`Picking Women': The Recruitment of Temporary Workers in the Mail Order Industry

Abstract

This paper describes the procedures used to recruit temporary and part-time warehouse workers in the mail order industry. It seeks to explain how and why temporary `picking' and `packing' jobs continue to remain `women's work' even within a region of severe male unemployment. Theoretically, the evidence suggests that some writers may have been too hasty in their total rejection of the contribution of the reserve army of labour thesis to an understanding of women's relationship to paid employment.