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US Senator Blasts Microsoft's H-1B Push As It Lays 18,000 Off Workers
dcblogs (1096431) writes On the floor of U.S. Senate Thursday, Sen. Jeff Sessions delivered a scalding and sarcastic attack on the use of highly skilled foreign workers by U.S. corporations that was heavily aimed at Microsoft, a chief supporter of the practice. Sessions' speech began as a rebuttal to a recent New York Times op-ed column by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett and Sheldon Adelson ... But the senator's attack on "three of our greatest masters of the universe," and "super billionaires," was clearly primed by Microsoft's announcement, also on Thursday, that it was laying off 18,000 employees. "What did we see in the newspaper today?" said Sessions, "News from Microsoft. Was it that they are having to raise wages to try to get enough good, quality engineers to do the work? Are they expanding or are they hiring? No, that is not what the news was, unfortunately. Not at all."
If you believe in a global free market economy, I've got a bridge for sale on prime Florida real estate guaranteed to give a 3000% return. Act now! The prince of Nigeria is also interested now that he has transferred all his money to the US.
There's a false comparison being made here... who says the Nokia engineer or the Xbox content maker being laid off has the same skills as the programmer they are wanting to hire?
Basic economics says if you are having a skills shortage in a certain sector then you should see wages increasing as employers attempt to attract the required labor. If wages are not going up then you do not have a skills shortage. This is something economist Dean Baker points out all the time.
Why should we pass laws to enable a company to do what it wants?
Laws should be passed because they are morally right and protect the American people, not to make business more profitable. Train the workers you have.
>we had enough regulation already, look where it got us.
To the most economically, technologically and military powerful nation the planet?
America only started falling off once Reagan and Clinton started busting unions, signing free trade treaties, giving amnesties to illegal aliens and deregulating wall street.
What did regulation get us? You mean after the new deal was put in place but before Ragean and company went about getting rid of it? Hmm let's see? End of the great depression? But wait Rush Limbah says that WW2 ended the great depression? Well the great depression was starting to end before WW2 but if you are saying that the massive government spending and massive government growth during WW2 ended the great depression then I have to thank you for proving my point exactly,
What else did it get us? ~50 years of strong growth without any real recessions? Strongest middle class in the history of mankind? Turning the US economy into the biggest in the world with the largest manufactoring base? Remember back in the day all the best consumer electronics were all made in the USA. Our manufactoring base was protected because from the founding of the country until about the 1980's we actually charged tariffs to people importing goods we could make here. In fact until WW1 tarrifs completely funded the federal government.
Execpt for all of that then I guess I would have to say yeah, regulations gave us nothing. Guess we need a fundamental change? And by fundemental change I guess you mean do the same thing we have been doing for the last ~30 years? I.E continue to deregulate and destroy whatever is left of the new deal? Yes we should not got back to the way things were back in the 50's and 60's. Back then the government actually regulated business. Back then a CEO could not be paid in stock (so he -- and yes back then it was always he, couldn't pump and dump like everyone loves to do today.) If a company became a monopoly then the government would split it up. The government wouldn't allow banks to lend money to people that couldn't afford to pay it back. And since the ultra rich had a +50% top tax bracket (with a lot fewer shelters so they actually mostly paid it) more rich people invested more money in their companies (to avoid paying taxes) and so there was less money around to have tons of bubbles in the stock market, energy market, housing market, etc. Back then companies actually had R&D departments because the CEOs all weren't slaves to the stock price -- they actually cared about the long term future of the company (imagine that!)
No you are right we should certainly not go back to the way things were back then. We need a fundemental change and that means doing the same thing we have been doing since Ragean.
You as Americans have a choice and a vote, each 2-4 years. You can either do something or you don't want to. The spiral and time is working against you.
Every so often we get to vote, but we are limited to two choices, both of which have been given large sums of money by various PACs, which are essentially just fronts for various corporate officers. Often, the same PAC will back both candidates in any given race, just so that they get the benefit of backing the winner every time. There is no democratically elected leadership in this country anymore, there is only a selection between two candidates presented to the masses by the 1%. In all the ways that really matter (fiscal policy, economic policy, regulation, law enforcement, etc...), the candidates are identical. They will debate and argue over the issues that the public has been trained to believe really matter, but in reality the issues that are hotly contested don't really matter, and the ones that do, are quietly agreed upon behind closed doors. How many politicians that truly have power have done anything to end Guantanamo, or the rights abuses happening there? How many have done anything to end the systematic dissolution of our constitutional rights? How many have actually taken steps to fix the systemic problems that led to the recession? How many have taken any action to help eliminate the vastly disproportional power the 1% wield in our political system? How many have taken steps to address the extraordinary and growing wealth and earnings inequalities in our society?
The answer to these questions is now, and has been: none that matter. The only way we will be able to undo the damage the 1% have done to our country will be through an extraordinary action outside the accepted political system, because everything inside the political system has been thoroughly corrupted by those with the real power: the 1%.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
If tech companies weren't shit at training they would be somewhat more fungible, though not perfectly so. Engineering companies are somewhat better at this: if a company is looking for chemical engineers and can't find someone with experience in exactly the process they're hiring for, they'll hire a chemical engineer with experience in a different process and get them up to speed. Tech companies seem incapable of doing that, and instead they have a big list of really specific background they want, "must have 7 years of experience in J2EE and 3 years experience using Joe Bob's Serialization Framework", then complain they can't find anyone so it must be a "programmer shortage".
At which point they bring a foreign worker over and train them in J2EE and Joe Bob's Serialization Framework.
I've written about this at length in the past. My own wife came over on an H1A as a nurse. The reason that they got her had nothing to do with a "shortage of nurses". Instead, it had to do with a "shortage of nurses that would work for the shit wages that the nursing homes wanted to pay". Big difference - and frankly that's the same thing I see in the tech industry.
If the Department of Labor simply forced these companies to follow the law and compensate the foreign workers on par with American workers it would somewhat alleviate the problem. But they don't, and the law's a joke.
The other issue is that these workers are essentially indentured servants until they get a green card and the power disparity also plays heavily into this. Looking at my wife's situation again I know of nurses who pissed off the wrong people in their job and ended up on a plane back home. If you hate your job you don't have the ability to simply get another. I'd like to say that everybody acts like an adult and that doesn't matter but the reality is that it matters a lot. When you don't really have the option to quit there's little pressure on management to make sure you like your job.
In the nursing industry it's even worse because of regulation. I don't mean the regulation makes it worse - hiring foreigners is a great way to get around regulation and not worry about your employees turning you in. After all, if your understaffed shit hole gets shut down by the state you get a plane ride back home.
In my wife's generation this was even worse because they had to come up with US$5000 to pay the staffing agency to bring them over. That's about a year and a half of wages for your typical middle class Filipino - it would be analogous to an American coming up with $75,000. Not easy. And if you lose your job in America you'll spend 10 years working in the Philippines to pay that off.
Ugh.
Do you have ESP?
There are a *LOT* of other factors contributing to the US's superpower status pre-Reagan or Clinton. Things like:
1. massive natural resource endowment (particularly land area, educated population, and cheap energy reserves)
2. being the only large industrialized nation not bombed into oblivion post-1945.
to name just a few. Now we are witnessing a regression to the mean as some of these key points (education, cheap domestic energy, and unique industrialization) are challenged by the same globalization principles that we put in place. The fact that our government bureaucracy at all levels is a bloated and inefficient mess only serves to retard any attempts to correct our deficiencies and maintain our position.
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What the senator is really saying is that Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced by a foreign worker.
This space for rent.
"You must be stupid if you believe that" is not a logical fallacy. "You are stupid, therefore what you believe is false" is a logical fallacy (ad hominem). "People who believe things that are obviously false are stupid. That is obviously false and you believe it, therefore you must be stupid" is valid, assuming you accept the premises.
We didn't just build industry. We built the freeway system. We built the space program. We rebuilt our military to defend the world against the Russians. That was all government spending. And yes, our top tax rate was 91%. Millionaires still made buckets of money. But, they paid their taxes and shit got done.
Then, Reagan came into office and lowered that top rate. All of a sudden, the government deficits started going up and work didn't get done. Millionaires started using their new buckets of money for speculation. Now, we're in a recession as a result of Wall Street speculation and we can't fix a fucking pothole let alone pave a single new freeway.
Reagan went from $1T to $3T
Bush Sr went from $3T to $6T
Clinton went from $6T to $5T
Bush Jr went from $5T to $11T
Obama went from $11T to $17T
Which one was worse?
It doesn't fucking matter.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
also evil.
The layoff wasn't much of a surprise.
I've been expecting it for a few years and I expect that Apple and Google will follow suit,
just not sure of the timeframe. They're all engaged in verticalizing their information
equivalent of a supply chain, i.e. an indicator of saturating markets.
http://nodemy-ghost.herokuapp....
There was the savings and loan meltdown in the early '80's when they were deregulated. That was the first sign about the dangers of de-regulation with the big difference that people went to jail then.
Now they get huge bonuses as rewards for screwing the worlds finances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism