Dispatched labor refers to an atypical employment relationship. Dispatched work agencies receive customer ("Users enterprise") requests for workers to fulfill particular tasks. The workers have employment contracts with the Dispatched work agency, rather than the customer. By mutual consent, dispatched laborers work for and are supervised by the customer. There is no direct contract between dispatched laborers and the customer.
In labor dispatching, there are three parties: "Dispatched work agencies", "Users enterprises" and "Dispatched laborers".
The earliest labor dispatching came out in London, UK before World War I, but the form of labor dispatch at that time was different from nowadays. In addition to labor dispatching, it also contained the job of private placement agencies. The initial development of labor dispatch originated from 1920s. Samuel Workman created the idea of "rented help". He hired some married women to make inventory at night and met the temporary or short-term demand of enterprises at that time.
At this time, labor dispatching has popularized in America, Japan and all over Europe. Most of important and typical labor dispatching of America in nowadays were founded in 1946 to 1951. For example, the biggest dispatched work agency at present "Manpower" was founded in 1948.
According to the statistic of NAPEO, the growth of America labor dispatching keeps 20% per year roughly. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Belgium, France, UK, the Netherlands, Norway and America already had the service of labor dispatching, and most of well-established dispatched work agencies were founded at that time. In Japan, labor dispatching started coming out in 1965. The employers of dispatched work agencies already hired or registered a certain amount of laborers, and dispatched them to the users enterprise to provide labor services when the enterprise had the demand. At that time, labor dispatching played matchmaker between the females, the older workers and dispatched work agencies. After 1975, due to the arising demand of many enterprises, dispatched work agencies grew rapidly.
In 1980s, labor dispatching starting a blossoming developing in America, part of the reason lay on the highest employment rate and the lowest unemployment rate of America after World War II. The labor market of America also faced a structural change. With the rapid development and the stability of social environment, enterprises started to pursue the goal of maximum profits and minimum costs. At the same time, enterprises also started to pursue the labor force that can adopt soon to market variations. The enterprises attached more importance to the flexibility of human resource utilization. Japan made the law of labor dispatching for the first time in July, 1985. The Ministry of Labor started to formulate a chain of detailed by laws and executive orders, and entered the era of legal labor dispatching in 1, July, 1986.