Slashdot Mirror
IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
TheAmit writes to tell us that many recently laid off IBM employees have been offered jobs if they will only move somewhere it is cheap to employ them. IBM's new Project Match program offers some financial assistance for moving and immigration help for visas. "However, the move has not gone well with the IBM staff union. Slamming the offer, a union spokesperson said that not only were jobs being shipped overseas, but Big Blue was trying to export the people for peanuts too. He added that at a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States. "
I live in Vancouver, Canada. I used to work for a software company here that was acquired by a company headquartered in Washington, DC. In the summer of 2006, once the 'merger' was complete those of us that worked in Vancouver were given an option: Move across the continent and to a new country and join the DC head office, or be let go. The majority of us chose to stay and found ourselves unemployed.
I'm living in China because my spouse's company transferred us here. I applied to IBM here and they wanted to hire me and send me back to the USA at the Chinese pay level as an intracompany transfer which they use to avoid the H1-B process (although as a US citizen I didn't even need to apply for the intracompany visa). The pay was a bit under $800/mo for database technical consulting work that's in the $120+ range in the US for the consultant, nevermind what the company charges. Obviously I turned that down, but I have to wonder how many Chinese get sent to the US with this kind of pay thanks to the intracompany visa scheme. The interviewing manager said they "do it all the time".
BTW - the firecrackers 24/7 is only for 2 weeks around Chinese New Year. They go back to being illegal except for permits tomorrow at midnight. And you might build a house without restrictions but you can't own the land. The government at any time can move you out and take it back for some odd reason - and while eminent domain abuse happens in the US, at least there you get paid fire sale rates for your house before they knock it down.
The Real Owners George Carlin:
There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it'll never ever be fixed - it's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you got, because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now. The wealthy big business interests that control things, and makes all the important decisions.
The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners.
They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear.
They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying - lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers - people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it.
They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy.
The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people: white collar, blue collar it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue (these are people of modest being) - continue to elect these rich douchebags who
don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you - they don't give a fuck about you.
They don't care about you at all - at all - at all,
and nobody seems to notice.
Nobody seems to care.
That's what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
It's called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
(Listen to him - the power of the words heard is so greater than read, it's the difference between seeing a punch and taking one.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry