Labor Ready
| Subsidiary of TrueBlue | |
| Industry | Employment services |
| Founded | Kent, Washington 1989 |
| Founder | Glenn Welstad |
| Headquarters | Tacoma, Washington, United States |
Number of locations | 600 |
Area served | United States, Canada |
Key people |
Robert J. (Bob) Sullivan, Chairman Steve Cooper, CEO and Director |
| Products | Temporary workers for manual day labor |
| Services | Dispatching Temporary Associates |
Number of employees |
2,900 (2004) 600,000 temporary employees to jobs in construction, manufacturing, hospitality services, landscaping, warehousing, retail and more. |
| Parent | TrueBlue |
| Website |
www |
|
Footnotes / references [1] | |
Labor Ready, based in Tacoma, Washington is the United States' largest provider of temporary workers for manual day labor to the construction industry, other light industry, and small businesses. Labor Ready is part of the TrueBlue group of companies, which also includes CLP Resources, Spartan Staffing, Plane Techs, and Centerline. TrueBlue is a public company, NYSE: TBI.
Founded in 1989 in Kent, Washington by Glenn Welstad and two partners, Labor Ready has 600 locations in all 50 states and Canada.
Worker payment, hours of operation, etc.
Workers are paid daily by check or a prepaid debit card provided by Global CashCard. Workers have access to safety equipment at no charge but are encouraged to purchase their own. Workers who do not have transportation to jobs are sometimes provided with transportation at a fee of between $2.50 to $3.50 each way. The current rate as of January 2011 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, is $5.50 each way. Workers are encouraged to wait on site for work that may become available, though this waiting is unpaid.
All branches open at 5:30 AM in order to begin dispatching workers needed that day. (When companies need workers for evening, night, or weekend shifts, Labor Ready assigns the workers hours in advance or one to two days in advance.) Depending on the location of the office and the day of the week, anywhere from zero to roughly one hundred workers can be dispatched daily. Typically, workers line up outside the doors of a given branch office prior to the branch opening, however, company policy states it is not a first come first served and is actually "best match dispatch". Many potential workers receive no job for the day.
Safety record
Company records indicate around 10,000 workers (roughly 1.6% of its claimed more than 600,000 workers) are injured at work every year.[2] According to a 2002 report by the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, Labor Ready employees are injured at three times the U.S. national average rate. Every year, 25% of Labor Ready employees are injured.[3] Various unions have accused Labor Ready of deceptive practices and of mistreating its employees.[3]
Misclassification of workers
Labor Ready has also come under fire for misclassifying workers (for example, as clerical rather than construction), which has resulted in the company paying less money (and in some states, nothing at all) into state workers' compensation funds than would otherwise be required. It has also been alleged that this conduct is systematic and intentional.[2][4]
Name change
In 2007, the parent corporation was renamed TrueBlue, Inc. to reflect the company’s expanding family of brands. It changed its corporate headquarters web address to http://www.trueblueinc.com, and its stock ticker to TBI. Labor Ready remains TrueBlue's flagship brand.
Other brands under TrueBlue include CLP, Spartan Staffing, PlaneTechs, TransTechs and Centerline.
References
- ↑ "TrueBlue, Inc. Company Information". Hoovers.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Fleecing the Day-Laborers -- and the Workers' Comp System: The Labor Ready Story, Reprinted from Mother Jones.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bernardo Fallas "Labor Ready's Ethics Questioned By Many," World Internet News Co-Operative, April 20, 2004.
- ↑ New Report by Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO Shows Labor Ready Workers Comp Misclassification Widespread, Long-Term. PR Newswire, May 28, 2002.