Microsoft wasn’t offering unrestricted perks to contractors, they were treating them like second class employees, paying them less, not giving them benefits or allowing time off, dictating additional rules, excluding them, and avoiding existing labor, discrimination, and tax laws — exactly the same thing they (and every other big corporation) are still doing now — with a codified fiction in place that didn’t exist previously.

Microsoft didn’t lose the lawsuit, they won a settlement — and their lawyers and lobbyists made sure it would never happen again.

Most corporations have preferred vendors and the 50% plus savings in salary and benefits has a large kickback that finds its way back to the employer.

The real issue that was skirted around in the lawsuit was that Microsoft actually owned the vendors that supplied them with contractors.