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There are limits of what they are allowed to provide to contractors before the Department of Labor says, “I don’t care if you call them contractors, you’re treating them like employees so you need to give them all the same benefits”. Companies using contractors are doing so specifically so they don’t have to provide those benefits, so they need to be very careful not to cross that line.

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That's a good point.

I wasn't trying to say they should have offered these benefits to everyone, but sometimes it seemed like the contractors were just ghosts. It would have been nice to at least have these activities mentioned somewhere so you had some idea of what was going on (and if contractors were or weren't included).

Sometimes the full-time employees would all get up to go do something and you had no idea what was going on (and if you should go with them or stay back).

Yes, you've described exactly why this is a bad practice.

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