Manpower, Inc.

▪ 1998

      In 1997 Manpower, Inc., a company that provided workers for other employers and by 1997 the largest such firm in the world, was seeking to expand its roster of employees by actively recruiting welfare recipients. As a result of new U.S. legislation, there was increased pressure on business to employ people who had been on the welfare rolls. Manpower's chief executive, Mitchell Fromstein, who sat on the White House panel on welfare reform, believed that the company had the experience in the training and placement of workers to make the reforms work. Earlier, Manpower had collaborated with several not-for-profit organizations to form the Milwaukee (Wis.) Job Center, a program to offer a one-stop employment office for the impoverished people of the inner city. Though the program failed, largely owing to disputes over the roles to be played by each organization, Manpower learned some valuable lessons. The company now better understood the special training needed by some of the people on welfare and was eager to tackle those problems on its own. Manpower's plan to place offices in poor urban neighbourhoods was still in the developmental stages in 1997, but some success had already been achieved in Milwaukee.

      This sort of leading role was typical of Manpower, especially under the leadership of Fromstein, who took executive control of the company in the 1970s. The company was founded in 1948 by Elmer Winter and Aaron Scheinfeld, primarily to place workers in industrial positions. When Fromstein took over, he shifted the focus from factory work to office services and instituted an extensive training program to ensure that Manpower could provide competent workers, familiar with the needs and technology of modern offices; in recent years particular emphasis had been placed on computer training by means of a specially devised program called Skillware. Consequently, when the era of corporate downsizing began in the 1980s, Manpower was well prepared to step in and provide skilled workers. During that time the firm signed exclusive national contracts to provide temporary staffing for major corporations (most notably IBM and Hewlett-Packard). The company also expanded rapidly into Europe and by 1997 was operating 2,400 offices in 43 countries and providing work for 1.6 million people. Since 1994 it had been the largest private-sector employer in the United States. In 1996 Manpower formed an alliance with Drake Beam Morin Inc. (DBM), a leading executive job-finding company. The move allowed Manpower to offer highly skilled and experienced businesspeople for temporary work and permitted DBM to return its clients quickly to the workforce while it searched for permanent positions for them.

      Manpower often provided valuable training for its workers, and its placements could lead to permanent positions. Also, its many offices allowed employees the opportunity to relocate and work where they pleased. Yet, it had to be recognized that the company had grown and flourished because many workers had been forced to settle for temporary positions rather than the permanent ones they would have preferred.

JAMES HENNELLY

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