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Audio clip from interview with Andy Katz, February 16, 2016

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Audio file
Download jhp000208.mp3 (audio/mpeg; 4.2 MB)

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Date

2016-02-16

Description

In this clip, Andy Katz discusses the programs at Manpower, an employment agency franchise that his parents established in Las Vegas in the 1960s, and still exists today. Katz became involved at an early age, and talks about employment opportunities he had growing up.

Digital ID

jhp000208
    Details

    Citation

    Andy Katz oral history interview, 2016 February 16. OH-02575. [Audio recording]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1028s003

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    This material is made available to facilitate private study, scholarship, or research. It may be protected by copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity rights, or other interests not owned by UNLV. Users are responsible for determining whether permissions are necessary from rights owners for any intended use and for obtaining all required permissions. Acknowledgement of the UNLV University Libraries is requested. For more information, please see the UNLV Special Collections policies on reproduction and use (https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/research_and_services/reproductions) or contact us at special.collections@unlv.edu

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    Digital Provenance

    Original archival records created digitally

    Language

    English

    Publisher

    University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Libraries

    Format

    audio/wav

    So when people find out over the years?there's so many questions I could ask you about Manpower. How many people? I mean the city is growing and expanding and how many people are coming in here. You had to as a company touched a lot of people. Over fifty years, yes, yes. I would say on an average year we're sending out five thousand, six thousand W 2s. Not all are working full time, unfortunately. That would be nice. But when you think about that number of people multiplied over the years...Of course, it wasn't like that when it first started. But you go around talking to people, some of these names that I mentioned that I went to school with, their first jobs were like mine were. It was demonstrating a Kodak camera. Tom Foskaris will tell you a story of digging a trench on Fremont Street, one of his first Manpower assignments. Or the fraternity, the fraternity I was in, I said, "You guys, we can all do a fun job at the convention center for a day or two and just donate all the money and that could be our fundraiser for the chapter." So the company has always been intertwined with my social. Everything just kind of comes together. So what was your first job, do you remember? My first job as a temporary? Oh, absolutely. I think my mom still laughs about it. I was a temporary for the Easter Sunday brunch at Bally's?wait a minute. No, it was the MGM before it was Bally's. So I was a busboy for the brunch. My mom still remembers me standing at the door afterwards, my shoes in my hand, like this ain't for me. I remember just working really hard and I got like five dollars in tips. I remember the main bus person, the head of the bus people that day came up to me and said, "Well, it's common that anybody that's working as a bus person will share their tips with the lead person of the day." I said, "I only got five bucks." He said, "That's fine." They took the whole five bucks? Yes. That was funny. So that was my first temporary assignment. But it was mowing lawns and the Kodak demonstrations. Conventions, see, now, that's something that my dad kind of started around the country. Manpower has its set stuff, but there really weren't any market here for conventions. So I remember sending hundreds of people at a time, industrial guys for setup and breakdown. I remember me and my brother?this is when I first started actually sending employees out?me and my brother sat in a little cubby hole in that building across from City Hall in the back of the building. That's back when there was a waiting room. So six o'clock in the morning, we'd open the door and there would be dozens of guys just waiting there. They come in. And as we get calls from different companies?the convention center, the health district, Centel?who needed extra help that day, we're like, "Okay, who's got a car? All right. You, you and you, you guys go there. You, you and you, go there." That was like the down and dirty temporary staffing, the waiting room.