I see this on Miami Animal Cops (or whatever it's called) on Animal Planet
all the time.
It always makes me sick to my stomach.

Then I try and think about how else to hold and move a screeching, clawing,
VERY pissed off animal with teeth and claws...
I wouldn't want to try to support their bodies. I know what damage a really
pissed off cat can do to flesh. I know how much they can squirm and wriggle
out of contraptions meant to help hold them.

I have no solution.

The poles, AFAIK, are the only way to keep everyone relatively safe. They
move, so that when the cat spins, the pole spins to keep it from strangling
the cat. The end of the pole is coated in a material that won't hurt their
teeth if they bite it.
Animal workers don't deserve to be in excessive danger for helping animals.

Realize that most of the cats who thrash about violently and such are feral
and wouldn't tolerate handling without months of work. These animal workers
need to move them now, not tomorrow or a month from now. You want pressure?
Go work for animal control. IIRC, New York has a team of like 10 people for
the entire city, which has millions of pets.

If anyone has a more humane solution that will allow the workers, who are
massively overworked and in need of 50 hour days to get everything done, to
move the cats in an efficient and timely manner, without harming themselves
in the process, please be very vocal. Maybe you can effect change in the
system and help these animals and the workers. Maybe you can invent something
and make money, too!!  :)
Or maybe you'll just educate stupid ol' me.

/didn't RTFA, but has seen it on TV