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You absolutely can, and you wouldn't be the first, either. Check out WashTech (represents technical workers in Washington State) and Alliance@IBM (represents IBM employees) for some examples and inspiration.

IBM has been massively quiet on lay-offs for many years. It's just their style. It's bad for PR when it is that visible, let alone that it demoralizes the staff. IBM, through unofficial sources, has created ~70,000 jobs off seas while axeing a comparable amount (50,000) here in America. And that's before this latest round that we see today. The tracker is at http://www.techsunite.org/offshore/

They probably don't need to offshore this work, not while our fine Congress, representing the best interests of Big Business, are trying to double the H1-B visa limit for this year and subsequent years with an automatic 20% escalator clause. See "New Senate Bill Raises H-1B Caps, Sponsor Has Strong Ties to Indian Lobby" at http://techsunite.org/news/display.cfm?ID_Content= 5054

The actual regulation says that the H1B worker must be paid at least 95% of the prevailing wage. The company can provide any prevailing wage information....even their own data.

If you think H-1B visa workers being underpaid is an urban legend, peruse the LCA database at your leisure. Look at some of the huge Indian bodyshops (they are the worst offenders at misusing US visa regulations), and decide for yourself if they are underpaying their workers ($38K for a programmer?)

The reason the cap was hit by the first day is these bodyshop hoarde the visas, which flaunts the spirit of the visa regulations. The idea behind the H1B visas were to give employers access to specialized workers, not to allow foreign companies the ability to import their own workers while putting our domestic technical workers out to pasture.

Oh yeah, some Congressmen are trying to attach legislation to the Omnibus spending bill that would effectively double the H1B visa cap. Read more about that at Techsunite

The workers at EA should talk to the people at "Washtech / TechsUnite, and consider organizing themselves into a union.

Other IT organizations have also been lobbying this for awhile.

I sat with other Washtech members and tried to beat it in Jay Insley's head (democrat from Boeing, err Everet) that outsourcing was an area of concern, as well as H-1 and L-1 visas.

He tried to tell us that India would buy enough Boeing airplanes (he's head of some India Caucus or something other) and that H-1 visas were needed to help get unique talent like 7' tall Chinese basketball players.

After an hour of listening to us, something must have sunk in, because on NPR he did say he was pushing for a study.

Not the only congresscritter we lobbied, but one I personally shock the hand of.

But whichever effort finally broke the camel's back, I'm glad. Now if enough geeks get busy calling their reps and putting pressure, the study might come to something.

Otherwise, it's just a study. For those of us that already know that the job market is different,a study won't do much but let us know we're not the only ones in this mess. Myself, I now have a higher skilled admin job than I had before, but at less pay. Myself, I don't mind the competition as long as they would get paid as well as I do. Hard to compete with people paid less than half I do.

This is your life. Take the Tech Worker Challenge.

The CWA is also trying to organize IT workers. The Techs Unite mailing list is very busy. They also have regular meetings that local IT workers go to in various cities.

I'm quite happy with this happening. I think the most important thing is that it be recognized that IT work is skilled, professional work, that both the CWA and the companies understand this. Some unions have handled this well like SAG, the actors union - I would say Robert DeNiro is highly skilled, although in a different manner than myself. I would not mind CWA rules that I have to be paid overtime after 40 hours, or be paid to be oncall and so forth however. A union would raise wages (as unions always do), lower overwork (overtime would be paid), lower unemployment (less overworked people means more jobs) and be a very good thing.

As a member of Washtech- I need to point out that the CWA movement is called TechsUnite.
If you don't like unions, there's always the Guild
But as I posted in the other thread- at the rate things are going, unionization won't save us. It's the race for the bottom of globalization and nobody is safe.
This year- be happy with a starting wage of minimum wage- many of your brethern have experience 17-26 months of unemployment in the last three years
Next year- be happy with $.24/hr (yes, that's 24 cents per hour), the de facto minimum wage of China
The year after that you'd better be happy with a house, a pound of food rations a day, and massa giving you a single suit a year- because that's what the slaves in the Sudan get
Welcome to the REAL effect of the perfect storm of a labor surplus combined with worldwide sourcing- deflation of the cost of labor until the only country getting the jobs is the one that still has slavery

www.techsunite.org

See Techs Unite.

Technology Workers need to take a serious look at Unionizing.

As much as a perons's ego wants to deny it, only standing together can we stop our jobs from being lost to slave labour.

I think IT workers have to take anything that a trade association of 3000 companies says with a grain of salt. "We want more trained workers, trained at their, or someone else's, expense" is a constant, never changing mantra of these associations. There is ALWAYS a shortage of trained people in their eyes, there are ALWAYS a huge amount of high skilled jobs that are going unfilled (unfilled at the wages THEY want to offer). The ITAA was apoplectic in the late 1990s about the shortage of trained people there were for careers that would be around forever. And this is the line they continued to play for the past few years, saying people need to come in on H1-B visas with skills Americans don't have and so forth. Meanwhile, I know people here on H1-B visas who told me they never touched a computer before they stepped foot in the US.

So take all of this with a grain of salt. I would trust information from other IT people then some of the doo-doo that comes out of the AEA and ITAA. Check out Washtech.org or TechsUnite. If anything, they help IT workers communicate with one another about various things.

from India. They see the backlash and are trying to preempt any action by confusing the debate. The reality is 2 million high paying, highly skilled jobs have gone to countries that don't respect human rights, treat people like cattle, women are treated like property and are killed by their husbands if they don't have enough of a dowry. Is this the world that we all want to live in? Yes, America has its problems, and is not blemish free. But compared to all other countries in the world, its paradise.

Companies that outsource to India are anti-American and are a cancer to the US. Its time to put theses guys out of business by boycotting companies that outsource our jobs overseas. Also, we need to vote out of office the bastards that supported NAFTA. Here's a short list of companies we should start boycotting: (add your own if you feel a company is deserving of this treatment)

Walmart (these guys have done the most to destroy America)
AT&T
Electrolux
American Express
GE

Also, pressure should be applied to the government and to the SEC to force companies to disclose how much outsourcing they are doing in their public filings. Companies should realize that outsourcing is not pain free.

Techs that want to do something should visit: http://www.techsunite.org

AT&T Wireless Blocks Employees' Access to News Stories About Offshoring
By D. David Beckman
WashTech News

AT&T Wireless is now tracking all Internet browsing by its employees, at one point last week even blocking access to online media stories that were perceived by company officials as critical of its offshoring activities.

Employees reported last Thursday that when they attempted to read online news reports about AT&T Wireless offshoring activities on The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Web sites, a blocking alert appeared on their Web browsers warning them that access to those stories was blocked.

"Warning Notice," the alert reads. "You have attempted to access a site that has been deemed inappropriate by our business and blocked from ALL internal access. A record of this request has been logged and will be provided to Business Security upon request."

Below the message, in capital letters, a line reads, "PLEASE REFRAIN FROM ANY FURTHUR ATTEMPTS!"

Company employees who spoke to WashTech News on the condition that they would not be identified said that currently navigating from their work computer to any Internet site that carries news reports critical of AT&T Wireless produces a similar alert, but the sites are now accessible.

"It really makes you feel like Big Brother is watching," said one employee. "It's intimidating."

Last Wednesday (Nov. 19) WashTech News and the Wall Street Journal published stories detailing how AT&T Wireless is reducing its domestic IT workforce, and forcing many current employees to train their foreign replacements. Internal company documents obtained by WashTech News show that the replacements are employees of Indian offshore outsourcing firms such as Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro, Ltd.

The following day (Nov. 20), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times newspapers published similar stories.

Redmond-based AT&T Wireless is the third-largest mobile phone company in the United States, and employs about 30,000 workers, approximately 3,900 of whom work in IT. Most of the IT employees are based in Redmond and Bothell, Wash., and in Allen, Texas.

Internal documents obtained by WashTech News show that as many as 70 percent of the company's IT workers will lose their jobs, many of which are being sent to India. Several AT&T Wireless IT workers claim that many who are slated to be laid off are being forced to train their Indian replacements.

"It's not like the company is not doing well financially," said an employee. "It is doing quite well. This [offshoring] is motivated by pure greed."

http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/031020_md .c fm

October 20, 2003

MD State Lawmaker to Fight Export of Jobs
By Mark Gruenberg
Press Associates Union News Service

----------------
'We have to play up the insanity of sending jobs overseas at a time when we have high unemployment in our own country.'

-- Paul Almeida, President, AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees
----------------

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (PAI) -- Pauline Menes wants to stop export of white-collar jobs from Maryland before an exodus starts.

And the way to do so, the state delegate believes, is to put the weight of the state government behind the Free State's white-collar workers.

Menes, a Democrat from College Park, met Oct. 15 in its city hall with unionists concerned about the issue, to discuss strategy for and details of legislation on the issue that she will introduce in the state capital of Annapolis next year.

Her legislation, like measures in other states, would ban state agencies and contractors from exporting white-collar jobs -- computer techs, data processing, engineering and the like -- to other countries. Those exports deprive U.S. workers of jobs.

Though Maryland has yet to experience such an exodus of white-collar government jobs, other states had such migration. And the departure of private white-collar jobs is worse.

Public pressure in New Jersey, for example, forced the state to bring nine white-collar jobs that a contractor had outsourced to India -- handling a "help line" for welfare recipients -- back to Camden, an area of high unemployment.

But in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush (R) let some similar welfare-related jobs go overseas via a state contractor.

Studies estimate that at least 3.3 million private-sector white collar jobs will be exported in the next decade to nations such as Russia, China and India. There, workers with similar skills would perform them -- at much lower cost -- for firms such as Microsoft, IBM, the Bank of America and Hewlett-Packard.

Meanwhile, high-tech workers here at home would be jobless -- and the vaunted "information economy" which was supposed to make up for blue-collar job losses would not do so.

Menes admits her bill would affect few state government jobs, but it would have more impact on state contractors. And its real impact is as a signal to Maryland's high-tech companies. "It's a way to influence them," she points out.

"We have to take people to Annapolis who know the problem and get them to talk to the (legislative) committees about it" at next year's hearings, she said. "That way they would understand its importance to you and to the rest of the labor movement."

That may be easier said than done. "White collar workers have traditionally not been very good at advocating for themselves," said Paul Almeida, President of the AFL-CIO Department of Professional Employees, who attended the meeting. "If the public was aware and raised its voice, this would stop." That happened in New Jersey, he noted.

Other participants included top DPE official Mike Gildea, and Mike Blain of WashTech -- a Seattle-based Communications Workers local that has led the fight on the issue.

They agreed a state-by-state strategy is the best way to get federal attention to the white-collar job exodus. Some federal lawmakers are already paying attention. The House Small Business Committee held its second hearing on the issue on Oct. 20.

And the Justice Department is investigating a case where a California-based manufacturer of Palm Pilot-type devices sent its techs over to India to train workers, promised the techs their jobs would not be dumped after they came back, and then reneged.

Menes introduced legislation last year to ban export of state-funded white collar jobs, but did not mobilize support for battling the job exports, except for a letter from officials in one d

I mean we let people from all over come here and work. Ummmmm, except we don't.

Um, YES we do!

The H-1 and L-1 Visa programs were invented specifically for this reason. In the US, we have no standard like those I've read about in Australia and elsewhere. Well, we have some regulations, but recently they've gone completely unenforced. If a company in this country can hire someone from overseas to do a job for which they're currently paying an American worker, and pay that worker half or less what the American makes, the company is under no pressure not to hire the foreign worker. It's happening for real. In the REAL world.

http://www.rescueamericanjobs.org/
http://www.local6.com/money/2381343/detail.html
http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/LosingYou rJ ob.htm
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2003/L1_bill_7- 10-03.htm

Further, US jobs now are being sent TO other countries. By some estimates, 2 million plus jobs in the next few years. Than't a HUGE chunk of the IT sector.

http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/backlash.html (accoring to this article, the number is like 10% of IT jobs)
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=14700325
http://www.msnbc.com/news/947478.asp?cp1=1
http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/030722_ibm. cfm
http://comment.cio.com/comments/13404.html

The reason this is a story here, is because a good number of us work in the IT sector. This has HUGE implications for us.

Consider the fact that many colleges around the nation are scaling back IT programs (my stepmother teaches various IT classes at a local college) and thike about what that means for those of us who spent money on educations or who have been relying on our IT experience as means to acquire jobs.

The economy and job prospects have been bad enough just dealing with the economic slowdown without having to deal with the jobs that are still there going away from the US (I know, I was unemployed for the greater portion of 2002, and I'm only employed now because I new the guy who ran the IT department for the company I work for now).

In many countries in the EU and also in Australia, they cannot hire a non-citizen unless they CANNOT find a qualified candidate who IS a citizen. The US government needs to step up and implement some similar legislation. Even if you think about this from a lawmakers perspective, an American who makes $50,000 a year pays a whole lot more than an unemployed American and the foreigner who takes his job for $30,000. They'll see a WHOLE LOT less than that from the unemployed American and the job that's no longer in the US! Even the companies that do use outsourcing are killing their own market. How many computers or programs or Coke ayr you going to buy when you're unemployed, and can the foreigner who's making half of what you were making pick up the slack? I don't think so...

Anyway, I'm done...

GAO Green Lights Offshoring Study
WashTech News

Washington DC -- The General Accounting Office agreed on Tuesday to study the trend of U.S. companies exporting engineering and technical jobs overseas to cheaper labor markets. Congressmen Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Adam Smith (D-WA) wrote a letter to the GAO Inspector General on July 17th requesting such a study.

"I'm extremely pleased that the GAO agrees that this is a critically important issue that should be thoroughly examined," said Rep. Smith. "I'm very eager to see the study's findings and use them to improve public policy."

Rep. Inslee told WashTech in a written statement: "Clearly, an increasing number of American firms are outsourcing some of their services. Congress needs an accurate assessment of the facts surrounding this practice in order to find viable policy solutions that will enhance competitiveness of American workers and help keep high-tech jobs in our country. I am encouraged that the GAO is willing to take on this project, and I look forward to their recommendations."

This study comes after several months of lobbying by WashTech, and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) calling on members of Congress to request that the GAO to investigate the issue. As part of the lobbying campaign, which began in January of this year, WashTech generated more than 13,000 email and fax letters to congressional representatives from more than 30 states.

The issue of offshore outsourcing of engineering and information technology jobs has also generated increasing U.S. and international news coverage in recent months.

The study will begin looking at this trend, and analyze the impacts on technical and aerospace employees. It will also review the treatment of IT outsourcing in U.S. trade policy and offer recommendations for enhancing U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace.

Reform The H-1B and L-1 Guest Worker Visa Programs
By the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO

In the current recession--unlike previous economic downturns--a growing number of well-educated and highly skilled U.S. professional and technical workers have found themselves in the long lines of the unemployed. They and their families have not only been battered by the economic trauma of being out of work, but increasingly they are finding themselves victimized by dysfunctional U.S. guest worker policies. For many--particularly workers in high tech--these policies have made a bad situation much worse.

Under current law, employers, especially in high tech, are abusing temporary visa programs to allow hundreds of thousands of guest workers with no rights and no job security to take job opportunities in the United States, when workers in this country are unemployed and even being laid off. There are now more than a million of these workers in the United States under the two largest guest worker programs, H-1B and L-1. Yet neither of these programs connects in any way to the realities of the U.S. labor market and our rising unemployment rate.

Worse, both programs are rife with fraud and abuse and are being used by unscrupulous corporations to displace America's workers and exploit guest workers. Under these programs, guest workers must depend on their employers not only for a job, but also for their legal status. Employers also have the power to renew guest worker visas at their pleasure. This creates an unequal relationship inherently subject to abuse, in which employers have the upper hand to intimidate guest workers who seek better wages and working conditions, seek to join a union or complain of discrimination. Employers can retaliate by threatening to end these guest workers' employment and thus their visas, or by threatening to deny the renewal of visas in the future.

This year, Congress must take action to clean up the problems that plague these programs by implementing urgently needed reforms.

The H-1B Temporary Guest Worker Program

In effect since 1990, the H-1B program originally was designed to permit a modest number of professional and technical guest workers into the United States each year to alleviate spot shortages in our labor market. However, in 1998 and again in 2000--despite AFL-CIO opposition--Congress drastically expanded the program, even as widespread reports of exploitation and abuse of U.S. and H-1B guest workers were surfacing. Later this year, the previous legislation will sunset and thereby reduce the number of visas to the original yearly limit of 65,000 that was in effect prior to 1998. The AFL-CIO supports this reduction, but other reforms are also needed:

To make the program truly "temporary," H-1B visas should be limited to one non-renewable three-year term.

The program must include explicit prohibitions against replacement of U.S. workers and must strictly tie the entry of any and all H-1Bs to U.S. labor market conditions to minimize the impact on all professional workers.

The existing "attestation" system--a sort of honor code whereby employers assert they have searched for qualified U.S. workers and are paying H-1B workers prevailing wages and benefits--should be replaced with real safeguards that protect both domestic and foreign guest workers.

The number of guest workers per company must be limited. Only the primary employer--with a specific, full-time job opening--should be eligible to make application for an H-1B visa. In higher education, the primary employer may make application for job openings consistent with the unique employment terms and conditions in that industry.

H-1B workers must have an independently verified college degree equivalent to a U.S. degree, demonstrated experience in the field for which they are being hired and must have achieved licensure in the occupations that require it.

With the exception

http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/gao_study1. cfm

July 18, 2003
Reps Smith and Inslee Request GAO Study on Offshore Outsourcing
By David Beckman
WashTech News

___
'We need to know where jobs are
going to be.'

-- Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
__

A Washington state congressman requested a federal study yesterday that would attempt to determine to what extent the rising trend of offshore outsourcing is affecting the loss of U.S. tech jobs.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash) delivered a written request late Thursday morning to General Accounting Office Comptroller General David Walker in Washington, D.C. Smith said in a news release yesterday that he wants the GAO to investigate the impact offshore outsourcing has on U.S. high-tech workers, aerospace engineers, and various levels of state and federal government workers whose jobs have been sent offshore. Fellow Washington state congressman Jay Inslee co-signed the request.

Smith said that in light of the nation's high unemployment rate, the United States needs to develop a new jobs and industrial plan and determine a focus for the "New Economy."

"We need to know where jobs are going to be," said Smith, who represents Washington's 9th District.

While government programs invest in retraining unemployed workers, it is not clear whether there will be jobs for those workers to fill, Smith said.

"Offshore outsourcing (of information technology services) has become increasingly common for U.S. organizations, generally because of the perceived cost savings and to enhance competitiveness in the global economy," Smith said.

But Smith said he is concerned that retraining and educational programs may be training people in the United States for jobs that are being sent overseas.

The recent practice of moving service and development work to countries such as India, Russia, and the Philippines has been employed ever more widely by companies such as Microsoft and Boeing in order to slash domestic labor costs. The magnitude of the effect on domestic jobs and on the U.S. economy has so far not been measured.

___
'Part of the problem with the issue is just tracking and understanding it.'

-- Stan Sorscher, research director for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)
___

"Part of the problem with the issue is just tracking and understanding it," says Stan Sorscher, research director for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA). "We're analytical people by nature. Seeing the actual data would be much more helpful in understanding the impact."

The rate of unemployment in Washington state has concerned Smith for some time, said Smith's Communication Director Katharine Lister, especially when constituents complained that offshore outsourcing is responsible for the loss of many of the state's information technology jobs.

"We've been working the GAO (request) for a couple of months now," Lister says. She says the reason Smith assumed a low profile on the issue until now is that the congressman "tends to labor under the radar screen."

Inslee assumed a somewhat higher profile. He met with representatives from SPEEA and the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, or WashTech, on June 6 in Seattle. The groups asked to meet with Inslee to discuss remarks he reportedly made while on a visit to India. Press reports said Inslee told Indian government and tech industry officials that measures before Congress or state legislatures intended to curb offshore outsourcing "would not go anywhere."

They also asked Inslee to initiate a GAO study on the effects of offshore outsourcing. Inslee said he would investigate making such a request.

Two weeks later, however, Inslee said he was unsure whether he could build support for such a study.

"I'd like to say we could do that, but I don't have a tho

Unionze. Check out WashTech or Techs Unite

'Cmon. How can /. be so far behind on this story?

For those of us in the industry, go check out TechsUnite.org for info on what we can do to have our voices heard on this matter.

To me, its just as important to be a member of TechsUnite as it is the EFF.

This time it's a bullseye. This post was right on. If the cheap labor can't come here, the corporations will go to the cheap labor. We (meaning American workers) lose either way, at least over the short term. At least if the jobs stay here, we lose more slowly.

It's a natural law: in the absence of labor organization, wages will seek the lowest common denominator of the market. The only way to keep U.S. wages up is to raise wages in India, et al, which means unionization.

I think I'm going to go take a look at this techsunite.org.

Of course unions, etc have not been a traditional alliance for geeks. I can just imagine the flamewars over this.

The proposed reforms validate many if most of the concerns of IT workers, but I am not sure if these are the best solutions. I have seen suggestions that advocate the all out abolition of the H1B program. This might be the way to go, if the the thing H1B fixed did not in fact fix anything in the first place.

The last thing we need is the US to become the equivalent of Detroit with urban burnout across the whole country.

These are both projects of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Some of the CWA leadership actually have a clue that if they tech workers are going to organize, their unions aren't going to look like the Teamsters or UAW.

Techs Unite
WashTech