Gardner, Florence U. of California, Berkeley This doctoral dissertation proposal examines the use of temporary employment within two European companies located in their home sites to that use in transplanted sites in the Greenville-Spartanburg area in South Carolina. The research will be conducted through two comparative case studies. The first case study will compare the use of temporary employment in the home facilities of BMW and Michelin Tire and their transplant facilities in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina. The second case study will compare the use of temporary employment in transplant facilities of these two companies to that of the indigenous textile industries of several companies in the same area. Data on workforce, job categories, employment variation, wages and gender-sex will be gathered through semi-structured interviews with personnel managers, union officials, permanent workers, and temporary workers at each site. The work will contribute generally to the topic of economic restructuring but more specifically to industrialization through foreign direct investment in the use of contingent employment relations by identifying the regional variation in the use of temporary work and the locality dependent dimensions of this use.
