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NY To Replace IT Vendors With State Workers
dcblogs writes "New York state plans to replace as many as 500 IT contract workers with a new type of temporary state worker. The state estimates it can save $25,000 annually for each contracting position that is in-sourced. This is the result of a new law creating 'term appointments,' which strip away some hiring and firing rules that apply to permanent state workers. These term appointment workers are employed 'at will.' Term appointments can be up to five years and workers get state benefits. Proponents of this change said a state IT worker might earn an average of $55 an hour, including benefits, while the state pays its contractors an average of $128 an hour for workers in similar jobs."
State employees have one of the most powerful unions there is. This is the thin end of the wedge to destroy it. Whether you are happy about this or not depends on how you feel about unions. I, for one, welcome this as a step forward for government employment.
Of course, some of that $128/hour the contractor gets goes toward employee benefits... and the cost to the state will be more than $55/hour including benefits...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
They're called "slaves", actually. And "right-to-work" laws really mean that you have the right to be fired for no reason and have no recourse. Funny what happens when you let corporations write the laws in this country.
On the surface this sounds like a good idea.
Employees are more loyal, and generally care more about the work they are doing than outside contractors.
I have mixed feelings about creating the positions as a special semi-temporary group. Its good in that it allows the state to actually hire needed people, but it sounds like they are second-class employees. Only here temporarily. Not really part of the team, but expected to work extra hard in the hopes of someday getting to be a real employee...
Can we just restrict this meme to idle posts?
But in other news, /. lurkers find new ways to recap summary in one sentence, stay tuned for more info!
2^3 * 31 * 647
I'd assume most of these are helpdesk jobs anyway.. so this might be just fine for positions like that. But for anything more technical or requiring expertise I image they will keep full time on site support. Or feel the results of Temp workers when a "critical" to them system crashes.
~Mekkah
If they hire IT workers who match the quality of most NY state workers, they will wind up hiring contractors in the end anyways...
How so?
If they were taking full-timers and laying them off then rehiring them as contractors (with no benefits) that's clearly illegal - it's a process called "conversion".
But they are simply saying that jobs that are currently filled with a contractor will be filled with full-time "at will" employees now. Contractors are already "at will", and the contracting firm is (in theory) paid a lot extra because they can rapidly add or subtract resources as needed. You pay extra for the flexibility. Flexibility which, in this case, the state doesn't need as much.
Now the state is saying "we have people that we know we'll need for 5 years or so. We can't hire them full-time under existing State terms because we cannot eliminate their positions when we don't need them any more, but it's terribly expensive to hire them for 5 years at about triple what they actually get paid." That $128/hr contractor MIGHT be getting paid $45 an hour with benefits. Their firm takes the rest.
I can't even see the State union getting upset about this, these employees will likely be Union members, with the only exception being they have a fixed term of employment rather than "employed until retired or dead" like most State jobs. But it beats working for the contracting firm.
About the only people I can see getting upset about this is, well, contracting houses.
But the State is large enough that it really doesn't need the assistance finding talent, and the employment terms are long enough that people will still jump at the chance. I mean, c'mon, how many people in "real world" IT last more than 5 years in a given job? My record, after over 20 years in the field, is 4 years 10 months, ending in a layoff. I'm really hoping my current employer is "the one I retire from", because they are really nice folks to work for. But lifetime employment is nearly unheard of nowadays.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Oh, you don't like "free markets"? The government shouldn't look for ways to save money?
It's funny how quickly the most staunch conservative turns into Michael Moore as soon as it's his well-being that's threatened.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you properly manage a smaller number of very high paid IT workers instead of a much larger number of low paid IT workers, you'll find that the ROI is hugely in favor of the higher paid workers - because they were "properly managed". That includes selection, hiring, and allocation of time and resources. (In many ways it means give them the tools and the requirements and then get out of the way.)
Now if you are lousy managers it makes sense to hire low paid IT workers because you pay less and you won't produce much value either way. So perhaps NY is on to something because they didn't say anything about fixing their managers.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Is it just illegal because government is doing it?
Private corporations have been doing this for years.
It's only "unheard of" in countries where the corporations run the government. Funny, but in the empoverished Socialist third-world hellholes like Germany, or Israel or Sweden, a person staying with the same employer for a lifetime is not uncommon.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That $128/hr contractor MIGHT be getting paid $45 an hour with benefits. Their firm takes the rest.
There is no Generic IT grunt getting $45.00 an hour in New York. They are getting $21.00 MAX.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sure, but because of cronyism and bad economic & political policies, politicians/department heads have been "contracting" jobs that are needed full-time and would have cost less in-house. For example, a Department of Transportation isn't "in the business of IT". For political reasons, a department head may choose to outsource the IT to a contracting company. This allows DoT to claim a lower personal overhead even though it is now paying more than it was before, and "the government is smaller". There are likely just as many IT employees working at the DoT as before, but DoT doesn't pay them directly, and DoT can claim it isn't some bloated government agency. Next, DoT will shift its accounting, legal, cleaning, and engineering staff to outside agencies in an effort to show smaller government; "a win-win for all!" (Except the poor taxpayer who now pays twice as much because everything now has a much greater overhead).
Minus the extra $25k per year that would otherwise be thrown away to the contract firm (or to the IT worker if independently contracted). So in the end, it works for a net win for the state (They could take that $12.5 million they just saved and push it towards the pension package, or reducing taxes, or paying off some of their debt, or something else useful)...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
And why are those pension plans "underfunded"? Any guesses?
You are welcome on my lawn.
This sounds like a good move for government IT. Governments IT shops (especially unionized shops) suffer badly from the dead-sea effect. The more productive IT workers who keep their skills up will tend to stay for a few years ago go. The less productive are free to stay for 30 or 40 years because they can't be fired and have no potential of finding a job that pays as well. Over time the IT department becomes heavy with unproductive employees.
Medium-term employment provides a methd for the government IT organization to turn its staff over frequently enough to keep healthy.
Interesting post. Because he complains that government doesn't obey the same laws as the rest of us, you assume he's conservative. Huh. Or was there something else that tipped his hand? I gave up labeling people a while ago, so I've lost track -- do good liberals nowadays not favor government obeying the same laws as the rest of us?
Currently hooked on AMP
Depends on your definition of "IT". A lot of "IT" jobs with required programming skills (basically software developer jobs with a side of support) pay that much. Depends on what you're doing, in what industry, and in what part of the state, but given that a family health care plan in NY costs around $13,000, you're getting $6.00-6.50 an hour just on health care benefits. The people I know working these combined "IT/programming" jobs in NYC are often getting $100K in salary (off a B.S. and five years of work experience), which is another $50/hour right there. $45 is not at all unreasonable.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
-1 Reactionary: I'm pretty bleeding heart on most issues, but try as I might, I'm not seeing how the GPP indicated his political affiliation, or did anything other than point out a very mild form of hypocrisy (which I don't consider all that hypocritical, since the government is merely subjecting itself to private industry rules instead of the usual more generous government rules).
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Management: IT is expensive - we can save money by OUTsourcing.
5 years later...
Management: IT is expensive - we can save money by INsourcing. ...
5 years later, Go to line 1
Those of us who've been in IT for a while have seen this cycle through a few times. After much reflection, I conclude that there is no such thing as competent management.
Pretty much. I used to work for state IT. I'd cringe every time a pointy-hair brought in a contractor, knowing just how much tax money was going up in smoke for someone with no better skills than their permanent employees had -- and there was almost always a contractor doing something, so they could have FTEd that work if they could have got the paperwork through. there were a few of these contractors that actually made good money, but only through generous travel reimbursements. The rest were getting shafted compared to what their employers were charging.
Someone had to do it.
Although actually, I'm not clear on why you're so confident this is a move to "destroy state employee unions"? This wouldn't seem to displace any actual state employees. Rather, it makes a change so the contractors they now outsource (instead of actually hiring state employees who would be part of a union) would be substituted with temporary employees, paid half as much as the contractors were costing them.
Personally, I think contractors are generally "bad news" when it comes to government projects. They inflate costs and take advantage of the fact that their paychecks come from the taxpayers. (Once they "win a contract" to complete some project, they know they're getting paid for a while. They can slack off or just learn what they're doing on the job. If the project goes over budget or collapses completely, they just walk away at the end of the contract period, and let other people sort out the mess. Half the time, they even convince the right people that it wasn't their fault, and they get a second chance and more money to try again.)
When you're directly employed by the state, by contrast, your paycheck is subject to being cut off at any time, if you fail to live up to their expectations. Someone else is always happy to interview for the job opening to take your place, and the project as a whole goes on with or without you. If you're successful and save the govt. money or improve its efficiency, that stands to benefit you too. (They're not going to give a contractor a raise for doing a job well.)
Yea, like those socialist countries don't have some serious problems..... Socialism sucks
You know, in the 21st century, using supposedly negative terms like "socialist" are pretty tired. The USA is one of the most 'socialist' nation-states going. The USA spends more per-capita on health care than bogey-man "socialist" countries like Canada and spends billions (trillions?) buying banks, car manufacturers, you name it.
In the USA, the government sticks its nose into who can marry who, spends billions of your dollars saying what drugs people can use, asks me at age 43 for ID when I try to buy a bud lite, posts stupid useless warnings on foods & menus, has ridiculous zero-tolerance policies at schools, goes crazy if Janet Jackson's tit 'slips out'... (think of the children!) and on and on. You won't find many more socialist nanny-states in the world than the USA...
It's illegal in the private sector too. Microsoft got dinged for $100M for doing that. MTV / Viacom too iirc. It gave rise to the term "permalancer."
meep
They could replace those IT workers with trained monkeys and save a lot more money! Unfortunately, you usually get what you pay for.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
was working for NYS OMH (Office of Mental Health) as a programmer at one of the facilities. I worked there for 5 years before I was layed off in 1991. I saw more corruption and incompetence in those 5 years then the rest of my career. Completely turned me off from unions. No one there was ever fired even when caught red-handed. They were allowed to resign.
I wonder if the meeting went something like this.
Nerd Rock In Progress
Fun fact: everywhere has serious problems, nothing is perfect. Of course, if you don't pretend that an improvement must lead to perfection in order to be meaningful, you start to see where maybe our system could be better.
The important question isn't "does the alternative have problems?", much more useful to ask "would we rather have the set of problems belonging to the alternative, or the set of problems belonging to the status quo?"
Capitalism sucks too.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I do plenty of work with NY's state and local government offices. Usually dealing with the IT staff. (I'm not a contractor but consult on specific software products.)
The usual job of an "IT" person in government employ is to follow very specific, very carefully prepared documents with step-by-step instructions complete with screenshots. Should a task need to be performed that is not in a document or the steps are different in some way, they call up vendor/consultant support to lead them through the process. All IT tasks are performed this way. No troubleshooting, no independent research, and no process improvements are attempted. Any updates to software or procedures are done with vendors or consultants. These updates can drag into years. There is no way, either, to predict which updates will be delayed before starting the process.
The long-term contractors I have dealt with have been marginally better than internal support. If only because the state-employed IT workers I have dealt with can as often be victims of a lateral move from another department within the organization when their old job ceased to exist or some other action forced them from something like "scheduling coordinator" or "assistant photocopier maintenance" (both real, and funny, examples). Contractors will have actual IT training in some capacity besides that provided by the organization.
Basically, it takes more people to provide less support in the government offices I have dealt with. It costs more, too, because the actual support is provided by hidden outside vendors and service contracts. Since promotions are not based on technological metrics like successful projects or cost savings initiatives, I do not see this situation improving. With the organizations I deal with and have seen the finances (part of my job), the staff/contractor costs are dwarfed by outside support and consulting costs. In most private companies, the amounts are closer to parity.
With the above considered, I doubt state organization budgets will improve.
But they are simply saying that jobs that are currently filled with a contractor will be filled with full-time "at will" employees now. Contractors are already "at will", and the contracting firm is (in theory) paid a lot extra because they can rapidly add or subtract resources as needed. You pay extra for the flexibility. Flexibility which, in this case, the state doesn't need as much.
Now the state is saying "we have people that we know we'll need for 5 years or so. We can't hire them full-time under existing State terms because we cannot eliminate their positions when we don't need them any more, but it's terribly expensive to hire them for 5 years at about triple what they actually get paid." That $128/hr contractor MIGHT be getting paid $45 an hour with benefits. Their firm takes the rest."
Well, the trouble is...with so many govt. contracts...they ONLY seem to want to work through contracting houses.
If they would go back more to allowing contracting with individuals, preferably people that are self incorporated..then the rates could go down, they'd still have the flexibility they get with contractors, and the contractors would be able to make enough to pay their own benefits, as well as enjoy the many tax write offs and benefits that come with being an indie contractor.
My biggest gripe is that it is so tough to get a contract directly on any govt project...at best, you have to sub or even sub to a sub to get into the door. A bill rate of $150+, and you can get maybe $65/$70 of that if you know someone and/or know how to negotiate.
The problem isn't so much with contract help...but the fact that we've allowed the bastardization of the contract paradigm to where now the contract is only with a big contract house...which then supplies them with W2 employees, who themselves get the worst of both worlds...contract hours/job security, and less money and more regulation (like earning vacation hours? Gimme a fucking break).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Unless things are really different there, its pretty safe to assume that most of those employees arent making anything close to $128, having been in that area of employment I can assure you for most of the people doing the work, $55 will be a raise. Most contracting firms (yes there are some exceptions) these days are just a legal form of prostitution, the pimp gets the big money unfortunately they tend to have enough pull to block the independent contractor from most companies looking for help.
You drink Bud Lite? I think government intervention is in order...
Eventually, even the government will discover that labor is cheap in an economic downturn. They're smart to lock desperate people into cheap 5 year contracts right now.
What the [snip] does the 21st century have to do with anything?
Calm down, Anonymous Coward.
What I'm saying is this is the 21st Century - It isn't 1962 any more, and outdated black & white terms like "socialist" don't make sense in a 21st century context - Particularly from americans who now live in a nation-state that is, in many ways, more of a 'socialist' nation than many countries that they tar with the 'socialist' label. Take healthcare. Most people outside of the USA would consider the health care that's delivered in France to be superior to the American system. Yet the nonsensical term "socialism!" is stuck onto it and suddenly it's evil.
This sort of simplistic discussion isn't intelligent and it doesn't make sense in a modern context.
That's all good and fair and whatnot but the question is what actually happens in future. Why would they make permanent hires when they could go with temporary ones? One of the biggest reasons for subcontracting is because you can get rid of them easily, unlike employees whose many rights are a major pain in the ass for organisations. This goes double for government (local, national, whatever).
They're doing this to save money. The margin the contractor makes is just one opportunity for them to save money here, they'd be negligent if they did not at least consider the others too. Maybe they are going into this with the best of intentions, but inevitably what's going to happen is that in say 5 years time the ratio of contractor/temp workers to permanent staff will have increased.
I know. Slippery slope and all that.
But - what companies hire other than "at will" any more, and what argument is there to hire on a bunch of full-timers for projects or keep the current markup on temps?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Take healthcare. Most people outside of the USA would consider the health care that's delivered in France to be superior to the American system.
I'm curious, in what ways is the French system better than the American one?
Is it just cost, cost/quality of care, or some other factor?
I can't even see the State union getting upset about this, these employees will likely be Union members
I work for the NY State tax department's Office of Processing and Taxpayer Services. (When a NY resident pays their taxes, they pay us.)
Every year, we directly hire temporary phone staff for front-line taxpayer assistance -- jobs like "read over the scan of this guy's tax form and look for scanning errors" or "answer this phone call and read this scripted answer to them." These are jobs that could easily be filled by one of the local staffing agencies in Albany, but we hire them directly and, like you say, spend less to pay them more.
These "temporary" staff often have indefinite durations, and are a lot closer to "at-will ish" employment than truly "temporary." And every one of them is either a union member, or pays one of our two unions to represent them.
We can't hire them full-time under existing State terms because we cannot eliminate their positions when we don't need them any more
Hah! Sure the State can. Ever since the wall street bubble burst we've been in a hiring freeze, and state agencies are encouraged to downsize staff by offering the employee early retirement -- and eliminating their position.
Jesus I hate that ITIL stuff.
The managers where I work run around making sure they are up2date with it and processify everything. Where once upon a time if a problem arose you knew who to call, spend 5-10 minutes getting updates on personal lives and then sort out whatever problem was presented immediately after.
Now, primarily because of ITIL, the personal phone calls have stopped, problems go into a queueing system (ticketed - and the poor bastard on the Help desk had better have entered the ticket correctly) where it will eventually get sorted. Most cases not being classed as urgent because not everybody thinks it is, but it is always urgent to somebody. That person then resents 'the it department' because the incident took a day or two to be fixed.
There is more paperwork which means less actual work gets done. Management get to have their management meetings and have whole documents of incidents to show that their department did things by the book (but not actually solving anything because everybody was busy writing out documents and filling in forms).
This stuff is the reason why governments (and large organisations) have a bad rap.
*sigh* /rant
.
Because many government pension plans are heavily invested in the stock market. See for example CalPERS.
I know of this issue first hand being a IT contractor and working for the state. Where Im at they have approximately 125 IT contractors. So far they have laid off 15 IT contractors, are trying to convert 15 or so more to government service. Next in Oct all IT companies will have to bid through a Managed Service Provider. Basically an appointed IT contractor that all the agencies will go through to source contractors. I don't believe they plan on eliminating all contractors since I don't think they can do to the fact the most people would rather be a contractor than work for the state. Also a lot of the IT contractors are from overseas and cannot become state employees without a green card. Most of us are just taking a wait and see approach to what our future actually is with the state come Oct. Who knows how many contract slots will be available at that time.
For some people taking the state job is actually good deal. Some prefer the stability that the state has offered in the past. What I can add is the converted contractors will receive a tier 5 pensions not tier 4. The state legislature enacted the tier 5 pension in Jan 2010 in coincidence with the plan to convert the 500 contractors. Here are some of the reduced benefits that they will receive.
Require most public employees to work 10 full years before vesting in the system, rather than the current five, and limit the amount of overtime that can be used in the calculation of a final average salary to 15 percent of regular annual wages.
Raises the minimum full-benefit retirement age for members of the State and Local Retirement System to 62 years from the current 55.
Certain exemptions were granted to firefighters, teachers, and police officers.
They figure they will save $48 billion over 30 years.
Here is the full article. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/statehouse_oks_deal_to_fix_hyper_p72NcP2a2IegZcBJFKuf0J
offering the employee early retirement
Not precisely what I had in mind with the term "eliminating positions". I was thinking 2 weeks pay and don't let the door hit you in the ass, just like in the corporate world. If you're lucky.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I once knew a guy who was a contract worker for 11 years. Contract positions can last for quite some time. What I hope New York doesn't do is hire all of their 5-year plan employees and then realize 4 years down the road that they'll have to graduate that class of employee all at once. Or maybe I do; I'm quite conflicted.
In any case, it's yet another indication that IT workers are considered a replaceable, interchangeable cog in the machine. Unfortunately, when your replaceable cogs are essentially your entire infrastructure, you'll have a hard time trying to get the new class of cog to know what the old cog was doing. Add to that a fatalistic sense from the old cog guard, and you have a recipe for one hell of a breakdown when you least can afford it.
Best of luck, New York; you're gonna need it.
Ironically, it is the Greek public sector workers who are joining the protests because they are being forced to give up the traditional deal of having a modest public sector salary in return for a generous long-term state pension.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I'm curious, in what ways is the French system better than the American one? Is it just cost, cost/quality of care, or some other factor?
A high quality of care, delivered to everyone, at a per-capita cost of nearly half of what the US taxpayer spends:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/pvd/Primer.htm
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/08/11/frances_model_healthcare_system/
I assure you, the average contractor on a state job doesn't pull in $128/hour. His pimp...I mean contract agency...charges on average $128/hour for his services. The contractor gets only a piece of that.
Good point. The private and public sector do not play by the same set of rules. In other words, there's the Government, and then there's the rest of us. You know how it is. Power accretes and all that.
Life is not for the lazy.
Go ahead, hire them as independant contractors, or long term temporary employees,pick a "term".
Remember,the wages you pay reflect how much you are buying.
Are you paying "from the neck down"?
Or do do you want some "brainpower " to go with it?
You only get what you are paying for...
"Temporary state worker" status is the Plague.
In my third-world country (Greece) as well as in other states in Europe (e.g. Italy), the main trend since 20 years is to replace state workers in Universities, secondary schools, Municipalities and most other public sectors with the so-called fixed-term part-time workers. They are much cheaper, they get no additional or pension benefits and are as obedient as slaves because they are expendable - there are legions of them waiting in line eager to replace them.
Everybody accepted and still accepts to work under these terms, signing 19th century - style sweatshop contracts, with no real health or pension insurance and total insecurity, in the hope that someday (usually just before general elections), a law might pass allowing them to become permanent state workers.
Most of them actually are equally or more qualified than the respective permanent state co-workers - most have post-graduate degree and a significant percentage holds a PhD. Competition for these positions is so fierce that everybody strives for post-graduate studies.
However, the majority of them are living on 8-month or less contracts which are continually renewed, even when the recent (2004) state law strictly forbids them being employed in the same place for more than 24 months. There were even cases of people signing [b]daily[/b] contracts that started at 8am and finish at 4pm [b]every day[/b], 24/7/365.
The problem is so grave that in 1999 the EU issued the Council Directive 97/81/EC for the protection of part-time workers, which is still largely ignored by local governments who pass legislations that might seem legal but in reality severely distort the directive's intent. The Directive states that no-one in the public or the private sector should work under short-term contracts for more than 2 years when actually he is fulfilling a permanent and perpetual need of the employer.
It is estimated that at least 15-20% of the workforce in Greece (and to a lesser extent in Italy) lives on such contracts. They are fire-fighters, hospital nurses, ambulance drivers, school guards/guides, state building cleaners, administrative staff in public services, even teachers in state Universities, you name it. The "lowly" jobs are done usually via contractor firms, that borrow and lend the same people to the same institutions year after year.
For example, the cleaning ladies, guards, gardeners, receptionists in our University are the same 15-20 years now, just under a different contractor each year, the one placing the lowest bid. You can understand what that means for their salaries and benefits. Since this is ./, the majority of our central IT and computung facilities developer, helpdesk and support staff are also under (illegally) recurring short-term contracts (no contractor firms though - yet).
Most of these short-term workers managed to live a life and make a family (not me), even have kids and are really living on the thin edge of the wedge, making frequent public protests and asking for more permanent and fair terms of work. Personally, I "work" in a major state University under these terms since 1991, together with several hundreds of colleagues in the same situation. Currently, until new contracts appear in a few months, I'm living on 5 euros per day. Hope never dies.
The EU Directive attempted to prevent what I see coming to you in the US, that is, the exploitation of part-time workers. The state thinks that by bypassing the Big Contractor Firms they'll do their job much cheaper, and they're damn right.
I hope your labor Unions over there are well aware of the pending dangers of this within-county outsourcing of state jobs. In the worst case scenario, the public sector will collapse (as is the case here), because no-one will be really willing to commit to his state work duties like a permanent state worker does (who usually works under oath, at least in Greece). All our public sector suffers from the indifference of both permanent worker
if a private sector employer employed a "contrator" for 5 years in this way the IRS would could consider them an employee
"I'm going to Sweden soon, 'gonna be a dental floss tycoon.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
In what ways is France's healthcare better than the United State? Seriously?
Cost (11.2% of GDP or US$3,926 per capita) in France vs (15.2% of GDP or US$6,347 per capita) for the United States
And just about everything else:
Life Expectancy
Abortion Rate (irony!)
Deaths from Cancer
Heart Disease, Obesity
# of Physicians per 1000 people
Teenage Pregnancy
Any questions?
.
Basically, because it's impossible to fire people, companies almost never hire full-time employees, and this creates a two-track system where the well-connected enjoy cushy jobs for life, while the poor are shunted to shitty temp jobs. This is not a good thing.
Fundamentally, we need a labor force that adjusts as the economy changes, and so we need workers to switch companies and move around frequently. But I believe it's the responsibility of government to citizens cope with the instability this causes. The way around this is with a generous social safety net and universal health care, so that workers do not suddenly lose everything when they get laid off. In the Netherlands, this is combined with a serious job's retraining program and free university for all, and the end result is a higher median wage then the United States, some of the lowest unemployment in the world, and robust growth. Even without life-time employment, this sounds pretty good, no?
And the guy flew his airplane into the IRS because. "He cited a 1986 change in the tax code affecting software contractors like him as the source of his problems." There is a chance that this is illegal.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Your translating private industry to government. It is an apples to oranges comparison.
It is more like:
"After wasting lots of money on expensive private consultants that have friends in high places, that generally do a poor job for lots and lots of money, and after much public outcry..."
Political Government: IT is expensive - we should build talent and experience within government.
5 years later...
NEW Political Government: IT is expensive - the last government wasted your money, look how big government is! We must reduce the size of government, and put the jobs in the free market and let business do what it does best, Innovate! (queue up the juicy contractor and consultant pork)
Workers souls dies a little bit inside...
Repeat until the world burns.