What is the Future of Contracting and Temporary Personnel Services?
The data indicate that independent contractors represent almost seven percent of the workforce and are being used with increasing frequency. The trend “$#133; represents a structural change in how business is done. It’s not just a cyclical change.”5 One aspect of this trend is to hire the independent contractor simply to do the work that was previously done by a “regular” employee, an activity which recently brought Microsoft Corporation to the headlines. This corporation has used “independent contractors” to hold jobs like software tester and proofreader. However, a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ordered Microsoft to pay employee benefits to hundreds of these so called “independent contractors” because these people were treated as regular employees and not as independent contractors. In essence, this federal appeals court set a precedent, perhaps a warning, to company leaders that it may not be acceptable to adopt hiring procedures wh
