The cost to the taxpayer of all the contract workers is double that of civil servants, not because contract workers are paid better–they often have to put up with low wages and poor conditions–but because the contractors’ fees, overheads and profit margins, and the ratio of the number of contract workers to the number of civil servants is sometimes as high as four, revealing how bloated and inefficient the outsourcing process can become.64 A recent study shows that the ‘federal government approves service contract billing rates–deemed fair and reasonable–that pay contractors 1.83 times more
...more
