dear friends, doug has pointed that the bls.s first attempt to quantify the number of contingent workers has yielded results at odds with what many others have assumed to be the case, namely that the number of contingent workers is very large and growing rapidly. this has elicited a number of responses, some of which, especially those of jim craven, seem a little fantastic. the bls uses a variety of definitions and assumptions when it makes its estimates. wouldn't the best thing for us to do be to examine the bls definitions and assumptions carefully, point out possible weaknesses, and suggest adjustments. i think that more than 5% of employment is contingent, but i have a somewhat broader definition of contingency than does the bls. it seems not very useful to rail against the bls, which, given its definitions, does a good job of collecting data and calculating statistics. (bls head abraham (?) has sshown a lot of courage in the recent cpi debate, to her great credit). it seems especially not useful to rail against doug for sharing the bls findings with us and suggesting that capitalist governments often do a good job of gathering and analyzing information. it is up to us as radicals to use them and subject them to careful scrutiny and criticism. why in heaven's name would we expect those who work with rather than against a capitalist society to use radical(e.g. Marxist) definitions and categories? michael yates
