A319
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 257; Flight Crew Total 17540; Flight Crew Type 10800
Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Training / Qualification
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy; Staffing; Procedure
This pushback was an utter disaster due to the outsourcing of the entire station.  There were multiple trainees all over the ramp with it seemed; only one instructor.  I mistakenly had my interphone button 'out' as I had pressed it twice.  The verbiage coming back to the Captain was absolutely none of what Company X mandates.  No; 'set brakes' or anything similar.  The engine start command from the tug driver was 'cleared to fire up number two!;' and it went downhill from there.  He didn't even know we did not start #2 first. From our vantage point; the station was obviously trying to get way too many people certified at once.  The instructor's span of control was lost during the entire operation.  The all clear symbol with the arms down at 45 degrees was given to us with the tug not even disconnected and numerous people still below the airplane watching the disconnect operation.  It appeared there was NO supervision on the interphone due to the deplorable non SOP commands that were coming to the aircraft.  Our Air Carrier has totally given up SOP mandates it appears with some of these stations and their lack of SOP mandatory compliance.  In this particular instance; there were far too many students for one instructor.  This probably was as close as a crew could be to having an incident as a crew could have without having one on pushback.  It is quite obvious whoever in the Company that is responsible for handing over a station to contractors has dropped the ball in their oversight and SOP compliance for that station.  I would say that office within [our] air carrier needs complete restructuring itself after seeing far too much of this.
First Officer reported that during pushback ground personnel used nonstandard commands and phraseology. The reporter felt this issue was due primarily to the use of outsourced ground staff.