He's been working as a temp senior lead QA tech for a company in the SF East Bay for 14 months now. No paid holidays, no sick days, no paid vacations.

Although benefits are dependent on the agency you work for, they range from meager at best (ie, co pay, paid holidays and a week of paid vacation for every 52 consecutive weeks where you average forty hours a week or more) to completely non-existent.  I worked for a number of temp agencies after graduating with my first degree, and with the exception of Volt (who offered the benefits I described above) most of them viewed their employees as serfs and were perfectly fine with the companies in question treating them like that too.

If he can't get FTE status, your husband might get treated a bit better if he switched to a contracting agency rather than a temporary one.  I'm not sure what the legal differences between the two titles are, but at the company I work for (in I.T.) contractors probably average $50.00 - $60.00 an hour while temps average, at best, $15.00 - $20.00 or so.