Permatemp
Encyclopedia
A permatemp is an employee whose status is somewhere between a temporary employee and a permanent employee. The word is a portmanteau of the words permanent and temporary.
There are two types of permatemp employment relationships. In the first form, a public or private employer hires employees as "temporary" or "seasonal" employees, but retains them, often full-time for year after year, without any benefits. These employees often do the same work as permanent employees, but without the same benefits. The second kind of permatemp is an employee of a staffing service provider or payroll agency, which sends workers to work in a long-term, on-site position for a private company or public employer. The employee is paid by the staffing service provider or agency rather than by the primary employer, and sometimes receives benefits.
to high-priced consulting
. The employee may work for one or several companies, and the working periods may be for days or months at a time, but the working periods often come about irregularly. Temporary agencies may or may not provide benefits
, such as subsidized health insurance
, to their employees.
Regular, permanent employees work for a single employer and are paid directly by that employer. In addition to their wage
s, they may receive benefits, such as subsidized health care
, paid vacations
, holidays, sick time, or contributions to a retirement plan. Regular employees are sometimes eligible to switch job positions within their companies. Even when employment is "at will
," regular employees of large outfits are sometimes protected from abrupt job termination by severance policies, like advance notice in case of layoff
s, or formal discipline procedures. They may be eligible to join a union, and may enjoy both social and financial benefits of their employment.
Policies regarding temp workers tend to differ between companies. At some companies, temporary employees are ineligible to apply for jobs open to regular employees. On the other hand, other companies use temporary staffing arrangements to "test drive" prospective employees. At the end of the agency, company employees and underperformers can be let go with minimal proceedings. When a staffing agency is involved, the permatemp may have little relationship with the agency that employs him. The staffing
firm may have a national contract with the worksite company. Although the staffing company may be thousands of miles from the job location, it can find job candidates to fill positions through Internet job websites, with interviews occurring over the phone and paperwork filed via fax
machine or e-mail
. Sometimes, a permatemp employee may never actually meet anyone at the staffing company.
The staffing firm provides a wage to the employee, but may or may not provide any benefits. Often, if benefits are offered, they come at a direct decrease in the pay rate. In order to pay the employee, the staffing firm is paid by the worksite company at an agreed upon bill rate, which can be many percentage points higher than the pay rate. Bill rates are rarely disclosed to the employee, and the staffing firm may, in fact, be contractually prohibited from disclosing it.
. These public sector cases generally involve violation of ordinances or rules limiting the length of service of such workers.
Two California cases address the issues of public employees who were improperly considered "temporary" when they were actually employed as regular, permanent employees. The first case involves the Los Angeles County Fire Department
; the second such case concerns the employment practices of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
. These cases are both class action
lawsuits that have been litigated over a number of years. Both cases are near, or in the process of, being settled.
In an Albuquerque, New Mexico
, case a federal district judge ruled that an employee who worked full time for the City of Albuquerque for more than ten years as a "seasonal" supervisor and recreation leader (never earning more than $7.00 per hour and with no benefits) might have had a "property interest" in his employment such that he could not be terminated without a hearing. The judge also certified a conditional class of "similarly situated" city employees employed as temporary or seasonal employees in violation of City ordinances, which limited temporary employees to two years and limited seasonal employees to nine months or less each year.
Staffing through temporary agencies became common in the Silicon Valley
technology companies. Permatemping came into vogue simultaneously with the economic bubble
of the 1990s. Most recently, General Motors
and its subsidiary, Delphi
, announced plans to rely on temporary employees. Whether these will be long-term temps, or permatemps, remains to be seen.
General Motors has used "permatemps" for a long time in its lowest management level, Level 6 Supervisor, under a national contract with Kelly Services
.
One legal issue and one tax issue, both having to do with permatemps at Microsoft
, defined permatemping and also changed it.
lawsuit was brought against Microsoft representing thousands of current and former employees that had been classified as temporary and freelance. The monetary value of the suit was determined by how much the misclassified employees could have made if they had been correctly classified and been able to participate in Microsoft's Employee Stock Purchase Plan. The case was decided on the basis that the temporary employees had had their jobs defined by Microsoft, worked alongside regular employees doing the same work, and worked for long terms (years, in many cases).
The case and subsequent appeals were heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
. Before a final ruling could be issued, Microsoft settled the case for US$97 million. The Microsoft permatemps collected their money almost 10 years later.
issued a ruling that Microsoft owed millions of dollars in payroll taxes. The IRS determined that permatemp employees were common law
employees of Microsoft and the staffing firm's role was simply that of payroll processor
.
organizations at many companies changed their policies towards temporary employees. Microsoft, for example, decreed that an individual could not be a temp for more than 364 days, and that individuals must be separated from Microsoft for more than 100 days between temporary assignments with the company. Other companies have created policies stating that temporary workers can be assigned to only specific projects that last just a few months. Individuals are often prohibited from taking back-to-back assignments within an agency client company.
When a company requires a break in service of its permatemps, the result is often that those employees regularly cycle between two companies instead of having back-to-back assignments. Other permatemps plan for personal breaks and simply use the time as vacation. In most cases, they are eligible for unemployment insurance as long as they nominally look for work. This form of permatemping may be attractive to those not wanting a steady, full-time, or year-round position, or not wanting to be committed to one position or one employer.
Another arrangement to avoid long-term serial temporary assignments is to "in-source" the work to be done, and not the position that does the work. In this arrangement, a company does not hire a staffing firm to fill a position, but rather hires it to do the work. The staffing firm still must hire the permatemp to do the work, still on-site at the corporation.
Some of these alternative arrangements barely differ from the pre-Vizcaino format for permatemping. Laws and legal rulings continue to define the permatemp-employee relationship. The IRS continues to warn many companies they may owe employment taxes for their temporary workers and employee lawsuits over temping repeat the same arguments.
Due to the 365 day rule, high value contractors (typically in IT) who choose to accept the risk of not receiving benefits and of contract termination in exchange for higher hourly rates are forced out of standard business relationships. This causes problems for both the contractor, who must continually move to new companies, and for the company, which must retrain and familiarize a new contractor with business rules and infrastructure.
Some permatemps also disagree on the effectiveness of lawsuits and new laws to regulate hiring.
Other critics note that the constant job turnover mandated by human resources department policies has the effect of increasing the unemployment rate, which has led to wage deflation in fields with large numbers of permatemps.
In the wake of employee lawsuits, most companies have not increased hiring of staff in positions typically held by permatemps. In fact, rather than risk lawsuits, many firms have decided not to hire within their own country at all, instead turning work formerly done by their pools of permatemps over to outsourcing
firms in other countries.
-like system. That permatemps had socially integrated into the corporate culture and that the company had included permatemps in morale events and gift giving was evidence both in Vizcaino and to the IRS for a communal corporate culture. Policy enforcement that now restricts permatemps from participating in morale events, employee social clubs and the like creates a second class
division between regular employees and permatemps. (At one time temporary employees at Microsoft referred to being hired on permanently, with accompanying stock benefits, as "being knighted.")
Many corporations hire temporary employees to do work they deem low-skilled or unimportant. Permatemps hired to do that work may not get the resources that a regular employee would. Permatemps might be forced to share office space, cubicles or phones when regular employees have their own. Employee badges for permatemps might be a different color, and permatemps may be recognized in the corporate e-mail
system by dashes or other identifiers appended to their login ID. By declaring positions filled by permatemps to be low-skilled and making it easier for regular employees to identify their co-workers who are permatemps, companies create a sense of elitism
in their regular employees. Permatemps, as a group, might be known by epithets such as "dash trash" (referring to an identifier and a dash prepended to an email user account).
Frequently permatemps are highly skilled, excellent workers, particularly in the IT
field, but are still not allowed to participate in company events or receive bonuses for work well done. If they earn over the United States Department of Labor
minimum for overtime exemption, they may be asked to put in similar overtime
hours to benefitted, salaried employees without overtime compensation. Depending on the staffing firm and corporation policies, permatemps may discover themselves in one of several positions, all of which require the same level of work from them as from their coworkers:
There are two types of permatemp employment relationships. In the first form, a public or private employer hires employees as "temporary" or "seasonal" employees, but retains them, often full-time for year after year, without any benefits. These employees often do the same work as permanent employees, but without the same benefits. The second kind of permatemp is an employee of a staffing service provider or payroll agency, which sends workers to work in a long-term, on-site position for a private company or public employer. The employee is paid by the staffing service provider or agency rather than by the primary employer, and sometimes receives benefits.
Definition
Traditionally, a temporary employee is hired to substitute for an employee who is on leave or vacation or to staff a project for which there are insufficient permanent employees to carry out the task. A seasonal employee is hired for the limited time because the work is necessary only for a certain season. The normal practice of temporary employment for an agency is one in which the employees have a close relationship with the agency from which they receive their pay. Their work may range from day laborDay labor
Day labor is work done where the worker is hired and paid one day at a time, with no promise that more work will be available in the future. It is a form of contingent work.-Types:Day laborers find work through three common routes....
to high-priced consulting
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
. The employee may work for one or several companies, and the working periods may be for days or months at a time, but the working periods often come about irregularly. Temporary agencies may or may not provide benefits
Employee benefit
Employee benefits and benefits in kind are various non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries...
, such as subsidized health insurance
Health insurance
Health insurance is insurance against the risk of incurring medical expenses among individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health care expenses among a targeted group, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to ensure that money is...
, to their employees.
Regular, permanent employees work for a single employer and are paid directly by that employer. In addition to their wage
Wage
A wage is a compensation, usually financial, received by workers in exchange for their labor.Compensation in terms of wages is given to workers and compensation in terms of salary is given to employees...
s, they may receive benefits, such as subsidized health care
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
, paid vacations
Annual leave
Annual leave is paid time off work granted by employers to employees to be used for whatever the employee wishes. Depending on the employer's policies, differing number of days may be offered, and the employee may be required to give a certain amount of advance notice, may have to coordinate with...
, holidays, sick time, or contributions to a retirement plan. Regular employees are sometimes eligible to switch job positions within their companies. Even when employment is "at will
At-will employment
At-will employment is a doctrine of American law that defines anemployment relationship in which either party can break the relationship with no liability, provided there was no express contract for a definite term governing the employment relationship and that the employer does not belong to a...
," regular employees of large outfits are sometimes protected from abrupt job termination by severance policies, like advance notice in case of layoff
Layoff
Layoff , also called redundancy in the UK, is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or a group of employees for business reasons, such as when certain positions are no longer necessary or when a business slow-down occurs...
s, or formal discipline procedures. They may be eligible to join a union, and may enjoy both social and financial benefits of their employment.
Policies regarding temp workers tend to differ between companies. At some companies, temporary employees are ineligible to apply for jobs open to regular employees. On the other hand, other companies use temporary staffing arrangements to "test drive" prospective employees. At the end of the agency, company employees and underperformers can be let go with minimal proceedings. When a staffing agency is involved, the permatemp may have little relationship with the agency that employs him. The staffing
Employment agency
An employment agency is an organization which matches employers to employees. In all developed countries there is a publicly funded employment agency and multiple private businesses which also act as employment agencies.-Public employment agencies:...
firm may have a national contract with the worksite company. Although the staffing company may be thousands of miles from the job location, it can find job candidates to fill positions through Internet job websites, with interviews occurring over the phone and paperwork filed via fax
Fax
Fax , sometimes called telecopying, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material , normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device...
machine or e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
. Sometimes, a permatemp employee may never actually meet anyone at the staffing company.
The staffing firm provides a wage to the employee, but may or may not provide any benefits. Often, if benefits are offered, they come at a direct decrease in the pay rate. In order to pay the employee, the staffing firm is paid by the worksite company at an agreed upon bill rate, which can be many percentage points higher than the pay rate. Bill rates are rarely disclosed to the employee, and the staffing firm may, in fact, be contractually prohibited from disclosing it.
Legal issues
Arguments have been made that when a worker is actually employed full-time, year round, but called a temporary or seasonal employee, the employee is being exploited by being denied the wages, benefits, and employment rights enjoyed by other employees. While it is unknown how common this kind of situation is, class action lawsuits have been decided against Seattle, Washington and King County, WashingtonKing County, Washington
King County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population in the 2010 census was 1,931,249. King is the most populous county in Washington, and the 14th most populous in the United States....
. These public sector cases generally involve violation of ordinances or rules limiting the length of service of such workers.
Two California cases address the issues of public employees who were improperly considered "temporary" when they were actually employed as regular, permanent employees. The first case involves the Los Angeles County Fire Department
Los Angeles County Fire Department
The Los Angeles County Fire Department , serves unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, as well as 58 cities and towns that choose to have the county provide fire and EMS services, including La Habra. It should not be confused with the Los Angeles City Fire Department, which serves the city of...
; the second such case concerns the employment practices of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is the largest supplier of treated water in the US. The name is usually shortened to the "Metropolitan Water District" or simply "MWD". It is a cooperative of 14 cities and 12 municipal water districts that indirectly provides water to 18...
. These cases are both class action
Class action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
lawsuits that have been litigated over a number of years. Both cases are near, or in the process of, being settled.
In an Albuquerque, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, case a federal district judge ruled that an employee who worked full time for the City of Albuquerque for more than ten years as a "seasonal" supervisor and recreation leader (never earning more than $7.00 per hour and with no benefits) might have had a "property interest" in his employment such that he could not be terminated without a hearing. The judge also certified a conditional class of "similarly situated" city employees employed as temporary or seasonal employees in violation of City ordinances, which limited temporary employees to two years and limited seasonal employees to nine months or less each year.
Staffing through temporary agencies became common in the Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
technology companies. Permatemping came into vogue simultaneously with the economic bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
of the 1990s. Most recently, General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
and its subsidiary, Delphi
Delphi (auto parts)
Delphi Automotive PLC is an automotive parts company headquartered in Troy, Michigan, USA. Delphi is one of the world's largest automotive parts manufacturers and has approximately 146,600 employees ....
, announced plans to rely on temporary employees. Whether these will be long-term temps, or permatemps, remains to be seen.
General Motors has used "permatemps" for a long time in its lowest management level, Level 6 Supervisor, under a national contract with Kelly Services
Kelly Services
Kelly Services, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Troy, Michigan, offering services that include temporary staffing services, outsourcing, vendor on-site and full-time placement.Kelly operates in 37 countries and territories...
.
One legal issue and one tax issue, both having to do with permatemps at Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, defined permatemping and also changed it.
Vizcaino v. Microsoft
In 1996, a class actionClass action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
lawsuit was brought against Microsoft representing thousands of current and former employees that had been classified as temporary and freelance. The monetary value of the suit was determined by how much the misclassified employees could have made if they had been correctly classified and been able to participate in Microsoft's Employee Stock Purchase Plan. The case was decided on the basis that the temporary employees had had their jobs defined by Microsoft, worked alongside regular employees doing the same work, and worked for long terms (years, in many cases).
The case and subsequent appeals were heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
. Before a final ruling could be issued, Microsoft settled the case for US$97 million. The Microsoft permatemps collected their money almost 10 years later.
IRS tax rulings
Simultaneous with Vizcaino, the United States Internal Revenue ServiceInternal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
issued a ruling that Microsoft owed millions of dollars in payroll taxes. The IRS determined that permatemp employees were common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
employees of Microsoft and the staffing firm's role was simply that of payroll processor
Payroll service bureau
A payroll service bureau is an accounting business whose main focus is the preparation of payroll for other businesses. Such firms are often run by Certified Public Accountants, though a typical payroll processing company will refer to itself as a service bureau rather than a CPA firm, to...
.
Legal changes
As a result of the legal and tax rulings, human resourcesHuman resources
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
organizations at many companies changed their policies towards temporary employees. Microsoft, for example, decreed that an individual could not be a temp for more than 364 days, and that individuals must be separated from Microsoft for more than 100 days between temporary assignments with the company. Other companies have created policies stating that temporary workers can be assigned to only specific projects that last just a few months. Individuals are often prohibited from taking back-to-back assignments within an agency client company.
When a company requires a break in service of its permatemps, the result is often that those employees regularly cycle between two companies instead of having back-to-back assignments. Other permatemps plan for personal breaks and simply use the time as vacation. In most cases, they are eligible for unemployment insurance as long as they nominally look for work. This form of permatemping may be attractive to those not wanting a steady, full-time, or year-round position, or not wanting to be committed to one position or one employer.
Another arrangement to avoid long-term serial temporary assignments is to "in-source" the work to be done, and not the position that does the work. In this arrangement, a company does not hire a staffing firm to fill a position, but rather hires it to do the work. The staffing firm still must hire the permatemp to do the work, still on-site at the corporation.
Some of these alternative arrangements barely differ from the pre-Vizcaino format for permatemping. Laws and legal rulings continue to define the permatemp-employee relationship. The IRS continues to warn many companies they may owe employment taxes for their temporary workers and employee lawsuits over temping repeat the same arguments.
Due to the 365 day rule, high value contractors (typically in IT) who choose to accept the risk of not receiving benefits and of contract termination in exchange for higher hourly rates are forced out of standard business relationships. This causes problems for both the contractor, who must continually move to new companies, and for the company, which must retrain and familiarize a new contractor with business rules and infrastructure.
Permatemp job stability
In many surveys, those in permatemp situations readily state that they would prefer to be regular employees of the companies they work for. Not all permatemps agree with this, however. Many enjoy the high hourly rates associated with such jobs as well as the on-again/off-again lifestyle and do not need the guarantee of a stable income.Some permatemps also disagree on the effectiveness of lawsuits and new laws to regulate hiring.
Other critics note that the constant job turnover mandated by human resources department policies has the effect of increasing the unemployment rate, which has led to wage deflation in fields with large numbers of permatemps.
In the wake of employee lawsuits, most companies have not increased hiring of staff in positions typically held by permatemps. In fact, rather than risk lawsuits, many firms have decided not to hire within their own country at all, instead turning work formerly done by their pools of permatemps over to outsourcing
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
firms in other countries.
Permatemp culture
In Microsoft's corporate culture, the presence of permatemps created a casteCaste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
-like system. That permatemps had socially integrated into the corporate culture and that the company had included permatemps in morale events and gift giving was evidence both in Vizcaino and to the IRS for a communal corporate culture. Policy enforcement that now restricts permatemps from participating in morale events, employee social clubs and the like creates a second class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
division between regular employees and permatemps. (At one time temporary employees at Microsoft referred to being hired on permanently, with accompanying stock benefits, as "being knighted.")
Many corporations hire temporary employees to do work they deem low-skilled or unimportant. Permatemps hired to do that work may not get the resources that a regular employee would. Permatemps might be forced to share office space, cubicles or phones when regular employees have their own. Employee badges for permatemps might be a different color, and permatemps may be recognized in the corporate e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
system by dashes or other identifiers appended to their login ID. By declaring positions filled by permatemps to be low-skilled and making it easier for regular employees to identify their co-workers who are permatemps, companies create a sense of elitism
Elite
Elite refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence...
in their regular employees. Permatemps, as a group, might be known by epithets such as "dash trash" (referring to an identifier and a dash prepended to an email user account).
Frequently permatemps are highly skilled, excellent workers, particularly in the IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
field, but are still not allowed to participate in company events or receive bonuses for work well done. If they earn over the United States Department of Labor
United States Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor is a Cabinet department of the United States government responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and some economic statistics. Many U.S. states also have such departments. The...
minimum for overtime exemption, they may be asked to put in similar overtime
Overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:*by custom ,*by practices of a given trade or profession,*by legislation,...
hours to benefitted, salaried employees without overtime compensation. Depending on the staffing firm and corporation policies, permatemps may discover themselves in one of several positions, all of which require the same level of work from them as from their coworkers:
- Working for an inclusive corporation that allows permatemps limited rewards for good work, with a staffing firm that provides some benefits. If a staffing firm offers benefits they are occasionally immediate, but more typically the employee must wait several months to a year before becoming eligible. Some staffing firms have their own rewards programs for things like good contractor evaluations and length of employment.
- Working for an inclusive company through a staffing firm that offers no benefits. For example, a corporation might make up for a lack of holiday pay by paying for the day despite the employee's not working. This would eliminate common situations where permatemps received reduced pay due to forced time-off (such as company-wide closings on New Year's DayNew Year's DayNew Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...
or ChristmasChristmasChristmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
holidays). - Working for a non-inclusive company that offers no benefits at all to permatemps, with a benefit-offering staffing firm.
- Working for a non-inclusive company with a staffing firm with no benefits. Staffing firms are competitive, and long-term contracts vary between companies. While some do offer tangible benefits such as partial coverage of insurance premiums and personal time, others only offer pseudo-benefits. For example, a contracting company might advertise insurance as a benefit for its contractors, when all they offer is the opportunity for the permatemp to pay full price for insurance through them. Many corporations have contracts with staffing firms that don't allow them to switch a permatemp from one firm to another, so once a permatemp is brought in through a staffing firm, they must stay with that firm for the duration of the job, short of the corporation hiring them permanently. Unfortunately, a permatemp may discover themselves accepting a job that has no benefits out of economic necessity, or because their field has limited-to-no permanent openings in their location.
External links
- IRS definitions of employer relationships, including common law employees.
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer summary Microsoft "permatemps" win
- Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a permatemp rights organization.
- Center for a Changing Workforce, a research and policy organization on permatemps, nonstandard employment, and health insurance.
- Boralnd, John. "Microsoft 'permatemp' checks finally arrive". CNet News. October 21, 2005
- Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion dated May 12, 1999, by Tech Law Journal.