Having worked in management in a large company, I have a little perspective from the other side:
Yes, there are laws that prevent you from employing a temp for an extended period of time. It's somewhere around a year; I forget exactly, but it's a law that attempts to protect temps from indefinite temp status. It's supposed to compel the company to hire that temp if they really want them.
There are also laws that prevent you from hiring a temp back within some period of time, so the company doesn't just skirt the issue by firing-then-hiring the temp with a one week break in the middle.
The reason a good temp isn't hired has nothing to do with benefits. Benefits aren't really that expensive relative to a knowledge worker salary.
The reason is because FT headcount is one kind of expense and contractors are another. The budget for FT head is very difficult to drop (it's called layoffs) and actually grows every year because of raises. Contractors are part of slosh money (e.g., "program spend").
So departments are told: "You can have a head budget of $XX and a program budget of $YY." The implicit understanding is that $XX will hold or grow across budget planning (i.e., "We won't make you drop your head budget unless we're actually doing layoffs or moving teams out of your department") and that the $YY can fluctuate.
Departments can generally spend the $YY any way they see fit, and often times, they need workers, so... temps. And if the company is financially stable (which I assume Amazon is), $YY doesn't drop that much so you end up with a long time with enough $YY to keep temps on for a long time, but there isn't enough faith in needing the department at that larger size to increase $XX enough.
I've also seen a lot of temps hang around for a year then get let go because there were just mediocre. Good enough to be productive, not bad enough to go recruiting again, and definitely not good enough to go use a bullet on fighting for increasing $XX. I'm not saying the OP is that case, but I'm sure we've all seen the mediocre temp (or FT) worker hang on.
EDIT: I should add that I'm not at a large company any more. Co-founded a second startup. Woohoo!
Yes, there are laws that prevent you from employing a temp for an extended period of time. It's somewhere around a year; I forget exactly, but it's a law that attempts to protect temps from indefinite temp status. It's supposed to compel the company to hire that temp if they really want them.
There are also laws that prevent you from hiring a temp back within some period of time, so the company doesn't just skirt the issue by firing-then-hiring the temp with a one week break in the middle.
The reason a good temp isn't hired has nothing to do with benefits. Benefits aren't really that expensive relative to a knowledge worker salary.
The reason is because FT headcount is one kind of expense and contractors are another. The budget for FT head is very difficult to drop (it's called layoffs) and actually grows every year because of raises. Contractors are part of slosh money (e.g., "program spend").
So departments are told: "You can have a head budget of $XX and a program budget of $YY." The implicit understanding is that $XX will hold or grow across budget planning (i.e., "We won't make you drop your head budget unless we're actually doing layoffs or moving teams out of your department") and that the $YY can fluctuate.
Departments can generally spend the $YY any way they see fit, and often times, they need workers, so... temps. And if the company is financially stable (which I assume Amazon is), $YY doesn't drop that much so you end up with a long time with enough $YY to keep temps on for a long time, but there isn't enough faith in needing the department at that larger size to increase $XX enough.
I've also seen a lot of temps hang around for a year then get let go because there were just mediocre. Good enough to be productive, not bad enough to go recruiting again, and definitely not good enough to go use a bullet on fighting for increasing $XX. I'm not saying the OP is that case, but I'm sure we've all seen the mediocre temp (or FT) worker hang on.
EDIT: I should add that I'm not at a large company any more. Co-founded a second startup. Woohoo!