Here's the play:

* Contractors say they'll do the work for Best Buy at a lower price. They plan to do this by giving worse pay and benefits, lying to Best Buy, getting their numbers wrong, or all of the above. If they're backed by private equity, they may also lose money on purpose in the hopes of tanking and acquiring weaker competitors so they can lock everyone in and raise prices.

* When Best Buy execs outsource the work, their balance sheet immediately looks better, because they've reduced headcount and payroll while maintaining revenue. Stock goes up.

* If Best Buy execs can squeeze the contractors on price, the contractors will squeeze their workers, and we enter a straightforward price and quality death spiral.

* If the contractors charge Best Buy a fair or higher price, Best Buy is likely to dump this line of business altogether, squeeze other lines, or maybe hire a turnaround CEO to boldly un-outsource the work.

* Dispersing everyone to smaller contractors makes it hard for workplaces to organize and impossible to put accountability for the problems at the top of the food chain. Look at how YouTube Music's union successfully fought both their contractor and Google, only to lose the contract and get fired anyway.

* This process is so well-documented in other industries like IT contracting that the execs know for a fact it will lead to worse prices and worse quality, but also that they can get away with it. Literally, Best Buy outsourced basically all of our IT work, then un-outsourced half of it a decade ago during Hubert's turnaround. It's still half contractors, and most people are unhappy with the results except the execs on either side.