We didn't all come over on the same ship, but we're all in the same boat.

This is a quote by Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965), an American financier, stock market speculator, statesman and presidential adviser.

I belived it sums up very well the situation in my 'company', Visa. Regardless of whether you are permanent staff, contracted staff or outsourced staff, all of us works in the same building, floor and office. We will be praised/'screwed' by the same BIG boss if we did well/badly. What makes them (permanent staff) more superior than us, the contracted/outsourced staff?? Maybe because they can tell people that they work for VISA, unlike us. We can only say we work in Visa and not get into the complicated employment scenario of being a contracted staff, being seconded from a placement company to HP, and then sent to VISA to work on the project that HP bidded and won.

If one of us falls sick because of the air/water/whatever in the office, are they immune to it since they are 'permanent' staff?? So what makes them more eligible for the distribution of the Tamiflu than us?? Does it mean that VISA wouldn't mind a few of the contracted/outsourced staff to die of bird flu, but not their own staff?? Even if those staff are non-critical personnel, while the contracted/outsourced staffs manage all their IT services/servers?? What kind of logic is this?? It is not that I'm so hard-up for that few Tamiflu pills, which by the way has not be certified/verified to be able to prevent/cure bird flu, but it's the whole episode that ilks me. And pissed me off more is the attitude that some of the staff have towards us, the contracted/outsourced staff. What makes them think that they are in a safer position than us?? The company can still fire them immediately if it wants to, which did happen a couple of times in the past 2+ years I was in the company.

In this time and space, there is no such thing called "JOB SECURITY". It's a word that can be and should be banished, being a footnote to human employment history.