A CP story talks about the high cost of benefits and the positives and negatives of contract work -- but to get the whole picture, you had to read yesterday's story too.

Some excerpts:

A pair of labour disputes at the CBC and phone operator Telus Corp. may not officially be about wages, but experts say they are still all about the mighty dollar as companies across Canada look to lower costs in an increasingly competitive business environment.

Expensive benefits such as pensions, extended health care and dental coverage that are often granted to full-time workers, not to mention payroll taxes and other overhead costs, can increase the cost to companies of a full-time job by as much as 50 per cent on top of an employee's salary, observers say.

Ken Thornicroft, a law and labour relations professor at the University of Victoria, said the savings can be substantial for a company even if a contract employee is paid the same wage for the work as a staff employee.

"When you add all of that it can easily be another 30, 40, 50 per cent of what I'm actually paying you in terms of a wage. So if I can cut that out that's huge advantage for me," he said. ...

CBC management says in many cases, contract employees are hired strictly for a specific program, event or project, and the CBC wants those contracts to better reflect the project's schedule.

But again, there's the nagging rumour that for certain shows like CBC's The National, everyone would be on contract. That show has been running in one form or another since the birth of television, so why does the CBC not want those people on staff? The National is not an experimental six-week show.

Here's where the story hints at control as an issue -- of not just costs, but personnel:

Companies also gain the advantage of being able to find a new contractor if they don't live up to expectations, something that may be easier to do than getting rid of an underperforming employee.

"It remains very difficult as a matter of law to terminate employees especially when you are talking about performance related issues," Thornicroft said.

"You can change contractors pretty much like you can change your socks if you want to do that. So you have a tremendous amount of flexibility and of course depending on how competitive the sub contract market is, you can often reduce your labour costs dramatically."

The story also mentions another holy grail of management: Weakening existing unions.

Mark Thompson, professor emeritus at UBC's Sauder School of Business, said a greater proportion of contract workers may also help a company weather future labour disputes, one of the reasons the unions are standing their ground in this round of contract talks.

"The more you contract out the easier it is to hold out. It is not only this strike, but the next strike and the one after that. So you give the company what they're looking for and you're condemning yourself to a weaker position in bargaining," Thompson said.