Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the influence that manpower agencies have on employment in Kazakhstan's oil sector.

After independence, Kazakhstan's oil sector was flooded with trans-national companies bringing into the industry several of their cross-border standards.

The use of manpower agencies, i.e. the outsourcing of HR and the atomization of the workforce, characterizes one oil region more than others in Kazakhstan. The presence of manpower agencies and the absence of trade unions is directly linked to practices by trans-national companies, this paper argues. Manpower agencies have a decisive role in making employment and labor more precarious in the oil sector.

In particular, the paper highlights how their role fills several gaps: 1) trans-national companies offload responsibilities (time spent on HR for direct employees; responsibility on Health & Safety); 2) employers' preference for lower salaries and worse conditions; 3) lack of independent trade unions.

Their presence stimulates a race to the bottom also between workers, who have no other option but to accept precarious (the seasonal fluctuation of jobs in the oil sector is in fact one of the main reasons for which these large companies justify their use of manpower agencies), unsafe, and underpaid jobs.

The drive towards the inflation of "local content" in Kazakhstan's oil industry proved to be yet another reason that trans-national companies use to employ manpower agencies.

Against this backdrop, the paper also offers a peek into "industrial gossip", gathered during fieldwork in the Atyrau region.

This more anthropological side of the argument highlights how political pretexts, personal spats, family relations, and bribes have broken up both the world of trade unions and that of manpower agencies. The latter, however, has a propensity and an incentive for atomization, which makes it stronger, while the rifts among the former have weakened the labor movement, before it was essentially killed by recent legislation.