1Journalists' accounts include Lance Morrow, "The Temping of America," Time, March 29, 1993; Janice Castro, "Disposable Workers," Time, March 29, 1993; William Bridges, "The End of the Job," Fortune, September 19, 1994; and "The Downsizing of America," New York Times, March 3, 1996 to March 9, 1996. Public policy and university researchers have also shown a strong interest in this topic; in the fall of 1996, special issues of the Monthly Labor Review and Journal of Labor Relations were devoted to papers on non-traditional employment arrangements. General discussions are Anne E. Polivka, "Contingent and alternative work arrangements, defined," Monthly Labor Review, 119, no. 10 (October 1996), 3-9; Audrey Freedman, "Contingent Work and the Role of Labor Market Intermediaries," 1996, http://www.bapp.com/af/wisdom/afconwork.html; and William B. Gartner and Scott A. Shane, "Measuring Entrepreneurship Over Time." Journal of Business Venturing, 10, no. 4 (July 1995), 283-301.

2On growth of temporary agencies, see Lewis M. Segal and Daniel G. Sullivan, "The temporary labor force," Economic Perspectives, 12, no. 2 (March/April 1995), 2-19; Lewis M. Segal and Daniel G. Sullivan, "The Growth of Temporary Services Work," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11, no. 2 (Spring 1997), 117-136; and Karylee Laird and Nicolas Williams, "Employment Growth in the Temporary Help Supply Industry," Journal of Labor Research, 27, no. 4 (Fall 1996), 663-681. On the general phenomenon of contingent employment, see Lewis M. Segal, "Flexible Employment: Composition and Trends," Journal of Labor Research, 17, no. 4 (Fall 1996), 525-542 and Stanley Nollen and Helen Axel, Managing Contingent Workers: How to Reap the Benefits and Reduce the Risks, (New York: Amacon, 1996). William J. Dennis, Jr., "Self-Employment: When Nothing Else Is Available?" Journal of Labor Research, 17, no. 4 (Fall 1996), 645-662 addresses independent contractors.

3Eileen Applebaum, "The growth in the U.S. contingent labour force" in Robert Drago and Richard Perlman, eds., Microeconomic Issues in Labour Economics (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 62-82 discusses the rise of two-tier hiring schemes--involving a core of permanent employees augmented by temporary workers hired from a contingent labor pool--at large U.S. firms. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, "Nice Work If You Can Get It," The American Prospect, no. 23 (Fall 1995), 52-58 and Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994) describe the growing prevalence of free-lancing in the information technology industry.

4The MIT scenarios are discussed in Robert J. Laubacher and Thomas W. Malone, "Two Scenarios for 21st Century Organizations: Shifting Networks of Small Firms or All-Encompassing 'Virtual Countries'?" MIT Initiative on Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, Working Paper No. 001, January 1997, http://ccs.mit.edu/21c/21CWP001.html. On new organizational forms, see Thomas W. Malone, JoAnne Yates and Robert I. Benjamin, "Electronic markets and electronic hierarchies," Communications of the ACM, 30 (1987), 484-497; Thomas W. Malone and John F. Rockart, "Computers, networks, and the corporation," Scientific American, 265, no. 3 (September 1991), 128-136; Thomas W. Malone, "Is 'Empowerment' just a Fad? Control, Decision-making, and Information Technology," Sloan Management Review, 38, no. 2, (Winter 1997), 23-35.

5On mechanics' associations during the early years of the industrial revolution, see E. P. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon, 1964) and Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

6On the changing meaning of the term "job, "see E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present, 38, (1967) and William Bridges, Job Shift: How to Prosper in a Workplace without Jobs, Reading (Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1994), chap. 2.

7Gregory Acs and Eugene Steuerle, "The Corporation as Dispenser of Welfare and Security," in Carl Kaysen, ed., The American Corporation Today, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 360-382 discusses the history of non-wage benefits.

8Michael Useem, "Corporate Education and Training" in Kaysen, American Corporation Today, 292-326 discusses employment by the Fortune 500.

9Information on NASE from interviews and on Working Today from its web site http://www.workingtoday.org.

10Information on SAG and construction trade unions from interviews.

11Thomas Kochan, "The American Corporation as Employer" in Kaysen, American Corporation Today, 242-268 and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, "The Union and the Contingent Workforce," Collective Bargaining Reporter, Spring 1996, http://www.afscme.org/afscme/bargtabl/contwrkf.htm.

12Bill Wilt, "An Incomplete List of Atex Alumni...." July 23, 1996, http://rt66.com/twl/Atex.alumni.html.

13AFSCME, Collective Bargaining Reporter, Spring 1996. The Vermont example was cited by a participant at the 1996 Research Review meeting of MIT's 21st Century Initiative.

14The example of software engineers communicating via e-mail was suggested by Ed Heresniak during his tenure as Executive Director of the 21st Century Initiative.

15On changes in pension funding, see Acs and Steuerle, "Corporation as Dispenser of Welfare." H. Lane Dennard, Jr., "Governmental Impediments to the Employment of Contingent Workers," Journal of Labor Research, 17, no. 4 (Fall 1996), 595-612 addresses the legal framework.

16On the origins of micro-lending, see A. Wahid, ed., The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh: A New Direction in Poverty Alleviation (Westview Press, 1993). On the adoption of micro-lending practices in the U.S., see Paulette Thomas, "With a 'Microloan' for a Truck, Family Leaves Welfare," Wall Street Journal, October 1997, B1.