Legal Question in Employment Law in Illinois

The company I work for has a program under which people (management personnel, all exempt .. no union folks) are "temporarily" assigned to corporate level projects, temporary being from 6 months to two years. The assignments in this program are made supposedly to cross-train people and build skills. Hence the assignments are always to a level above your current job positions. For example, a senior business analyst could be assigned as a business manager. So far so good. But this is what worries me as to if something unethical or illegal is going on. First, they claim this is a temporary assignment. Hence the person given the new responsibilties / work is not given an increase in pay matching to the level of work they are doing (it's temporary). Next, the persons are left in the books in their old positions. They may be part of project "X" and working at location "Y", but the company still records them as reporting to business area "A" and location "B" (again as they claim this is all temporary). The old area of the company even continues to pay their salary despite being part of this corporate level project (so their costs aren't capitalized, but instead expensed). Lastly, they will then move in people behind this person on temporary assignment to backfill for their old work, using the same logic. A Business Analyst fills the Senior Analyst role, an Associate Analyst fills the Business Analyst role (all with no pay changes). And lastly, they will claim the Associate Analyst spot is no open, so they hire someone in at that low pay level.

This all fails to pass the smell test in my book. But given this is Illinois, I wouldn't be surprised if this is all perfectly legal. And that's my question. Can a program like this be legal? Or are they doing something wrong? I mean they have two org charts ... one with the positions as listed in the computer and one they maintain off to the side showing all the moved folks. It's like two sets of books to me.

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