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Comment by NDizzle | Hacker News Reader

Are you implying that companies outsource all of the janitorial duties now? I'm in Arkansas, so crack all the jokes you want, but the big places that produce a lot of food (McKee comes to mind - Little Debbie) staff their own positions.

https://mckee.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/mckee/jobs

So, in other words, yeah, you could be a janitor and potentially propose a new Little Debbie snack right now. That particular dream is still alive!

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Yep - many, if not most, factories staff these positions themselves. It fits in with their existing maintenance, assembly, cleaning, warehouse type roles.

It's mainly white collar places that don't know how, or don't want to, hire anyone who does blue collar work.

Part of the reason white collar firms outsource is that benefits usually need to be uniform across all employees. If you are a white collar firm with generous benefit packages, it becomes comparatively expensive to hire blue collar workers yourself compared to outsourcing. Decent health insurance (~$20K/year) is more than the federal minimum wage ($14.5K/year). I'm not suggesting this is moral, but it is reality. At a factory, with many workers at similar pay levels, this won't be as much of an expense.

Unfortunately, a second reason you see outsourcing are job functions where many of the workers in a geographic area are undocumented. Companies can't hire undocumented workers directly, but will allow a middleman to do so on their behalf.

That's not true. You can offer better packages for your higher paid employees.

Outsourcing blue collar labor has to do with offering any benefits at all. Once your company has 50 employees or more, you must offer at least a bare minimum health insurance plan to all full time employees.

Outsourcing is cheaper, because you can deal with small companies that are more focused on taking advantage of employees by doing things like making sure no one works more than 30 hours a week.

> You can offer better packages for your higher paid employees.

Wouldn’t the company lose the tax benefits if they fail non discrimination testing because the highly compensated employees (HCEs) received disproportionate benefits?

Only if the factors you are descriminating with are considered protected. The ACA is still being implemented in this regard, so pay level or executive level may or may not become "protected" but as of now, I don't think it is.

SF's recently-passed 'overpaid executive tax' [1] pushes companies further in this direction.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/san-francisco...

I see like the private jet and limo service, that is uniform across all employees and the CEO

I work in a place with one third white collar and two thirds blue collar workers. We have our own 'Facilities' folks that do all kinds of things. We hire a cleaning crew to come in after-hours and handle the janitorial part. Just sayin.

That particular dream, but parent is pointing to a bigger trend, of course. This is a snapshot of the death of upward mobility, the American promise and all that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi...

I work for a decent sized company in AR as well. Janitorial and Security are both outsourced. I always assumed for both cost and liability.

There are not too many companies where you can start at the bottom and work your way up to the top. Very unlikely in 2021.

There are tons of companies where you start at the bottom, work your way into a basic management role and then after a few years of that start your own company.

You go from janitor to floor polisher to supervisor to manager to slightly more important manager to "I'm starting my own company".

Not all companies, obviously, but the proportion of staff outsourcing has grown in the past few decades.

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