What is Domestic Outsourcing?  It is a mechanism that is used by companies to fill vacancies by purchasing manpower (contractors) from an external contracting agency at a contractually agreed upon price.  This does have the advantage of allowing the company to give workers "a test drive" to see if they fit the bill for the job opening, and the company as a whole.  Where this becomes an abuse is when the employer maintains the contractors as such and never hires them full time.  This allows the company to avoid paying benefits, insurance, vacations, etc., and give the contractor no vested interests in the company.  It also creates a two tier elitist subculture by which there are regular full time employees as well as contractors, who both perform the same job, but the contractor is generally treated as "lessors" by both management as well as their supposed colleagues.  At the same time, the contracting agency is taking a "skim" off the contractor's wages, for simply insulating the company from any legal attachment to the contractor.

What this amounts to is a "perma-temp" worker.  It is illegal for a company to create permanently temporary positions, because work assignments that last longer than a year are not considered temporary.  Companies invented the term "contractor" so that they can treat the contractors as if they are on temporary status for an indefinite period of time.  

IBM is one company that is guilty of this abuse.  In addition to the previously cited abuses, from 2001 to 2004 they have cut the contractor's pay six times, with the contracting companies breaching year long contracts before contract end to lower the pay rates.  This was done even in the face of a recovering economy and multi-billion dollar growth, while bragging that they gave their regular full time employees raises.  Since contractors are not regular employees, semantics allows them to tell the world that their employees all received raises while contractors have been repeatedly subjected to financial abuse.  Click for financial filings 2001-2003.

Domestic outsourcing, like foreign offshoring, is growing.  If you are not a contractor now, you could be the next job you take.  More and more companies are refusing to hire full timers, but they dangle the promise of full time employment in front of prospects, like a carrot in front of a mule, and try to get the prospect to accept contract employment.  You think it can't happen to you, or that you simply wouldn't take a contract position?  Tomorrow you might not have a choice.  

Email your congressmen and senators today.  Have them pass legislation that imposes the following requirements on employers to prevent them from becoming more predatory:  1. All contract employment must not exceed 1 year per person.  2. A contractor must be hired as a full time employee unless cause is shown why he/she should not be.  This will prevent companies from recycling contractors on year long assignments, then arbitrarily replacing them before they have to hire them.  3. Identify who is responsible for insuring this law is obeyed, and impose felony penalties upon those responsible when violations occur.  For a private company, this would be the owner or all partners, for a public company this would be the entire board of directors.  Prison time would make these employers think twice about such predatory and unethical practices.