneys to recover fees so workers aren’t left on their own.

Footnotes

166. Law professors Andrew Elmore, Kati Griffith, and Sachin Pandya examined a dataset of contracts between most large temp agencies and their clients and found that the host employers in those contracts reserved significant control in the contracts over temp workers’ hiring, supervision, hours worked, wages paid, safety and health, record keeping, and firing. Andrew Elmore, Kati L. Griffith & Sachin D. Pandya, “Presuming Justice for Temp Workers,” 67 Wm. & Mary L. Rev., at *17-43 (forthcoming 2025). Elmore, Griffith, and Pandya argue that courts and agencies should presume that host employers are joint employers if they directly supervise temp workers. Id. at 44-48

1. Rebecca Shafer, “Steps For A Staffing Agency to Reduce Workers Comp Costs,” Insurance Exchange website,https://blog.reduceyourworkerscomp.com/2018/11/8-steps-staffing-agency-reduce-workers-comp-costs/.
2. Interview with Maya Pinto, March 18, 2025.
3. Illinois Dept. of Labor, Day and Temporary Labor Services Act worksite posting, https://labor.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idol/employers/posters/dtlsa/2025/24_DayAndTemporaryLabor_English_NewLogo.pdf. Littler Mendelson, “Illinois Federal Court Refuses to Halt Equal Benefits Provisions of Illinois Day and Temporary Labor Services Act,” May 30, 2025, https://www.littler.com/news-analysis/asap/illinois-federal-court-refuses-halt-equal-benefits-provisions-illinois-day-and, 
4. New Jersey Dept. of Labor & Workforce Development, “Temporary Workers,”https://www.nj.gov/labor/myworkrights/worker-protections/temp_workers/.