My partner has been a UX Research contractor in corporate for a well-known brick and mortar retailer for the last year and a half. We live in a HCOL area. She works well over 40 hours a week, but is forbidden from submitting timesheets reflecting that. She was told yesterday that she should not claim more than 32 hours of work during weeks where there is a holiday, and that she would not be paid for those holidays. She has no vacation time, and if we did not live in New York State, she would also not have sick time. She receives no retirement pay, and the health insurance she has access to does not actually cover her medical needs. Her rate of pay is closer to what she would expect to receive in the not-for-profit space. Her duties are exactly the same as those of her full-time employee colleagues, but she earns less than them. She's constantly afraid she's going to be let go, because she's seen this happen to several other contract workers while she's been there.
She has a PhD and experience, but has no energy left at the end of the week to apply for new jobs. She's also supporting both of us, because I was laid off from tech earlier in the year. Her employer keeps dangling the carrot of “You're doing so great, we really want to convert you to FTE” in front of her, but nothing ever comes of it. I'm tired of seeing her, frankly, crushing it, and seeing her employer crush her in response. I've seen this dynamic play out in previous workplaces I've been in, where contractors give _everything_ to their job and receive nothing in return. I told higher ups it was unfair then, and it's unfair now. Contract labor is a fucking trap.