Formalising the informal: recruiting through intermediaries in Tema. : a way out or a way to the bottom?

Abstract

This study is about the activities of labour intermediary agents in Tema, a port city and the hub of industrial activities in Ghana. The study set out to understand the extent to which recruitment arrangements with intermediary labour agents by employers affect the employment relations of temporary or casual workers in the study area. Theoretical and empirical discourses on informalisation of work and flexible labour strategies constituted the frame for the study. Four intermediary labour agencies/agents were selected for interviews. A total of 24 casual/temporary workers from the 4 agencies/agents were included in the interviews. Employment arrangement through intermediaries is emerging in Ghana. However, the nature of some of these labour intermediaries reveals that the processes underlying their current form are not new. Some of them have adopted and adapted some of the old ways of organising and managing casual workers into their operations. The insertion of labour intermediary agencies/agents into the recruitment process at the study area has had a contradictory effect on the actors involved - there are gainers and losers. The actors who gain from the whole arrangements are the labour intermediary agencies/agent and their clients. Contrary to the thinking that hiring of labour through an institutionalised agency leads to the formalisation of work, the situation in Tema points to deepen insecurity of temporary or casual work negotiated through agents; manifesting itself in increasing work irregularity, irregular and decreasing size of wages and other benefits, risky working environment and the drudgery nature of work. In the process, some individuals have lost their privilege positions whilst those who used to occupy the lower echelons of the casual labour market have been pushed further to the bottom of the barrel. All these have tended to worsen the conditions of the temporary or the casual workers. Opportunities, however, exist either in the form of scaling up of some of the casual groups in Tema to embark on public action to cause a change in their employment conditions or the intermediary labour agents/agencies improve on their operations to enhance the conditions of the workers they supply.