Permatemp is a U.S. term for a

temporary employee Temporary work or temporary employment (also called gigs) refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes ...

who works for an extended period for a single staffing client. The word is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordspermanent'' 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 Full-time or Full Time may refer to: * Full-time job, employment in which a person works a minimum number of hours defined as such by their employer * Full-time mother, a woman whose work is running or managing her family's home * Full-time fa ...

for year after year, often with less pay and without any benefits. These employees often do the same work as permanent employees, but without the same pay, benefits, and

labor rights Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights infl ...

. The second kind of permatemp is an employee of a staffing service provider, payroll agency or Professional Employer Organization, 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. In the United States these agencies are required by the US

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory t ...

(IRS) to pay the employer portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes (FICA) and Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) in accordance with IRS Publication 15A. U.S. leasing organizations are also required to provide employees with health coverage by the

United States Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploy ...

, the requirements of the health care offered will change in 2014 to comply with the Affordable Care Act (

ObamaCare The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and colloquially known as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by Pres ...

). Long-term full-time leased employees in the U.S. may also be offered a retirement benefit package with a minimum (leasing) company contribution of at least 10%, IRS Form7003.

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 part or season of the year. 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 labor Day labor (or day labour in Commonwealth spelling) 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 (also ...

to high-priced

consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

. 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. "Permatemps" are often distinguished from temporary employees by working for the same company for a long, possibly indefinite amount of time, working the same schedules and hours of regular employees, and by requirements such as "company" training or required attendance at "company" meetings. This is where many Leasing Agencies in the U.S. run afoul of the IRS and US Department of Labor. The IRS, in an effort to close loop holes which allow companies to hire temporary employees and thus avoid federal employee taxes have created a very clear definition of a "Common Law Employee" versus a "permatemp". The IRS definition of a common law employee rests on who actually controls the work done by the leased employee. IRS Publication 15A explains "Under Common Law Rules anyone who performs services for you is generally your employee if you have the right to control what will be done and how it will be done...What matters is you have the right to control the details of how the services are performed". IRS 15A also defines the role of staffing services with "The staffing service has the right to control and direct the worker's services for the client, including the right to discharge or reassign the worker. The Staffing Service hires the workers, provides them with unemployment insurance and other benefits, and is the employer for employment tax purposes." Further clarification for U.S. employees can be found in IRS Publication 15A Section 2. Misclassification of employees can lead to severe tax liabilities (IRS PUB 15 Circular E) and civil penalties as in the case of Vizcaino v Microsoft. Furthermore, if a "permatemp" actually qualifies as a common law employee, they are entitled to the same fringe benefits their co-workers receive either after one year or after the qualification standard set for regular employees, IRS Publication 15B. IRS Publication 7003 goes so far as to say "An individual who is actually a common law employee of the recipient (the worksite company) will not become an employee of another entity merely because the recipient enters into a formal "leasing agreement' with another entity." Regular, permanent employees work for a single

employer Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any o ...

and are paid directly by that employer. In addition to their

wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', '' prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remune ...

s, they may receive benefits, such as subsidized

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health pr ...

, paid vacations, holidays, sick time, or contributions to a

retirement plan A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...

. 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 A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing (reducing the ...

s, or formal discipline procedures. They may be eligible to join a union, and may enjoy both social and financial benefits of their employment. 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.

Legal issues in the United States

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 Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

and

King County, Washington King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the ...

. 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 Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) provides firefighting services as well as technical rescue services, hazardous materials response services and emergency medical response services for the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County ...

; the second such case concerns the employment practices of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. These cases are both

class action A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

lawsuits that have been litigated over a number of years. Both cases are near, or in the process of, being settled. In an

Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding i ...

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...

, 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 is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...

technology companies. Permatemping came into vogue simultaneously with the

economic bubble An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be c ...

of the 1990s. Most recently,

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

and its subsidiary,

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The orac ...

, 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, Inc. (formerly Russell Kelly Office Service and Kelly Girl Service, Inc.) is an American office staffing company that operates globally. The company places employees at all levels in various sectors including financial services, ...

. One legal issue and one tax issue, both having to do with permatemps at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

, defined permatemping and also changed it.

''Vizcaino v. Microsoft''

In 1996, a

lawsuit was brought against Microsoft representing thousands of current and former employees that had been classified as temporary and

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. 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 In the United States, an employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) is a means by which employees of a corporation can purchase the corporation's capital stock, often at a discount. Employees contribute to the plan through payroll deductions, which b ...

. 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 Microsoft case centered on the language found in Microsoft's Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). In that plan, Microsoft defined plan participants (those eligible to participate in the plan) as all "common law employees" on the company's payroll. The only employees specifically excluded under the language of the ESPP were employees who worked less than five months per year or less than half-time. In reference to the independent contractors, the court held that because Microsoft conceded they were common-law employees and not independent contractors, Microsoft had no legitimate basis for rejecting their benefit claims. With regard to the individuals provided by temporary staffing agencies, the court used the following five factor test in determining whether they were truly "common law employees" and therefore eligible to participate in the plan: *Recruitment *Training *Duration of employment *Right to assign additional work *Control over the relationship between worker and agency Employees are not entitled to benefits unless they are "eligible" employees under a plan, regardless of whether they meet the common-law test for "employee" status. In other words, a plan need not adopt or incorporate the common law definition of an employee in delineating the scope of its coverage. Employers are free to draft employee benefit plans that leave out certain groups of workers. For example, a plan can exclude contingent workers or workers hired through a third party agency. It can also exclude workers who do not elect to participate in the plan. The case and subsequent appeals were heard in the

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...

. 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

issued a ruling that Microsoft owed millions of dollars in payroll taxes. The IRS determined that permatemp employees were

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omniprese ...

employees of Microsoft and the staffing firm's role was simply that of payroll processor.

Legal changes

As a result of the legal and tax rulings,

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms includ ...

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 Unemployment benefits, also called unemployment insurance, unemployment payment, unemployment compensation, or simply unemployment, are payments made by authorized bodies to unemployed people. In the United States, benefits are funded by a comp ...

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.

Job stability

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 Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refere ...

, 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 is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...

firms in other countries.

Culture

In Microsoft's corporate culture, the presence of permatemps created a

caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultur ...

-like system. 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,

cubicle A cubicle is a partially enclosed office workspace that is separated from neighboring workspaces by partitions that are usually tall. Its purpose is to isolate office workers and managers from the sights and noises of an open workspace so that ...

s 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 Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

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 Elitism is the belief or notion that individuals who form an elite—a select group of people perceived as having an intrinsic quality, high intellect, wealth, power, notability, special skills, or experience—are more likely to be construc ...

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) and Microsoft employees were referred to as "Blue Badges".http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19971216&slug=2578427 ''

The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington ...

'' "On Microsoft's Redmond campus, the distinctions between various classes of workers are clear, and part of the company lexicon. Permanent staffers are called "Blue Badges," the color of their magnetic passes. Temporaries hired from employment agencies are known as "A-dashes," the preface on their e-mail addresses...." 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

minimum for overtime exemption, they may be asked to put in similar

overtime Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways: *by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...

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 Day New Year's Day is a festival observed in most of the world on 1 January, the first day of the year in the modern Gregorian calendar. 1 January is also New Year's Day on the Julian calendar, but this is not the same day as the Gregorian one. Whi ...

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...

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.

References

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

CNet News ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

. October 21, 2005
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion dated May 12, 1999
by Tech Law Journal. {{Labour Hire Temporary employment Microsoft criticisms and controversies