OCSEA recently uncovered a pattern familiar to public workers in the IT field: the increased use—some would say abuse—of temporary IT workers in state government. In addition to the widespread use of overpriced IT contractors on large-scale IT projects, the state also “augments” their normal IT operations with high paid “temporary” employees. Some of these “temporary” employees have been working for the state for decades.
According to OCSEA’s own research, “staff augmentation” in the IT field has more than doubled since 2012, while the payroll for permanent IT bargaining unit employees has decreased by more than 30 percent.
OCSEA member James Benedict, a steward and Infrastructure Specialist in JFS, was recently interviewed for a Dispatch story about the increased use of temporary employees in IT under Governor Kasich.
“They are definitely costing more than a state worker would, and they are not doing anything different than a state worker,” Benedict said. “There’s no reason for them to be contracting that work. We’ve made that point to management many times, and it’s fallen on deaf ears.”
DAS spokesman Tom Hoyt claims in the story that the administration is simply making an investment in IT infrastructure that is past due. But as Benedict points out, DAS is jumping over dollars to pick up pennies, by using temp employees who get paid anywhere from $100 to $200 per hour, instead of hiring full-time permanent staff at a fraction of that cost.
Read the whole news article HERE.
IT Contracting and Bargaining Unit Comparison
Related: State Auditor Yost investigating IT contractor abuse