Tech Firm Fined For Paying Imported Workers $1.21 Per Hour

An anonymous reader sends in news about a company that was fined for flying in "about eight employees" from India to work 120-hour weeks for $1.21 per hour. Electronics for Imaging paid several employees from India as little as $1.21 an hour to help install computer systems at the company's Fremont headquarters, federal labor officials said Wednesday. "We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior from employers," said Susana Blanco, district director of the U.S. Labor Department's wage and hour division in San Francisco.... An anonymous tip prompted the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate the case, which resulted in more than $40,000 in back wages paid to the eight employees and a fine of $3,500 for Electronics for Imaging.

Comments

$3500 fine?

[msobkow]

That's a joke. They should have been fined at least as much as the backwages were.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes yes prices may go up, but as minimum wage advocates say, if you have to pay people more, they have more to spend.

A more sensible argument in favour of minimum wage is that if there isn't one, government assistance to low income earners are in practice a subsidy to companies that then don't have to pay a living wage.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder how much a certain large US Healthcare equipment company would have to pay if all of their "trainees" suddenly were paid real wages for all of the work they've done for years? Of course, nudge nudge, wink, wink, the Indian programmers were in the US for training, and not real work, as that would not be permitted by their visas.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Macman408]

It's not clear to me that it was willful avoidance of paying minimum wage - they had a job to do, they got help from some of their existing employees from overseas, who continued to receive their regular wage (in their regular currency) during the time that they were here. So the company paid the back wages to the employees, and a small fine to the government. Doesn't seem unreasonable to give them a little slap on the wrist; save the big punishments for when there are repeated offenses, or more wanton abuse.

I'm more curious what the legal requirement is for paying the local minimum wage instead of a worker's regular salary, when they are working away from their normal office. I certainly wouldn't want to be paid in rupees if I had to travel to an office in India. But if I were there under the same conditions as those workers were here, would there be any violation of US Labor Laws if they paid me the local wage while I was over there? On the other hand, if I go to a college recruiting event in San Francisco for an afternoon, am I entitled to an increased minimum wage of $10.74 for a few hours? What if I'm a driver, paid by the mile, going through different jurisdictions each with their own minimum wage law?

Re:$3500 fine?

[AK Marc]

They should have been fined 10x the "market wage" for the job, with half going to the workers, and half going to the local unemployment office.

Re:$3500 fine?

[tnk1]

I have to agree. If we have these laws, we need to enforce them.

If that means that the costs of products go up because we aren't using illegal aliens as slave labor, then we need to see that cost and understand why that is the case.

We think this is benefiting businesses primarily, but bear in mind, those who favor government programs and regulations to curry favor with progressives may be able to understate the economic effect of those items on the full economy by conveniently pointing to American productivity, but leaving out how much of that productivity is due to workers and businesses that evade those regulations.

Remember, it is a win-win for regulation and business if you can pretend that you have laws you enforce for higher standard of living, but you collude with businesses to make sure that the economy is not harmed by actually applying OSHA rules, minimum wage and social security to *every worker*.

I point this out, not to take the heat off of businesses. They are the ones who actually employ the illegal labor, and they are the primary people at fault. I'm trying to get to the heart of why the government is not enforcing these rules when it would be relatively simple for them to do so effectively. I think it is because no one wants to be up-front about why illegal workers are required to maintain our standard of living. No one wants to admit that we employ an underclass to maintain our citizens in comfort.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why.

US workers have to accept that like the Music labels, Movie distribution and Book publishers there is a "new" way of doing things where
it is cheaper to fly in labour from overseas rather than use the high cost/low work ethics of local people.

If US workers want to compete then they should do so and not have outdated laws protecting their high wage structures.

If "people" believe that they are entitled to the lowest cost products and be able to import what ever they like, and the likes of the Music labels have to get with the times, well why can companies not do they same. Exactly why should US workers be any more/less sacrosanct that the Music/video/Book industries ?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Noble713]

"Yes yes prices may go up, but as minimum wage advocates say, if you have to pay people more, they have more to spend." Or companies would increase their R&D/capital spending on robotics/automation, and make even more aggressive moves to eliminate their minimum wage positions than they are already doing..... Population growth + automation will eventually make the economic model of "everyone must work to earn their own way" unnecessary and obsolete. I think we are fast approaching the point where we need to essentially put 3-4 billion people on welfare, with the other 3 billion workers we actually need to support civilization collecting upper-middle class incomes. Then the existing crony-capitalists can stay as our feudal overlords, using some of their billions for something other than driving up the prices of NY real estate and rare Ferraris.

Re:$3500 fine?

[PRMan]

The entire $40,156 in back wages was distributed directly to the eight affected workers.

The fine was on top of the back wages.

Re:$3500 fine?

[whoever57]

That's a joke. They should have been fined at least as much as the backwages were.

And no more visas of any kind for this company. No H1s, no L1s, no B1/B2s, etc.. In this case, the company appears to have been misusing B1/B2 visas (visitors).

Re:$3500 fine?

[worldthinker]

Automation of jobs even professional level jobs such as medical or legal is inevitable. The long term prospect is that humans will be superfluous to work. Therefore, our society needs to rethink the purpose of an economy and evolve.

Perhaps ideas like a Universal Basic Income become relevant in a future society devoid of meaningful work.

Perhaps automation makes economic scarcity of essential needs a thing of the past.

Perhaps people become free to seek their own happiness instead of toiling for sustenance.

But that would be monstrously scary to objectivist who might think that society must exploit and privatize everything.

Re:$3500 fine?

[whoever57]

It's not clear to me that it was willful avoidance of paying minimum wage - they had a job to do, they got help from some of their existing employees from overseas, who continued to receive their regular wage (in their regular currency) during the time that they were here

It's almost certainly a violation of immigration law. I assume that these people came to Fremont on visitor visas that don't allow the visa holder to "work". Even if the foreign workers were here on H1s or L1s (which I doubt), they would have been violating the salary requirements for that type of visa.

Re:$3500 fine?

[c]

That's a joke. They should have been fined at least as much as the backwages were.

That's still peanuts.

If you really wanted to send a message, they should be required to pay for an external auditor of the governments choice to come in and perform a top-to-bottom audit on all employee and contractor compensation.

And then get fined for anything fishy.

Re: $3500 fine?

[tysonedwards]

Further, the "wage" payments were just the differences between their dollar and change an hour rate and minimum wage for technical work that would require a skilled employee. So, even that is a slap on the wrist. And there was no concept of "time and a half" or whatever else for the mandatory 120hr week slave conditions for these employees. As such, the lesson taught was very much a "just don't get caught next time" one.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the Objectivists. Their alleged philosophy is rejected by all but a tiny minority of serious academic thinkers as incomplete, idiotic, and unworkable in the real world.

Hell, even Greenspan, who sat at the feet of the weird Ayn Rand, was forced to admit in front of congress that his philosophy doesn't work in the real world, and that was the end of any intellectual underpinnings for the whole anti-regulation, anti-humane, anti-altruism, tax-cuts-for-the-rich, trickle down crap.

I repeat: Fuck the Objectivists and their amoral "Devil take the hindmost" attitudes.

Re:$3500 fine?

[SydShamino]

...which they would have spent anyway had they chosen not to break the law.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree this is an absolute joke. The point of the fine is to be punitive to the point that it isn't profitable to break the law. $3500 is not even a pin prick. This will do nothing but encourage the continued practice of doing this. At worst, the company sees that they have to pay what they would originally have had to pay the workers, but the gain for getting away with it (which is most likely better than 80-90% chance), is that they only pay peanuts for the labor.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

$3500 would be ok as long as it was only payable in 1929 double eagles

Re:$3500 fine?

[timeOday]

At the very least I'm glad they closed this potential loophole before it opened, otherwise the vast majority of US workers would be fired and re-hired by wholly-owned foreign subsidiaries within weeks. "Sorry suckers, you're in Cambodia now! For legal purposes at least! Hahahahahah!!!"

Re:$3500 fine?

[AbRASiON]

. The long term prospect is that humans will be superfluous to work. Therefore, our society needs to rethink the purpose of an economy and evolve.

No, society needs to rethink the purpose of creating so many humans.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not clear to me that it was willful avoidance of paying minimum wage

Aren't H1-B's supposed to make the same salary as their peers? Do IT professionals in the bay area make minimum wage? I'm gobsmacked by the $3500 fine. This is tax evasion (not paying income is also not paying income taxes) and legalized slavery. These people should be arrested, at gun point, and put in prison.

Re:$3500 fine?

[cayenne8]

Perhaps ideas like a Universal Basic Income become relevant in a future society devoid of meaningful work.

The world will *always* need ditch diggers....

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

A travesty is more like it. The fine should be 10x the back wages, to make other employers think twice about taking that gamble.

Re:$3500 fine?

[wonkavader]

We need to do both.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Obfuscant]

Yes yes prices may go up, but as minimum wage advocates say, if you have to pay people more, they have more to spend.

At 120 hours a week you don't have much time to spend any of that windfall, and by the time you do have time to go shopping you're spending it in India.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you have to pay people more, they have more to spend.

And if everyone has more to spend, they'll be willing to universally pay more for scare resources, making for higher prices, meaning people might be able to buy less with their more pay.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan is doing it, at least on the human creation part.

Re: $3500 fine?

[Black Copter Control]

..... . As such, the lesson taught was very much a "just don't get caught next time" one.

Who even cares about getting caught... They still got skilled technical work done at <10% above the local minimum wage. No matter how you spin it, it was still a massive deal.

Re:$3500 fine?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That's a joke. They should have been fined at least as much as the backwages were.

Why keep it civil? Seems only fair for whoever came up with this plan to spend some time stamping out license plates for Uncle Sam.

Re:$3500 fine?

[RabidTimmy]

What is this, a fine for ants. It need to be at least... 3 times as big.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your proposal is solid. That is precisely why it won't happen. Not, at least, until we have another occupy movement that is persistent enough to avoid being dissipated by the federal police.

The sociopaths that control our government do not respond to appeals to justice. They don't give a rat's ass about fairness or even sustainability. The *only* language to which they respond is force.

Until we force them to do what is reasonable, they will not. And mustering that force requires mustering agreement among hundreds of millions of complacent Americans.

Good luck with THAT!

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just a snake trying to eat it's own tail. If you raise the minimum wage, prices go up and then you have to increase government assistance to compensate. Sure it comes with/from increased income tax revenue but at the expense of increase unemployment and automation. Since "poverty" is a moving target set relative to some arbitrary percentile of median income you can't push the impoverished up without moving the poverty line with them.

You could put everyone on the planet in a gymnasium filled with gold coins and the social phenomenon of "poverty" would reestablish itself fairly quickly as a monetary pecking order ranking the ones with limited impulse control and lack of skills which are in demand below the people who have more impulse control and more valuable skills. Based on my experience, the ones with the most Machiavellian interpersonal tendencies are the ones who come out on top, and that's great for them. Someone has to set the standard for acting like a dickhead relatively high so we can all feel good about ourselves by comparison.

I'm not saying the status quo is fair, primarily because of the snowball effect wealth accumulation provides to those who have it. Falling below medium income/net worth is a slippery slope that only gets more treacherous during bad market conditions and regressive government incentives. With the phenomenon of "regulatory capture" bigger government probably isn't the answer. When you consider the predatory exploitation of vulnerable populations and externalities: smaller government probably isn't the answer either. That's probably because there isn't any one single answer.

Any change to the labor market has negative impacts on some populations and positive impacts on others. Democracy is supposed to "close the loop" of the control system by shifting the tide of popular opinion against market conditions which have become counterproductive to the majority of market participants. This allows disenfranchised peoples under existing conditions to petition for more favorable/tolerable conditions before violence becomes necessary. That's the theory anyway. How effective it is in practice is debatable, and effective for whom for that matter?

My solution is to minimize my interaction with the general public/society so that I have minimal stake in these issues. That said, isolationism seems to be as effective here as it is with Ebola and ISIS. Either way, the more invested you are in the outcome of these sorts of policy decisions the greater the tax on your time participating in the associated battle for hearts and minds becomes.

Vote for Cthulhu just to be safe. Why choose a lesser evil?

Re:$3500 fine?

[bill_mcgonigle]

At 120 hours a week you don't have much time to spend any of that windfall, and by the time you do have time to go shopping you're spending it in India.

There's not even enough time left to sleep, eat and shower - one ought be skeptical of the claims.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

A real message to stop would actually contain some form of showing a desire that they should stop. This sends the message to continue and do it even more.

If the execs feel its OK to pay their employees $1 an hour, and it truly is an act we as a country do not want to happen, send the execs to prison for at least the length of the longest employment term of one of these Indian workers.
Prisons pay pennies per hour for inmates labor, and the execs are clearly OK with this, so it's a win-win!

With a fine of $3500, any message is directly to the bean counters, and states that for a one time cost of $3500 you can enslave up to eight people for years at basically $1/hr.

When $x is less than $y, and the goal is the smallest number, the only correct choice is $x - so the message is enslave Indian workers and pay the fine, as that is the cheaper option than paying legal wages.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Wycliffe]

A more sensible argument in favour of minimum wage is that if there isn't one, government assistance to low income earners are in practice a subsidy to companies that then don't have to pay a living wage.

What percentage of people working at (or close to) minimum wage receive government assistance?
I read somewhere that the vast majority of people close to the minimum wage have moved up after a short time.
Noone I personally know who works for minimum wage receives government assistance. Most people
I personally know who work for minimum wage are single kids usually still living at home and getting
their first job. The problem I see with a high minimum wage is that it kills alot of entry level job so you
end up with a bunch of people who have no way of getting job experience. And you can't solve this
by making teenagers exempt from minimum wage as then companies have an incentive to only
hire inexperienced people and the few people who really do need minimum wage jobs are passed over
because they have a higher minimum wage.

Re:$3500 fine?

[narcc]

That's just a snake trying to eat it's own tail. If you raise the minimum wage, prices go up and then you have to increase government assistance to compensate.

I see that you're deeply confused. What bizarre libertarian whack-a-do gave such a pitifully simple-minded talking point?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow lol tldr, but i mean way to be a pessimist, i prefer sociopaths that are at least smart enough to give people freedom, to tyrants and generally depressed EMO motehrfuckers though

Re: $3500 fine?

[Livius]

So, even that is a slap on the wrist.

It's *entirely* a slap on the wrist.

Their crime was being so over the top that they would inevitably bring scrutiny on the cartel as a whole, forcing the government to make a credible response, and no-one wants that. (Well, no-one except those actually working for their income.)

Re:$3500 fine?

[CanHasDIY]

The sort of people who pay slave wages probably consider 6.8 hours of "free time" a day more than adequate for such self-catering needs as sustinance and rest. Don't wanna be too soft on 'em, ya know.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've gone to four different countries to my companies locations and did work there. Usually only for a few days but working probably 16-20 hours per day while I was there (moving the data center portion of our offices from one building to another across town). Now.. that was physically being there. I work on and mange that equipment daily in those countries.

Moscow was the only place of the four I've been in that my company filled out paperwork for that were we there for work reasons. The others, we just went.
I worked at a major US airline and i went to Toronto from the US at least a few times a month and did field work. I think the airline had prearranged agreements or something because our the admin assistant handled that for us. We just told her the hours we were there.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Simply Curious]

Let's look at the expected gain/loss. Assume that x is the probability that the company gets caught. That means there is an x probability of being down by $3500, and a (1-x) probability of being up by $40k. The break-even point occurs when x=0.08. That means that if this behavior is repeated over and over, we need to catch them at it at least 92% of the time for it to not be financially viable, giving these penalties.

This is the entire purpose of punitive damages. It is impossible to catch someone every single time. The punitive damages are to make it be so costly that one time that they are caught that the entire practice must stop. A $3500 fine is an absolute joke when the stolen wages are over ten times that amount.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how poverty is defined. Poverty is a goalpost that determines if one is able to fulfill his own basic needs or that of a family. It is not defined relative to the income of others.

Re:$3500 fine?

[FlyHelicopters]

The world will *always* need ditch diggers....

So sure of that, are you?

We are approaching a time when the robots will do all that for us... Even the very basic work...

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect, they have been doing this for over a decade with illegals.

No one has the balls to go after the companies that make use of slave day labor.

Here in Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio tries to go after business that employ illegals (appropriate pay or not). This, of course, makes him a racist Mexican hater, as it is entirely his fault that the lion's share of illegals here are from a country with which Arizona shares a border.

My point here is, I'm not surprised nobody "has the balls" to go after these companies, as I'm sure it would somehow get turned into some kind of thing about how illegal immigrants are being unfairly targeted and treated by law enforcement, and how entity X is out to get race Y (or simply the broad stroke of "anyone different"). Laws be damned, the illegals getting mistreated by the company be damned, impact on the economy be damn. It's all about "The Man" (aka. whitey) being a xenophobic racist.

And I agree, that fine is a joke. Making them pay out the wages that should have been paid already isn't a punishment. $3500 is almost insulting.

Re:$3500 fine?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I'll guarantee that your company took care of everything before you got there, and the Russians were just being their usual paranoid selves by checking to make sure your doing what you say.

Re:$3500 fine?

[ratboy666]

You are, of course, a moron.

I simply cannot charge $1.21 per hour for my time as an employee. Indeed, I would have to contract at that rate. But, of course, I still need credentials. How can I pay for post-secondary at that rate? I can't.

I need to immigrate to India. And, go to college in India to make this work. But, I *still* cannot compete, not being Indian (ref Infosys).

Re: $3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are of course the devils advocate.

The obvious difference is that the workers are people that the government is supposed to represent.

Those industries are not people and do not deserve the same level of protection. The individuals in those industries do, so they deserve the same minimum wages. They do not deserve a limitation on the freedom of the whole population just to facilitate their business model.

Re:$3500 fine?

[tlambert]

It's not clear to me that it was willful avoidance of paying minimum wage - they had a job to do, they got help from some of their existing employees from overseas, who continued to receive their regular wage (in their regular currency) during the time that they were here

It's almost certainly a violation of immigration law. I assume that these people came to Fremont on visitor visas that don't allow the visa holder to "work". Even if the foreign workers were here on H1s or L1s (which I doubt), they would have been violating the salary requirements for that type of visa.

My understanding from someone familiar with the case is that they were in the U.S. on L1-B visas that had been legally applied for; it's common practice for companies like IBM to pay their existing wage plus a per diem when they send someone to India to train people there, or to otherwise resolve issues in the foreign country.

From what I've been told, this is a misunderstanding on the part of EFI with regard to equivalence between the labor laws that apply in the other direction, and the labor laws that apply in the U.S. not being equivalent. It's why the fine was so low, and it's why only the California minimum wage was enforced in the payout to the workers, and why additional charges were not leveled at EFI by the USCIS.

It's pretty common for many organizations to do this (without the prevailing wage screwup) to avoid having to swear third party contractors or temporary employees to secrecy, without a relatively big carrot/stick to get them to keep their secrets. At least one of the photographs of the aluminum laser cut single piece MacBook case was a result of bringing in outside contractors to put down new carpet squares in the lab in question.

A lot of U.S. people tend to dislike this type of thing because it means that they don't get the temporary job that they can then leverage to get cell phone pictures to sell Engadget and really cash in on the situation, since a temporary position paying prevailing wages for a short term gig isn't going to come anywhere close to matching a $50,000 payday from a tech blog. They also don't believe that the foreign workers deserve to have the jobs they do in their native country, when it could be done for much higher cost in the U.S. by a less qualified American.

Re:$3500 fine?

[flyingfsck]

Jeez, that fine is gonna hurt!

Re:$3500 fine?

[flayzernax]

In that case if the country is failing and the vast majority of the families of this country are failing and being ruled by dynasty. Then our goal posts are pretty far off for poverty.

No one should suffer as I have or as I have seen many others. No it's not impossible to be successful and move up in the world and enjoy 1st world privilege. But the way this country is. It's losing ground here. And the vast majority of our wealth is built on corruption from 50 years ago.

Re:$3500 fine?

[deathguppie]

the answer to you last question is yes. If weed is legal in Colorado and I drive from there the Washington state (which also has legal weed) with weed in my car, can I be arrested in states where it is not legal?

If local laws have no value then they have no meaning. If you are a paid driver going through a jurisdiction that requires a minimum wage you are circumspect to that law. Otherwise you are unfairly competing with local drivers that are compliant with the law.

The same can be said for international wages. If we set an a legal wage for employees in this country you cannot just arbitrarily add people to the workforce without compensating them appropriately.

Re:$3500 fine?

[fatwilbur]

"We think this is benefiting businesses primarily" ... "I point this out, not to take the heat off of businesses."

This is extra hilarious. Here we go again - just because we've created the construct of a corporation to make business activities easier, folks just can't seem to stop actually thinking of them as real people. They're not, and it's real people making the decisions to pay these wages, real people acting in the interest of the American consumer.

Sorry, but the entire population of the USA is at fault. Businesses are simply social creations to help us conduct activities, and the people within them act in accordance to the pressure put on them by demand of their consumers. In this case, the carrot is dangling in the direction of more stuff and lower prices.

South Park did an episode about this, in that example about the Middle East wars. It's wanting to have your cake and eat it to. Putting pressure on your own creations to constantly deliver more and newer stuff, but you want the loudest voices to make it seem like you *really* don't like the side effects caused by it.

It's the rampant consumer culture in the US, and you know what, I'm not even making a moral argument against it. Heck, in the absence of any absolute morality it's beneficial for a country to exploit others as much as it can to its own benefit. What sickens me is when any US citizen complains about this. You don't want change.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Dahamma]

No, we are approaching a time when the robots *can* do all that for us.

The question is, will they be *cheaper*, which is really all that matters to those having their ditches dug. For $10 per hour, robots may become competitive, but for $1.21 per hour, pretty sure humans will be cheaper for quite a while...

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

So rather than ensure that the employees are paid fairly, you want the government to take an equivalent share? Other than catching the low wages what did the government do that even justifies fines of $3,500? What should have been done is that they should have been required to pay 2x-10x backwages, benefiting the workers and ensuring that the company does not try something like this again.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Dahamma]

Jeez, mods, way too much speculation (much of which is wrong) to be a "+5" post...

First, it was in fact L1 visas for short term inter-company work.

The real problem was that EFI paid their Indian employees their existing wages (plus boarding, per diem, and bonuses) while they were in the US. Since US employment law states otherwise, yes, they screwed up, and it's good that they were forced to pay them more. But it's bullshit to call this "slave labor", etc, because of the wage since these employees went back to India with the same wage they were already getting (and no food/lodging costs during that time).

On the other hand, what *is* disturbing is the claims that they worked 120+ hours a week while in the US. I'm almost skeptical of that number as that is literally less than 7 hours a day off the job which isn't enough time for a good night's sleep - but even more or less forcing 100+ hours for an hourly employee, working in a foreign country with likely little say over their duties or conditions seems borderline criminal to me...

Re:$3500 fine?

[viperidaenz]

No, they should have been fined at least 3x the back paid they owed, otherwise it's not really a disincentive.

Re:$3500 fine?

[viperidaenz]

It is indirectly relative the the income of others.
The more money people make, the higher the cost of living.
The more your supermarket workers and retails workers get paid, the higher the cost of the goods those companies sell to cover their expenses.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Sarius64]

No, it's much more entertaining to watch shills come on /. and scream how all of the H1Bs are making $500K a year working for Microsoft.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Sarius64]

Here in San Diego they still catch people dropping off illegal construction workers at the border once they've had an injury that makes them unemployable. I love how all the caring businesses basically use people as chatel.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Njorthbiatr]

If companies are people, jail the companies.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: humans no longer need to work, because all our needs are met for us by technology
Abrasion's solution: shut it down, no reason to exist anymore

Great idea!

Re:$3500 fine?

[MrL0G1C]

You obviously haven't thought about it much.

In the future it could take:

1,000,000,000 to provide for 8,000,000,000

or

10,000,000 to provide for 80,000,000

No matter how many people there are, with robots and AI only a fraction of them will need to work full weeks. A simple solution is to move to shorter working days and less working days per week with overtime mandatory at at least double pay.

The level of population is a separate matter.

Re:$3500 fine?

[EuclideanSilence]

if you have to pay people more, they have more to spend.

That's idiotic. It's like trying to fly by lifting up on your own boots.

You can't improve the spending power of a population by taxing them, whether by direct or inflationary tax. People have more to spend when you put less restrictions on what they can do with their labor.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Automation of jobs even professional level jobs such as medical or legal is inevitable.

Those jobs didn't even *exist* a thousand years ago. If they're automated away, there'll be something else that humans want other humans to do, and are willing to pay them for.

We could achieve your ideal guaranteed-basic-income most-people-don't-work utopia today, if we were willing to accept the quality of life from a thousand years ago, but we aren't. We could achieve it in a hundred years, if we're willing to accept the quality of life from today, but we won't be.

Re: $3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I think we need more apprenticeships, not abusive internships for graduates, but proper apprenticeships with guaranteed proper jobs at the end. On of my friends was a farrier he apprenticed on an absolute pittance for two years at 18 but afterwards had a business literally given to him.

It wouldn't work for all trades, but definitely would for IT.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

... No one wants to admit that we employ an underclass to maintain our citizens in comfort.

An episode of 'Law & order' admitted in passing that no city can exist without an underpaid workforce. Given that American CEOs are are earning 2,000 times minimum wage, it seems that minimum wage could rise. As I recall, a few months ago the US increased minimum wage by more than the Republican party demanded but less than the unions demanded.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys came to the US to do PC installations. People from the US wouldn't be able to go to India to do PC installations as India wouldn't approve the work visa for an American to do so. Other countries often protect the rights of their countrymen. If there is adequate labor force in the country to do a job then you have to employ local people first. It is a mystery how this company was able to get the work visa that allowed these guys to come into the country to do the work. We don't have enough PC installers in America? They HAD to fly Indians in to do the work?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of qualifications are you referring to? A+ certificate? Give me a break. We don't have enough PC Installers in the US? They had to fly in PC Installers because of a worker shortage? I think your going on a pretty big assumption that these guys weren't temp workers in India as well. Do you know for a fact that they had jobs when they returned?

Or look at it going the other way... Do you think I'd get a work visa for India if I was a PC Installer that was needed in India because the firm didn't want to sign someone for secrecy reasons?

Re: $3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's *entirely* a slap on the wrist.

no fucking way ... it was a fart in their general direction.

Re:$3500 fine?

[tlambert]

What kind of qualifications are you referring to? A+ certificate? Give me a break. We don't have enough PC Installers in the US? They had to fly in PC Installers because of a worker shortage? I think your going on a pretty big assumption that these guys weren't temp workers in India as well. Do you know for a fact that they had jobs when they returned?

The qualification that in order to get an L1-B, they had to have worked for EFI for 18 months, were presumably already bound by an NDA, wanted to keep their jobs when they got back, and were already familiar with "You will do it this way because this way is the way EFI does things". How long, exactly, do you think it takes for a new employee to get up to speed on company specific policies and procedures for wiring closets and server rooms, particularly for a company that, among other things, sells outsourced compute infrastructure?

Or look at it going the other way... Do you think I'd get a work visa for India if I was a PC Installer that was needed in India because the firm didn't want to sign someone for secrecy reasons?

Nope. I don't. Not without a buttload of hassle, if the intent was a work visa. I think they could send you there, though, and you would be able to do the work anyway because of reciprocity agreements between the U.S. and India. IBM frequently does that sort of thing because technically, you're being paid in the U.S., so it doesn't matter that you're working remotely at an IBM facility somewhere else.

Re:$3500 fine?

[stealth_finger]

It is indirectly relative the the income of others. The more money people make, the higher the cost of living. The more your supermarket workers and retails workers get paid, the higher the cost of the goods those companies sell to cover their expenses.

So pay your workers fuck all so you can sell your goods cheap to the fuckers with money? Great logic.

Re:$3500 fine?

[IANAAC]

The sort of people who pay slave wages probably consider 6.8 hours of "free time" a day more than adequate for such self-catering needs as sustinance and rest.

Considering this was in Fremont, CA, figure an hour commute each way - even if the company were generous and provided transportation, so 4.8 hours "free" time.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah Greenspan who got a nice cushy Fed Reserve job? Say what you want about Rand she nailed what is going wrong in the country about the human factor. Of course she had seen it before since she fled the USSR.

Re: $3500 fine?

[Wycliffe]

old school apprentices were rarely a "guaranteed job at the end" but more like "a shot at taking over the business at the end" if
you paid your dues, learned well, and did a good job. IT has actually moved that direction a little bit. When I interned for HP
while in college, they made it very clear that interns that they liked moved immediately to the top of the stack of resumes when
applying for a full time position practically guaranteeing you a job if they liked you and your performance. It's alot less risk for
them. Places like microsoft have also started using contractors and temp agencies for that purpose. They try you out for a
while, if you do a good job then they bring you on, if you don't, they don't have to worry about all the steps to fire you. It also
helps with company morale as then very few "official" employees ever need to be fired.

Re: $3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

The lesson is: "getting caught? Meh!"

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's true that if you go work in another country for a contract, your wage will still be the same, it will not be lowered to the standard of this other country so in a sense, you are right but there's a big difference between 1,21 an hour and 8$ an hour, the reason was simply because they were cheaper to employ and not because they needed their expertise, that's where the problem is.

Re:$3500 fine?

[RabidReindeer]

It is indirectly relative the the income of others.
The more money people make, the higher the cost of living.
The more your supermarket workers and retails workers get paid, the higher the cost of the goods those companies sell to cover their expenses.

So pay your workers fuck all so you can sell your goods cheap to the fuckers with money? Great logic.

There's also an implied assumption that the wages/prices ratio is something plotted with straight lines. That is, that there's no "sweet spot" where the two intersect.

Re:$3500 fine?

[CanHasDIY]

Considering the general working conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if they made the migrants sleep on pallets in the basement.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

. The long term prospect is that humans will be superfluous to work. Therefore, our society needs to rethink the purpose of an economy and evolve.

No, society needs to rethink the purpose of creating so many humans.

Why is productivity per human more important than well-being per human? Profit and per-person output is not the fundamental point of human existence. We created tools, machines, and automation so we didn't have to do the thing everyone bitches about: fucking work. So why is it that when we are at a place where we finally don't all have to work anymore, are so many people wanting to increase the amount of work, worse: decrease life, or otherwise expect people continue on doing what we have had to do but never wanted to do?

It is as irrational and ridiculous as instating a law that lottery winners are not allowed to quit their jobs. We won already. We won through thought and can do something no other species has ever been able to do ever; most of us can live in relative safety, health, and happiness without having to do a damned thing. What is so wrong with enjoying the fruits of our labor?

Re:$3500 fine?

[stealth_finger]

These people should be arrested, at gun point, and put in prison.

Why at gun point?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Duhavid]

Large companies set prices not on costs, but on "what the market will bear".

As long as the delta is reasonable, they will produce. What really happens is that the bright executive who manages to get workers for a pittance will get a larger bonus.

Re:$3500 fine?

[torkus]

It's no so much the cost of products needs to go up...but the excessive compensation of executives and shareholders needs to go DOWN.

Re:$3500 fine?

[torkus]

Take a trip down to mexico for example. A few years I went to Cancun on vacation and they were installing something (probably electrical conduit) in the ground alongside the highway.

No backhoe. No construction trucks in sight. Just a dozen guys with shovels that were apparently dropped off there to do their work. Oh, and no supervisor in a vest standing around or silly 'flag men' mindlessly waiving traffic.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know the only reason people exist is to generate economic activity.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

This rides the iron law of wages. This is "part of the problem". People have basic requirements to live, and will acheive them by any means necessary. If the robot can do it for $0.10/hour, but there is no reasonable way for a person to be fed (or feed their families) without working for pitence or stealing, you will have some portion working for $0.09/hour and some portion stealing. As the income drops the percentages shift.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if this wasn't contra to every example in history of minimuim wage being raised it might be a valid point.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Lord Lemur]

Read up a bit on the GINI and the effects of changing the shape of the GINI. It fundamentally disagrees with your statement. You might also correlate when we decoupled minimum wage in the US from worker productivity per hour also coincides with the precipitous plunge in real wage growth.

Re:$3500 fine?

[TwoEyedJack]

Objectivists are not responsible for over $115 trillion in unfunded liabilities. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the work, though low level IT work, isn't really minimum-wage-ish. Also, the total back wages doesn't seem to include overtime pay rates either. So, it's more on the order of 98% of the time.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

You almost have more unsourced anecdotes than sentences in your reply :) And I cannot tell if you agree with the argument made or not or simply don't know what you're saying. Since if you try to say that people who are on minimum wage have no need for government assistance, it supports the argument that there should be a minimum wage.

Now as far as entry level jobs are concerned, the fact of the matter is that automation will eliminate all virtually-zero-skill jobs (and more) so unless we want hordes of desperate, homeless people scavenging (and stealing) it will be necessary to have a system which enables everyone to either pay back a student loan or receive free education (+ assistance with living expenses whilst studying). Not to mention that to remain competitive in a global economy, it's a massive shot in the foot to have some people earn wages that are so low that they can compete with automation. Countries in which people in such a situation (i.e. no job, no education) are able to study until they become more cost-efficient than automation will outcompete countries which stick to the deprecated model of entering at a zero skill level and working your way up. It's simply too slow a process.

Re:$3500 fine?

[m3000]

This! I worked in France for a few months, while staying on US payroll, and as part of the work visa process my company had to prove they were paying me enough to comply with French laws.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Khashishi]

You don't personally know a good representative sample of people.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you think companies will happily pay double* in salaries** ***, without raising prices? And you call him(her) confused??

*based on the oft-spoken-about $15/hr min wage, which is double the current min wage.
**remember, it's not just min wage salaries that go up. If a cashier makes min wage, and a supervisor makes min wage * 1.5, and a manager makes min wage * 3, then ALL salaries double if min wage doubles.
***And, it's not just salaries that go up- supplies are bought from other companies... who themselves have to pay more in salaries and thus raise their prices, too. And their suppliers have to raise prices, too, etc.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Duhavid]

I would think the 50k payday and being able to go back to a jurisdiction where they can thumb their nose at the NDA would be even more of an enticement for these workers to cash in.

And why the presupposition that the American would be less qualified?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Khashishi]

You got things confused. Government is supposed to act in the interest of all citizens. Businesses act in the interest of their shareholders, not the typical consumer. Sometimes these interests align, and sometimes they don't.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? What businesses has he busted? He's going after the employees, not the employers.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Khashishi]

People have more to spend when you put less restrictions on what they can do with their labor.

You mean, rich people have more to spend. You are perhaps morally opposed to redistributive effects of taxation, but you'll have a hard time arguing that it doesn't improve the spending power of the poor.

Re:$3500 fine?

[doggo]

It's not just a joke, it's an insult to every worker in the U.S. This company should have been closed down. Shuttered. Its executives should go to jail. Its assets should be liquidated.

If the company is so ethically-challenged as to blatantly disregard U.S. labor laws, what else would they be willing to do to make a profit?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, but they're responsible for the great majority of the massive national debt.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding from someone familiar with the case is that they were in the U.S. on L1-B visas that had been legally applied for; it's common practice for companies like IBM to pay their existing wage plus a per diem when they send someone to India to train people there, or to otherwise resolve issues in the foreign country.

I am calling BS on this explanation. Companies don't use L1 visas to send employees to the US for a few weeks at a time (for example, for training). Plus, companies almost always use lawyers to process such visa applications. The lawyer would have advised them of the need to provide an equivalent salary.

Re:$3500 fine?

[gstoddart]

You don't seriously expect businesses to be fined in a way that actually hurt them, do you?

That could impact profits and executive bonuses, and we can't have that.

Re: $3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is also the problem with companies using and abusing the "temp" term. I have been with a company for over a year now a sa "temp" no benifits, no holiday pay, no PTO, no sick pay etc. etc. I was told id be upgraded to fulltime "within 6 months" A year later, nothing

which is why im currently looking into other jobs now that the market has gotten better im getting hits once again.

Its a good system, however its ripe for abuse (but i guess 12 an hour with no benis is better than nothing)

posting anon due to modding ~ganjadude

Re:$3500 fine?

[tnk1]

Minimum wage, to be effective, certainly needs to rise with cost of living at the very least. If it is ever static, then those workers are losing money every year just by standing still. I do think Minimum wage needs to track cost of living in a society where we assume an inflationary currency as normal policy.

Another problem with minimum wage is that it has to scale to the rates in places with different costs of living, so you can end up being unable to support yourself in one place while being semi-comfortable in others on the same wage.

I think we should probably end the minimum wage and start handing out actual items like food and housing in lieu of that. If our goal is really for people to have food and a roof over their head, then we should be providing that, and not throwing a wage around that doesn't guarantee any of that, or which can be misspent.

That or we need to start doing the math and figuring out if we really can, under any circumstances, actually provide for everyone. If not, we need to stop deluding ourselves and set realistic goals. I personally believe the US produces enough to feed every citizen at a basic nutrition level. However, I am not certain we can house all of us, except at a basic level and I am certain we can't buy all of us cars, even crappy ones. We need to ask what the minimum wage is really supposed to ensure, and if it is reasonable, let's just provide it.

Once businesses don't have to be responsible for paying for employees' necessities, then they can pay whatever the market will support and the workers will decide if they want to bother with working at McD's for $1.20 an hour in spending money and they won't have to accept a job there just to feed and house themselves.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, as an investor, if im not getting paid by bankrolling your company, im going to invest in gold..... now what happens???

~ganjadude

Re:$3500 fine?

[tnk1]

Both, probably. I don't think any one solution will work. Executives are a popular target, but the whole system needs an overhaul. People were still poor even when executives made a lot less money relative to everyone else too.

People are being replaced by robots, computers, or cheaper foreign labor. The people who used to work in those jobs need to either get retrained for entirely new ones or we need a different system. Even if you pay out a higher minimum, you only need so many people to work at McD's or on a farm, and frankly, we really should just replace the people with automation, and make it as cheap as possible to generate food and products. Then simply find a way to move towards an economy where you don't have to work for essentials. Our first step towards post-scarcity.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all so wrong on so many levels. One company does something horrible, and of course now let the All companies are evil and all off shoring companies are doing this and all corporations exist just to oppress the workers and glorify the owners, etc. etc.

The article has all the trappings of agit-prop:

"paid several employees as little as" - So perhaps as few as one, perhaps as many as all eight. But as the article didn't say, so probably one.

"some employees...worked up to 122 hours" - So perhaps as few as one, because they didn't say. Did they do this because they were told work these hours of we kill you? Or because they were passionate about the work? Were they forced to do this? Doesn't say.

The comments that make up the salacious quotes - where do they come from? Some egghead at UC Berkley (A bastion of left wing ideology). A guy from a firm that drinks from the government trough (Marin Consulting).

Nothing about Silicon Valley based startups - Where people regularly put in absurd hours for little to no pay, for the dream of an equity stake that rarely materializes. How often are these prosecuted for not paying minimum wage? Would you believe... NEVER?

I am inclined to believe the companies HR rep who said it was a mistake, and they cooperated fully, and happily paid the money. But let's turn this into an emotional populist "Get all those evil off shoring companies and string 'em up in the public square" moment.

Why does this strike a nerve with me? I'm sure you all think I am an evil right wing extremist troll. Well, you'd be wrong. I am a hiring manager. Who can't find decent developers in the U.S. and have been forced to hire people offshore to stay in business. So the reality I live in is go offshore, or go on welfare. This, of course, makes me an evil heartless bastard who is taking jobs away from Americans, right? Despite having a half dozen good paying programming jobs on our website, and on all the major job boards, for months. The applicants we get are absolutely clueless, for the most part, and have absurd salary expectations for a junior developer. Oh they claim to be senior... The offshore guys we hired work hard, do quality work, and are being paid well above the market rate in their home country.

As for illegals... If we didn't give illegals drivers licenses, and social security cards THEN PEOPLE WOULD NOT HIRE THEM.

Re:$3500 fine?

[MooseMiester]

There's also an implied assumption that the wages/prices ratio is something plotted with straight lines. That is, that there's no "sweet spot" where the two intersect.

Oh there absolutely is. If U.S. Government backed securities pay 2%... then a 100% safe return is 2%. But let's say you want to get ahead in life. The answer is you take on risk. Invest in the stock market, that's risky, you might get as much as 3000% and you might lose it all. That's how the world works, pal, I can't change that. (By "Pal" I am referring to anyone who is too stupid to understand this simple fact of life)

Start a small business. That's what's driving the majority of the growth and creating the majority of the jobs - Not big giant evil corporations, small businesses that anybody can start. You put your money at risk. For the first few years you work insane hours at low pay - or no pay. Minimum wage laws do not apply to business owners. Your return is what you sell your product for, minus what you pay your employees. Odds are, you'll fail - most small businesses do.

It's the same story for each and every one of us. Get a JOB, lower risk, lower return. Start your own business, higher risk, higher return.

So along comes some nameless bureaucrat thousands of miles away who knows nothing about your business, nothing about your products, nothing about the local market you operate in... and he says "Thou shalt pay every employee at least X. If you have employees who are happy making less than X, you must give them a raise to X" Are you with me here? What do you think just happened? You, as the owner, has two choices. If you're paying people MORE than X, you start thinking about paying them X. If you're paying people less, you don't want to reduce YOUR return, you have all the risk, you're going to raise prices. The whole scenario just got all fucked up.

Wages and Price ratios can't be plotted with straight lines because a bunch of well intentioned idiots decided to fuck up the system in order to make it "fair". These same people believe that all people are complete clueless idiots, who are too stupid to place a value on their work - and that all employers are cruel, heartless bastards who would pay everyone a penny an hour if they thought they could get away with it. This is, of course, complete nonsense. Good happy workers create good products and give good service. They are the biggest investment you're little business has, and if you are going to survive, you treat them like gold.

Yet - if you understood the simple example here, you've already proven you are much smarter than that. The fact is, the wage/price "sweet spot" is unique for every business. But no, we can't accept that. Instead we force a "one size fits all" on the universe - When in fact, each and every one of us is unique. And in so doing, we create huge problems we never had before.

Re:$3500 fine?

[MooseMiester]

In principle, yes. But in reality business buys government to bend the law to benefit the stockholders, thus making the leaders of business and government the ruling class. This is exactly what has been going on in places like Chicago and Detroit for 40, 50 years. And as we elected someone President who grew up in Chicago... big surprise! Income inequality is much, much worse than it was under a Texas Cowboy wanna-be, corruption is at an all time high, there's no attempt at all to disguise outright bribes to party loyalists, and things are getting more fucked up by the day. The majority of the population things we are on the wrong track, while here on the Internet we all shout ideological propaganda at each other that neither side believes, politicians just say that shit because they believe we are all stupid.

I'm NOT disagreeing with you. I am simply truing to make your point in a much more in your face kind of way for the benefit of the readership here.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Dahamma]

Yup. It's happening now at a smaller scale, and it's not sustainable...

Though according to the lofty ideal sci-fi future, once the robots can both extract resources and produce goods (and repair each other) with no net capital costs, society and the economy should become "post scarcity" where everyone can enjoy the same luxuries and standard of living.

But that assumes that those who own the robots don't mind giving up the economic power they wield and lifting everyone up to their level. We all know that's not going to happen. So I think our best bet is the robots revolt and maybe keep us around as well-fed pets.

Re:$3500 fine?

[doccus]

I think your proposal is solid. That is precisely why it won't happen. Not, at least, until we have another occupy movement that is persistent enough to avoid being dissipated by the federal police.

The sociopaths that control our government do not respond to appeals to justice. They don't give a rat's ass about fairness or even sustainability. The *only* language to which they respond is force.

Until we force them to do what is reasonable, they will not. And mustering that force requires mustering agreement among hundreds of millions of complacent Americans.

Good luck with THAT!

That's precisely how it is in CAnada, at least here in B.C. Disabled persons get a monthly stipend of $900 here, but we are not prevented from working , if we can find an employer that will hire us. Most will not, repeatedly citing the "unable to afford another employee.. business is poor" line. However, they will pay the maximum we are allowed to earn ($500) for which we work ,often, full time. So , essenttially, they are subsidised by the government $900, and we earn a maximum of #1400.00, in a province where rent and utilities for one person can easily reach a mimnimum of $800. and the extra costs involved in working such as car insurance and gas equal $200 Per Mo. Sounds like a subsidy , to me...

Re:$3500 fine?

[beastofburdon]

Except that labor is a very small percentage of the cost of most products. Raising the pay of workers will raise the cost of things some, but not nearly as much as companies say in their fear mongering press releases. There is a point where raising the pay of workers begins raising the cost of products significantly, but we are currently far below that on almost all products. The real reason pay is held back is to make sure the gap between the wealthy and the poor is the greatest possible.

Re:$3500 fine?

[Vrtigo1]

Agree. If this is the standard punishment it's only good business sense to pay folks $1/hr and hope you don't get caught. For every hundred businesses doing it, I'd guess maybe a few get caught, so you essentially have a 90+% chance of being able to save yourself a huge amount of money, but if you do get caught it's no worry because all you have to do is pay the employees what you would've paid them anyway, plus a $3500 penalty.

This is grossly inadequate enforcement of our laws which affects all of us that are trying to demand higher wages. If someone from India can be hired to work for $1/hr, where's the incentive to pay an American minimum wage? The penalty for this ought to be based on the revenue of the company, and it should be steep enough to hurt them enough to be a real deterrence.

Re:$3500 fine?

[q4Fry]

I really want to understand your last sentence, but I can't (no sarcasm). Can you restate and/or elaborate?

Re:$3500 fine?

[Lord Lemur]

Up until 1972 we had a few things happening. We had increasing GDP - per worker - per hour, we had increasing real wages, and we had the minimum wage pegged by law to a percentage of the productivity per worker per hour (thanks to those filthy Unions). The percentage escapes me currently. Then, in their (Legislature) infinite wisdom minimum wage was decoupled.

  The minimum wage has become a very small percentage of what it would have been (Almost $30 an hour in today's dollars, more than our median wage of around $20) because increases in productivity were no longer shared with workers and businesses. Business profits have expanded, however. As the automation process advanced and wages continued to be depressed the distribution of income became far less uniform. In simplified terms, those with the least income are your pure consumers. These folks have to spend every cent they earn, and many are negative savers because of this. So while wages have increased nominally and in real terms (for middle-class, but not the poor), the amount of productivity retained by the employer for each hour of labor has increased, about 75% (I’m going to call that a Corporate Greed Tax, because calling non-tax things a tax seems to be a cool thing to do) is retained by the employer now.
 

This could provide some optimal equilibrium I imagine, if there was some complex shared ownership scenario, but in our situation we have consumers with less money locally to purchase their own production back. The vast majority (about 90%) are worse off in this situation. Now by using, as you put it, an inflationary tax (what Randian craziness is that?) in the form of a minimum wage that is scaled to productivity you can shape your GINI curve, and get more of your consumers consuming. If, all things being equal, I can leverage 50% of my productivity (after Corporate Greed Tax) instead of only 25% I am strictly better off.

Now we certainly couldn’t go directly to $30 an hour for minimum wage overnight, and the issue is a bit more complex than this simplified version. We should properly be leveraging productivity enhancing technologies, driving wages up, driving work hours down and sharing in the Information Age boom in productivity, the same way we (via Unions) finally got our piece of the Industrial Revolution.

So it was worth it for the employer.

[random coward]

Assuming they get caught half the time this is a huge cost savings and they continue.

$3,500... really??

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to teach employers not to break the law like this, the employees should have been paid 3x their original earnings.

Re:$3,500... really??

[Obfuscant]

Want to teach employers not to break the law like this, the employees should have been paid 3x their original earnings.

They were paid more than 3 times their original earnings. They were paid at $1.21 an hour originally and then at $8/hour as backpay. They also got a bonus for travel, and almost certainly got money for room and board.

Re:$3,500... really??

[weilawei]

I think you misunderstood. The concept is called Treble Damages. The GP worded it poorly, so I can see where confusion might have arisen. Essentially, they should have been paid 3x the difference between what they should have made and what they actually did make. So, $8.00-$1.21 = $6.79. Then, multiply that by 3. So, $6.79 * 3 = $20.37/hr for the first 40 hours. Additionally, this doesn't take into account overtime (remember those 120 hour weeks?) which (at least in MA, where I'm from--not CA!) is 1.5x the base rate. However, IIRC, certain states (not sure about CA) have exemptions which allow companies to get away with not paying programmers overtime wages. That figure should also have been tripled (as well as the fine against the company should have been tripled). What it boils down to is that they got screwed left, right, and sideways by both the company they worked for and the courts.

Re: $3,500... really??

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, throw the management in jail, never let them run a company again and make them pay a million or two from theif own pockets in damages.

Re:$3,500... really??

[__aaltlg1547]

And that's just for the wage theft. There's also the issue of the immigration violation.

Re:$3,500... really??

[RatherBeAnonymous]

According to TFA, the workers were brought in to "help install the company's computer network and systems in connection with the move of the company's headquarters from Foster City to Fremont." That sounds more like IT technician work, which is not exempted from overtime in California.

What 3500$?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

3500$ per hour of stolen wages? per week? per employee? what the hell is wrong with our system? This is a slap in the wrist, and a clear permission to employers to violate all labor standards. They CEO's lunch tab could be more than this...

Re:What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

this doesn't even qualify as a slap on the wrist; more like a fart in their general direction

Re:What 3500$?

[Pinhedd]

It's not entirely unusual. Many regions have exemptions in their labour laws to deal with workers that are only in the jurisdiction temporarily, usually to perform short-term contract work.

Imagine if the roles were reversed. An American company sends a couple of technicians to India to fix some machinery and tries to pay them minimum wage in Indian Rupees rather than American Dollars.

It's obvious that there was some sort of abusive employer-employee relationship (eight employees working up to 122 hours a week for over three months and they only helped install computers? Yeah, sure), but what's not clear from the article is how these employees were retained by the company in question and whom was ultimately responsible for negotiating and paying their wages (it's not clear if it's the same employer, but I assume that it is).

While I'm sure that this particular instance is an example of straight up labour abuse, it's not always quite so simple.

Re:What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate executives will continue to break our laws until we start sending them to prison. Remember the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? 11 workers died due to BP skating safety regs to save a few bucks. How many BP executives have been arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced? None.

Now, as a thought experiment, let's have some oil rig workers kill 11 BP top executives. I bet the cuffs would be on the killers' wrists within an hour.

Re:What 3500$?

[roman_mir]

What stolen wages? From who were wages stolen? The only thieves in this case are the government, who stole money from a company on a pretence that some 'wages were stolen'.

A bunch of Indian people are working in India, making Indian wages come to the USA to do some temporary installation work and they continue being paid Indian wages. What the fuck is wrong the AMERICA?

Re:What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

> let's have some oil rig workers kill 11 BP top executives

Where do I sign up?

"In this country it is found good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to encourage the others." - Voltaire

Re:What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell is wrong with our system?

Nothing. It is working as intended.

America is an oligarchy that pretends to be a democracy, with a wealthy aristocracy who can bend the ears of the potentates to the degree that they are rich. Labor laws are there to shut the masses up while employers (the rich ones, anyway) are free to violate said laws with relative impunity.

It isn't just. But it is exactly what those in power want, and what the masses are willing to accept.

Re:What 3500$?

[riverat1]

It's one thing if you bring someone in for a few days (say 5 or less) but that was stretching things to the breaking point..

Re:What 3500$?

[Joe_Dragon]

just need a jury to look the other way.

Re: What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whom, not who. That error is deserving of correction. AFAICT, the rest of your post was worthless.

Re:What 3500$?

[narcc]

Please tell me that you're being sarcastic.

Re:What 3500$?

[roman_mir]

Please tell me what the fuck is wrong with you? A guy works in a company in India, he is making a market set wage there, obviously he is not forced to work in the company, he is making the best money he can in his country in that company, otherwise he'd be working somewhere else in his country.

He comes to the USA to do some installation work of the product that was developed by his team in his country. How is this at all a sane idea that he now needs to be paid something entirely different based on the country where he is doing installation rather than what his actual salary is back in the country where he was hired and where he has his actual job?

Sarcastic? What is wrong with you?

Re:What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

<3 never change you crazy ol' coot. You and APK really set the mood on Slashdot, just like the creepy old stuffed animal heads in grandpa's study.

Re:What 3500$?

[narcc]

So you think that it's okay for a company to, for example, hire a number of people from an impoverished country with a lower cost of living at a rate acceptable to them while living in that country and bring them to another country with a dramatically higher cost of living while offering them the same (now clearly unlivable) wage while they're here?

Let me guess "no one forced them!" Sure, they didn't have to come here to work for slave wages under horribly abusive conditions. They could have stayed in their home country and lost one of the few jobs available to them.

If believing that people should not be unfairly exploited so that a socially irresponsible company can save a few bucks means that there's something wrong with me, then that's a label I'll proudly wear.

Re: What 3500$?

[kenh]

There was the $20BN 'Recovery Fund' - that's just under $2BN/dead worker...

Re: What 3500$?

[kenh]

If the same company sends US workers to India, will the workers accept India-level wages? How come this only works one way?

Re:What 3500$?

[hey!]

What's wrong with our system is that corporate shills call anyone who suggests any restraint on corporate behavior a "socialist", and enough people are scared that only bloodless corporate tools can get elected.

We vote like a bunch of pussies, and we get the government we deserve.

Re: What 3500$?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it isn't a violation of the law. Minimum wage => can not be paid less. Unless India has a maximum wage there is no binary relationship here.

Re:What 3500$?

[Pinhedd]

You're absolutely right. I'm not defending the company in the slightest. I'm just pointing out that the case at hand is not a clear case of a broken system and not "clear permission to employers to violate all labour standards". The company got caught and fined. The punative fine is not substantial and I'd love to know how they managed to argue it down so much but they won't be able to make the same argument if they get caught again.

Re:What 3500$?

[Khashishi]

read up on mens rea

Re:What 3500$?

[Khashishi]

That is a totally reasonable point of view, but it's important for USA to put its foot down to prevent this from being used as a loophole to pretty much all labor laws. Pretty soon US companies would only hire foreign nationals to do their work.

Re:What 3500$?

[RockDoctor]

He comes to the USA to do some installation work of the product that was developed by his team in his country. How is this at all a sane idea that he now needs to be paid something entirely different based on the country where he is doing installation rather than what his actual salary is back in the country where he was hired and where he has his actual job?

Speaking as someone who moves around the world to operate software, train users and install and maintain equipment which my company develops here in the UK, no, I don't expect my pay rate to vary much from one country to another. There are local variations (dislocation pay rates if I'm more than 2 time zones away from home, which makes contacting the wife harder ; hardship rates for when working in disease-ridden hell holes with a good chance of being killed on the way to work ; overtime rates for more than 40 days a quarter away from home) which add up to about a 30% variation in pay rate from one job to the next.

There are, however plenty of employers in this business who do deliberately hire from the cheapest countries they can, and pay discriminatorily low pay rates as they move those staff around the world. We do try to harm them, our competitors, by hiring their best staff on UK contracts. If that means that we pay them like local maharajahs, we don't care. We still hire them out at UK rates, and shipping them around the world is a negligible cost (compared to finding the right people. Why should we care which continent they live on? That would be as discriminatory as hiring a Brit and paying him on a Thai rate just because he live there with his Thai family, even if he's working in Angola.

IF the company in question is based in India and this is what they're doing, then there's no problem with that. If the company is HQ'd elsewhere, then that's the rates they should be paying their staff on.

(Incidentally, our typical working day is 16 hours for seniors, 12 hours for juniors ; that's 112 and 84 hours per week respectively ; obviously in a crisis, you do what's necessary to not die, but generally that's not more than a few days of overtime.)

See, they don't need H1-B visas...

[Anonymous Coward]

They can just do this and then they save millions in labor costs and healthcare...

Re:See, they don't need H1-B visas...

[ShaunC]

Plus I'm willing to bet they claimed the travel expenses on their taxes. What did it cost to fly in 8 guys from India, and then fly them back a few months later? BLR to SFO, even booking the flights a month in advance, is about $800 per ticket and that's only one way. Could have easily been a $20K+ write-off, in addition to the other benefits they got from the arrangement.

Re:See, they don't need H1-B visas...

[Anonymous Coward]

They flew them back? lol...

fwd.us!

[Midnight_Falcon]

The real reason tech companies want more H1B Visas is clear: So they can exploit foreign workers in a mix between the days of indentured servitude and the company towns of the Industrial Revolution. Too much education and culture has gone into making Americans averse to such exploitation; but companies manage to sponsor employees and get away with paying them a pittance under this system. It's the closest thing to chattel slavery still legally viable.

Then, when it gets found out, the company pays a slap-on-the-wrist order a fine....almost nothing compared to fines for sexual harassment or other torts that might affect Americans.

Re:fwd.us!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have worked a few 'off shore' resources (not by choice).

I could hire for about 20k for about 6 months 5 developers. 1 of the 5 were any good. I could rotate them out until I had a decent group. If you work that out it is about 300-400 per employe per month and they probably got about 2/3rds of that.

Now let me put it in the terms of another group I worked with. They came over and pulled out their smart phones. They paid about 5 dollars a month for 20gig of data and unlimited talk and and 2k in text messages. What we would see as horrible pay they see as good pay.

I am not saying it is right. But it is a matter of perspective. They can literally step out their door and see squalor. They see it as an opportunity to do better. Things are wildly cheaper there. It can be as it is a short trip to china or even in country for manufactured goods.

I have to work at least 10x harder to keep up with them. Because they are 10x as motivated not to end up in the street.

Re:fwd.us!

[Anonymous Coward]

I surely jest. I was an expat for more years than I should in 3rd countries, and black and indians are very limited in what they do. The worst part of it, is they do not say no, they say they know and will do everything you throw at them "eventually". No, I do not need to work 10x harder, I just need to work smarter, which let one say, it I can do with one of my hands tied to my back.

Re:fwd.us!

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think this went through the H1B Visa process?

Re:fwd.us!

[Khashishi]

Basically, if you are simply acting in accordance to already existing unequal systems, then it is exploitative, even if people don't feel exploited. It takes a proactive stance, not a neutral stance, to combat exploitation. It's understandable that people from poorer countries will gladly accept lower wages and will be thankful for opportunities granted by a multinational corporation. Probably they are better off for it. Nevertheless, the corporation is still exploiting them. They are arbitraging in labor in an unfair labor market in which people are not free to change national allegiances. Corporations should pay a wage commensurate with people's skills and not based on where they happen to come from, not because it makes business sense, but because it is more fair. Yes, call me crazy, but I do expect people to act outside their own self interest.

they got it backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

the employees would've been thrilled to split the $3500 among themselves. A $40K fine might mean something to E for I or they might remember it for a while.

Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[dirk]

The reason companies keep doing this stuff is that they have deemed it cost effective. Let's assume they get caught 90% of the time. That means that would have to pay $31500 in fines for the 9 times they were caught and would save $40000 for the time they didn't. They are coming out ahead so the fine are just a cost of doing business. These tiny little fines are not going to stop things like this from happening. At minimum, the fine should be the same amount they would have "saved"(preferably more). At best, we should start putting people in jail for breaking the law just like we do regular people who break the law.

Re: Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

It definitely needs to be more than they would have saved. If they're statistically breaking even, it's still not much of a deterrent.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably fines would be higher for repeat offences, but it's still very low. The fine should be sized to equal any benefit the company gained * 2.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the thing -- they WERE fined the amount they were "saved" -- if the imported workers were being paid minimum wage. Domestic workers doing the same job would have wanted considerably more for the job. Without any escalating penalty for repeat offenders or changes in the penalty structure, it's going to become a cottage industry to just continue to do this and eat the fines. Worst case, you're paying minimum wage for skilled labor.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[MrKaos]

At minimum, the fine should be the same amount they would have "saved"(preferably more). At best, we should start putting people in jail for breaking the law just like we do regular people who break the law.

It is "Justice" "seen" to be done.

In reality the penalty should be so severe that no sane employer would expose them selves to that sort of risk. Currently it is like the "slap" in slap and tickle, a little exciting if you get caught and rewarding if you don't. Unfortunately because unions are unpopular in the tech industry there is no organization powerful enough to lobby the congresscritters for law reform as the tech industry settles more and more into mainstream and sleazier employers enter the market.

Great set-up if you want to exploit people though.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[godrik]

I am not too familiar with US laws and regulations. But I assume that if the same company get caught twice or if DoL start catching one company like that every week, then the fines will become higher.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[LordWabbit2]

Jail time for the manager who made this decision. Even it if it's just a lower echelon peon who is punished (at first). It won't take long before the peons either refuse to take the blame or refuse to follow the order. On the other hand, I am not sure what exactly "install computer system" entails, but if it involves clicking next a lot then they could have hired college students.
Wait let me break with tradition and actually go RTFA
Meh, doesn't say, but it does say they would not be able to legally pay ANYONE at that price. Must have been a nice windfall for the indian workers 8x their normal salary. To be honest it sounds like mostly manual labour, they were moving offices. So relocating PC's and running cables. Get people we know and trust in, pay them extra for the long hours and temporary relocation so the job gets done without having to educate new temp employees. Companies do it all the time. I was shipped out to Namibia to do software installation and customization and my salary was not adjusted (granted I was not earning minimum wage so it's not really relevant).
When the company in the article was notified of their fault they paid the employees and the fine.
Seems more like Americans are happy with Indians and Mexicans doing manual labour, running taxis and all night shops but as soon as it touches the tech industry they get all defensive.
I am not saying outsourcing to India is not an actual problem, I am saying that this post is overstating things and worded to create a negative response.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

At best, we should start putting people in jail for breaking the law just like we do regular people who break the law.

Sure, let's start with everyone who breaks the law by driving faster than the legal speed limit. That's not to say that there aren't compelling arguments for a good strong minimum wage - or that wages for low skilled workers shouldn't generally be higher. But if we're going to allow people in the USA to buy products made in other countries by people paid less than the US minimum wage then we can't really claim some general moral outrage about people being paid low wages.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a fine of 3X whatever PROFIT* they made during the time they were screwing the employees AND send a few executives to serious jail time? THAT would get their attention...

* as determined by forensic accountants, not their own beancounters

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens in the US is other companies see that they got away with it and then everyone is doing it so nobody gets prosecuted for fear of making waves.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Anonymous Coward]

But if we're going to allow people in the USA to buy products made in other countries by people paid less than the US minimum wage then we can't really claim some general moral outrage about people being paid low wages.

Gahd, this stuff is messy.

First, those people working in foreign countries for less than US' minimum wage were likely making a killing compared to their country's definition of minimum wage. That employer was likely considered one of the best employers to work for there.

We can't help it when other countries treat their workers like shit, and a hell of a lot of them don't give a rat's ass for their workers. They're little more than serfs.

We can help them by employing them to work for, relatively speaking, very high wages compared to their domestic employers.

We can also save a pile of cash by not employing lazy, expensive labour here. Would you sew t-shirts for $1.25/hr in 120 hr work weeks? They're happy to have that work. It beats the crap out of their alternatives.

I'm no Apple fanboi, but I don't begrudge them employing Foxconn to build their iBaubles. I wish all workers the world over were respected equally, but that's Pollyanna-ism. Lots of countries treat their workers like shit. Hell, I think we treat our workers like shit. Think about those cheap clothes you buy made by Bangladeshis working in buildings that threaten to collapse and kill them at any moment. Think about the bribery and graft endemic to those countries which perpetuate such atrocities.

We are at times a very ugly species, or lots of us make us look so. That doesn't equal evil. Often it's just that all the beauty has been sucked out of the equation by facts of life. Blame it on the rich pricks who're buying politicians there, but don't forget there's a lot of rich pricks buying politicians here too.

Who's more evil? A Walmart shopper, or a Pharma stockholder?

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[wonkavader]

You are incorrect.

The workers they brought over were not allowed to work in the US. If they had been on H1Bs, they would have to have been paid competitive rates for skilled workers (you can't bring over H1Bs unless they have skills you can't find enough of in the US) so they must be worth $20 an hour at least. If the workers had had real work visas they could have gotten low skill jobs which paid a bit more than minimum wage and would have gotten overtime, would have had some rights, could have negotiated with their employers, gotten raises, changed companies, etc. Certainly they needn't have worked for EFI and gotten minimum wage and no overtime.

So this company didn't save $40,000. They saved more than $80,000. And the government looked right at them and yet still somehow managed to look the other way.

So your points are logically correct, but they save more like 40 cents on the dollar even if they're caught 100% of the time.

Yes, jailing EFI's board of directors would be a start. They are responsible for the company and ultimately, if you can't figure out who really broke the law here, they're responsible. They are also the most likely to affect change, once they get out of prison.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[wonkavader]

We do jail people driving way over the speed limit. Google it. People get points on their licenses and have them suspended or revoked for repeat offenses.

Re:Maybe we should actually penalize companies

[Lonewolf666]

I agree with the overall sentiment, but your numbers are not quite correct.

The article in the San Jose Mercury News says that the company had to pay the difference to the California minimum wage, $40,156 in total, plus a fine of $3,500.

So this time, they had in effect to pay the minimum wage, plus $3,500, plus some bureaucratic hassle to deal with the affair. Lets call it a loss of $4000 compared to doing things the lawful way. Had they not been caught, they would have saved $40,156 compared to doing things the lawful way.

That makes it mighty attractive to do it the illegal way at least until the first fine, even if there is an escalating penalty for repeat offenders. I think the penalties need to be much bigger for first offenders, and escalate from that.

$3500 fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect, they have been doing this for over a decade with illegals.

No one has the balls to go after the companies that make use of slave day labor.

If you started fining companys every month a good chunk of money 5-10 grand, graduating 15,20,40 60 for frequent abusers things would change quick.

Yes yes prices may go up, but as minimum wage advocates say, if you have to pay people more, they have more to spend.

Pretty trivial penalty

[nytes]

So the company still got their computers installed by paying minimum wage, and also bought a nice laptop for some U.S government employee.

Sounds like they got a bargain.

Re: Impossible Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely doable. That gives them 7 hours a day to sleep.

Increase fine and throw executives in jail

[techdolphin]

I would make the fine at least triple the back wages owed, 120,000 plus the back wages. We should also throw the executives in jail. If anybody stole $40,000 they would face serious jail time. I do not see this as being different from stealing.

Re:Increase fine and throw executives in jail

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Jailing the executives would probably be the only effective strategy. Any fines just get passed along to customers - and the companies likely have ways to deduct the amount of the fines on their tax returns.

(No doubt, however, if executives realistically faced jail time for the illegal behavior of the companies they manage, they would demand even higher pay - and probably "hazardous duty" pay for any time spent in jail.)

IBM tries to do this too

[magarity]

When I lived in China between '07-'09 I interviewed at the local IBM office to do data warehouse ETL. They wanted to pay me a local wage around $1000/month but send me to the US on an 'L' visa whereby they wouldn't be subject to US wage laws which the manager said "we do it all the time". When I pointed out they couldn't send me to the US on any kind of visa since I'm a citizen, they dropped all contact.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[AK Marc]

You should have just said yes, and see if you could get something in writing from them. Having that would have earned you more than the job would have paid, and made interesting reading for us.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[Anonymous Coward]

you should have taken the job and then sued for backwages.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[UnderCoverPenguin]

A former coworker of mine, who is an immigrant from India, used to work for an India-base company. They assigned her to one of their US offices under an 'L' visa, paying her what she would have been paid in India. This was very common practice by her (now former) employer and many others she knew about. I suspect it still is.

FWIW, while in the US, she met and married a US citizen. She asked to have her assignment be permanent. but the company declined. She quit and quickly found a job offering 5x what her previous employer paid. Maybe should could have sued her previous employer for back pay, but didn't think about that at the time.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not true. L visas must be paid the average or more. basically same as H, they are easier to get, but with the catch that you have to have worked for the same company overseas for 18 months minimum.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course what the manager said was not true. That's the whole point of their story.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[magarity]

Nope, there's no wage requirement on the L's, only for the H's. But there is a requirement that the employee work for the company at least a year before getting an L. Yet the IBM office wanted to send me right away on one.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[whoever57]

Yeah, the whole issue around H1's is misdirection. People should be looking at how L1s are being (mis)used.

Re:IBM tries to do this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you selfish asshole, why weren't youmthinking about our needs?,

Fuck the Fine--prison

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the fine, how about prison time for the corporate officers, HR and any lawyers who knew about it.

No such thing as bad press!

[Anonymous Coward]

When you need digital prints at criminally low (wage) prices, think EFI - Employees Fucked Intentionally.

Who wants to bet

[MerlynEmrys67]

There will be about 40,000 dollars in unpaid overtime being worked in India over the next few months to make this all back. At this point the workers are back in India where the US Department of Labor can't do anything about it...
Outsourcing companies are almost the definition of evil.

Re:Who wants to bet

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be about 40,000 dollars in unpaid overtime being worked in India over the next few months to make this all back. At this point the workers are back in India where the US Department of Labor can't do anything about it...

Outsourcing companies are almost the definition of evil.

Those laborers just got a lump sum payment of 1 to 2 years their normal income. Do you really think they came in to work the next day?

Seems ridiculous to me

[amyckono]

It's amazing that $1.21/hr is all that stands between an employment dispute and human slave trafficking. The company and involved employees should be punished much more severely, imho.

Re:Seems ridiculous to me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing that $1.21/hr is all that stands between an employment dispute and human slave trafficking.

The company and involved employees should be punished much more severely, imho.

It's amazing to me that you're so ignorant of economics around the world that you cannot conceive of a person voluntarily working for $1.21/hr. For 120-hour weeks this is about $20 a day which is just about exactly middle-income in India. I highly doubt that these people were slaves.

LOL $3500

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet that company was glad they ripped off workers rather than the music labels.

If it were the music labels they would have been up for 100 times the amount

Re:LOL $3500

[Tablizer]

I bet that company was glad they ripped off workers rather than the music labels

If this lopsided penalty situation is not strong evidence that the USA is slipping into a plutocracy, I don't know what is.

Re:LOL $3500

[Anonymous Coward]

When was this mythical age when the USA was not a plutocracy?

Re: Impossible Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The market, the market, the market

Next week

[sjames]

Charles Manson is in for a stern talking to. They are considering finger shaking.

What would the company that had the work done say?

[Bomarc]

The company where the work was done... not much was said about them in the article. Did they pay top dollar -- and get $1.21; or did "Electronics for Imaging" lowball, and the company knew something was up and just didn't say anything?

American culture in Action: Spare the rod

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a fundamental part of American culture: Don't overly penalize businesses. They create jobs. If we make it hurt too much, the moneyed class won't open businesses, and less people will be employed.

Bullshit.

Companies get away with murder...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but labour unions are the bad guy.

Re:Impossible Bullshit

[Khyber]

Please, I came REALLY close to doing that much while I was in Texas constructing a hydroponics building.

And I'm like half-crippled.

And it was 7 days a week, by my choice. Prevailing wage, room and board, plus spending cash for when I wanted to go out and treat myself. Start work at 3AM, done by 7-8PM, hit the town for a couple hours, come home, sleep hard, wake up, pop coffee down gullet, repeat!

I did that almost a full straight month.

As I think has already been pointed out

[rsilvergun]

in other parts of the thread, if you don't fine someone several times the profit made from the illegal activity and you don't put them in jail then they will continue to do the activity. I doubt they lost money on the deal, so why stop?

Also, the damage wasn't limited to the employees. Everyone in tech (which is most of /.) lost wages when the prevailing wage for tech workers was depressed as a result of this behavior.

Re:As I think has already been pointed out

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unclear that the prevailing wage for tech workers was materially depressed by having 8 people spend 3 months installing networks.

Don't get me wrong -- this was definitely a violation of labour laws and it seems likely a violation of immigration laws, and at first brush I agree that $3500 seems like a low fine. Because it's abuse and abuse should be nipped in the bud.

Re:As I think has already been pointed out

[Anonymous Coward]

Because these unethical managers believe this is the value of tech workers. Not really, I'm sure they realized this was an amazing deal/steal, but they must think the real amount they should pay is much less than $25 an hour or whatever the prevailing network technician job pays.

Re:As I think has already been pointed out

[Macman408]

I think that's where the determination of willful violation versus accidental can make a difference. Sure, if they knew they were violating the law and did it anyway, then they absolutely deserve a bigger punishment. If it's just a case where they didn't really consider the implications of bringing foreign employees to their US office, a small penalty isn't unreasonable. If they weren't willfully violating the law, they're more likely to follow it for its own sake, rather than due to a financial threat.

It's run by the wealthy

[rsilvergun]

and these policies benefit them. Workers are at each other's throats. Blue collar guys blame white collar guys for not protecting their jobs when manufacturing went away in the 80s. White collar guys are isolated and convinced they should be able to make it on their own. Meanwhile the rich pick us off like ants. It's gotten to the point where Union is a bad word. The AMA? The Bar? Unions by any other name. But run by rich guys that know better than to associate with the riff-raff they want to screw...

Cheating Rampant, Reporting Not

[Tablizer]

I've personally worked in a shop where they paid the H1B visa workers once every 6 months. They also didn't pay overtime, just the strait hour rate. (But at least it was the right total amount, overtime aside.)

The visa workers had no intention of complaining because they risked getting booted home if they did. (It was during a recession.)

It was at a big company that contracted through a smaller company so that the big company didn't inherent any legal risk of cheating. From the big co's perspective, they are merely paying the contracting company for hours. Where and how the workers were actually paid was legally the small contracting firm's responsibility. Thus, the big co got the benefits of cheating but not the risk. (And the small co. was probably a reshuffle-able front of some larger outfit.)

Re:Cheating Rampant, Reporting Not

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the wonders of pure unregulated capitalism and greed. Surely the trickle-down effect must be working wonders for the economy and society as a whole.

Re:Cheating Rampant, Reporting Not

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I suspect that the biggest aspect of H1 reform needs to be giving them more freedom to work and even spend longer here while unemployed. Since if they have more power they're less desirable for abuse.

That's just it

[rsilvergun]

if it's so easy to outsource and we don't need any workers here why do we even have the H1-B program in the first place? Could it be that there's a benefit to having workers here? I keep hearing that if we don't let 'em have their visas their just outsource the work anyway. Let 'em. We'll just take back all the land they own. Don't want to live and work in America? Fine. You can go home, but you can't take the ball...

Re:That's just it

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... Are you retarded? The HB-1 system is supposed to be for importing talent that doesn't exist in America. Think top scientists, researches, etc. Super specialized and super rare. It's being used to import people with talents plenty of Americans have, but who are willing to work for $1.21/hour.

A simple fix to HB-1 program: every HB-1 employee has a $150,000 tax attached to him or her. If the person is worth it (ie unique and truly unable to found within the US), you pay the tax. Otherwise, fucking hire local Americans to do the job for you.

Re:That's just it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Um... Are you retarded?" ...says the fool who writes H1-B wrong...

Totally believable

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a branch of EFI. They would charge our unit for every call we placed to HR. HR screwed up my dental benefits, I had to call several times to get it straightened out. Even though it was HR's mistake, they still charged our unit.

Something doesn't add up

[Dereck1701]

Something about this doesn't add up, $40,000 distributed between 8 employees is about $5,000 per employee over about 3.5 Months. Assuming that they all worked the Sept 8 - Dec 21 window that figures out to about 15 weeks, or about $333.33 a week that they weren't paid I'm guessing to get them to minimum wage (all BEFORE taxes). Even figuring an average of 100 hours a week that puts their minimum wage pay in California at about $900, where as at $1.21 it would only have been $121 a $779 difference. Those "special bonuses" must have been pretty hefty. Somehow this doesn't sound as nefarious as the Labor Department is making it out to be. It could be some cultural thing, kind of like how in the US waitresses aren't paid much of anything but they make it up and more in tips. In any case they were underpaid by US standards, but not nearly as much as the Labor Department is claiming, and assuming that they weren't trying to skirt US Taxes by claiming to be under India's auspices. US taxes alone would eat up that $333 difference and put them right back in the same boat they were in as before if India's taxes are far more lax.

122 hours at ca min wage is about 1.5K

[Joe_Dragon]

and they are to cheap to pay that? ok 1.21HR even with OT pay is less then 40 hours at CA min wage.

What us work wants to work that when MD's pays more. In and out burger pays a minimum of $10.50 HR.

State of CA should fine them as well.

[Joe_Dragon]

and give the workers full back pay + court costs.

Re:Impossible Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the brain damage working out for you?

tip?

[Anonymous Coward]

not to blame the victims but why didn't the Indian employees complain about the low wages or long hours? I'm confused.

Re:tip?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Because they would have been shipped backed to India and lost the pay they were given. Or are you really ignorant enough to think they had any power in the relationship?

Re:tip?

[dbIII]

That's the libertarian dream - power to the powerful and the rest can go hang if they can't afford to pay a lawyer to impose some power.
Hopefully I'm dumbed that down enough so that those who will be offended by it can understand before their replies about how that isn't a "real" libertarian view, just that bunch over there that call themselves libertarians but somehow are not.

Re:tip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey I can do that too: "Well the Democrats' dream is to give companies no rights at all so that the government can micromanage them". You are taking one political viewpoint and painting the most extreme position for it. Tell me, are you purposefully being intellectually dishonest, or are you really that ignorant to the varying degrees of libertarianism?

Re:tip?

[dbIII]

or are you really that ignorant to the varying degrees of libertarianism?

It was only a short post so I'm not sure why you didn't read to the end of the second sentence which is the one that addressed that.

Re:tip?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Democrats dream of true slavery. No pay for work. Democrats are the champions of racism and slavery.

Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, they were used to replace a number of American workers. They should have charged 10x per worker what the average American would have gotten for that job. Once foreign companies understand that we do similar things that they do in their nations, then they stop trying to cheat.

$3500 fine? Someone email Liz Warren on this

[leftistconservative]

really, this is the sort of thing she could get on board with and use it to get to the presidency.

USA created by and for the plutocrats

[leftistconservative]

I quote james madison, father of the constitution--the structure of the federal gov't created by the constitution has the purpose of "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." He also wrote that the senate was created to maintain wealth INequality.

Re:USA created by and for the plutocrats

[gewalker]

Maybe you should quote him in context.

The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe, — when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

Madison intended a rule a benevolent statesman, not defacto slaveowners. In his mind, the purpose was to limit democracy so that mob rule does not simply vote itself the privilege of sharing the wealth of the rich. Madison may not have been terribly wise in seeing the future. But he at least had the foresight to protect against socialism. His protection against the evils of capitalism was also clearly inadequate too.

Re:USA created by and for the plutocrats

[Anonymous Coward]

But he at least had the foresight to protect against socialism.

So you disavow yourself of public roads, utilities, transportation, etc. right? We can't have you feasting on the spoils of socialism, right?

Re:USA created by and for the plutocrats

[Anonymous Coward]

>protect against socialism

Fuck you.

The "social market economy" in (West) Germany, constituted after WWII, combines the best of capitalism with social welfare legislation (health care, education, regulation against the worst excesses of capitalism, etc.). It is STILL the economic powerhouse of Europe, 70 years after it was instantiated.

Knee-jerk revulsion against "socialism" marks you as both ignorant of what it is and how the real world works. You want pure, "laissez-faire" capitalism? You better be rich or enjoy living in Dicken's London.

Fuck you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

The social market economy refrains from attempts to plan and guide production, the workforce, or sales, but it does support planned efforts to influence the economy through the organic means of a comprehensive economic policy coupled with flexible adaptation to market studies. Effectively combining monetary, credit, trade, tax, customs, investment, and social policies, as well as other measures, this type of economic policy creates an economy that serves the welfare and needs of the entire population, thereby fulfilling its ultimate goal.

he essence of the social market economy is the view that private markets are the most effective allocation mechanism, but that output is maximized through sound state macroeconomic management of the economy. Social market economies posit that a strong social support network for the less affluent enhances capital output. By decreasing poverty and broadening prosperity to a large middle class, capital market participation is enlarged. Social market economies also posit that government regulation, and even sponsorship of markets, can lead to superior economic outcomes, as evidenced in government sponsorship of the internet or basic securities regulation.

Re:USA created by and for the plutocrats

[Anonymous Coward]

You... don't really put it in a better light.

Used to work in their IT department

[tphonl]

Can't say I'm terribly surprised

Re:What would the company that had the work done s

[tphonl]

It was all internal to EFI - they were moving their HQ from Foster City to Fremont, and the 8 Indian workers were in the US to help facilitate the move.

1.21$ per hour

[50000BTU_barbecue]

"But hey, it's not theft, because those people choose to work at that wage and if they're not happy, it's not like we're preventing them from flying to where the jobs are, right?"

That's how some people think...

No wonder

[raind]

I am having a hard time finding a job. Competition like this.

Not it should have been 10* more

[aepervius]

You need to make the fine so painful that it does not become simply a "cost to do business" but rather a shattering experience which brings your firm to take such laws & rules seriously.

Frankly a fine which is less than 1/10 of the backwage, and no prison.... You can be sure as hell that the lessons taught is "try again folks : if you are not caught , you spare ten of tousands of quids, and if you are caught, Baah, no chip off your shoulder, you only pay 8% fine over the amount you tried to leech". What fucking kind of lesson is that ? And on the otehr side fine about copyright infringement were , what, 1000 times the price of the work infringed ? If that's good for the goose, then that's good for the gander too.

Tell them what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a "Social Wall" -- http://w3.efi.com/about-efi/social-wall

It's the magic of twitter.

Re:Tell them what you think

[wonkavader]

They have a "Social Wall" -- http://w3.efi.com/about-efi/so...

It's the magic of twitter.

There's only one mention of it on that page.

Tech labor

[confused one]

So... if they can get away with doing this for tech labor, that means my company can bring 10-20 engineers from our China site to work in the U.S. We can pay them their current wage (no adjustments necessary) and only risk a trivial slap on the wrist if we get caught. This is a win-win. What a great precedent they've set here.

Re:Really?

[Zeek40]

Yeah, I mean slaves were willing to work for free, so it' pretty damn obvious that paying employees at all is stupid.

lesson from Milton Friedman

[s.petry]

Minimum wage exists because we don't currently have a free market. I'm assuming that people are too lazy to read the books, but highly recommend them.

Yup, that was the fine

[s.petry]

An anonymous tip prompted the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate the case, which resulted in more than $40,000 in back wages paid to the eight employees and a fine of $3,500 for Electronics for Imaging.

In this case, should not the HR people and management be facing criminal charges for slavery? Forcing people to work 120hr work weeks and paying them an illegally low wage strikes me as something that should be sitting on a prosecutors desk. IANAL, but I'd be interested in hearing from one. A 120hr work week is an 18 hour day 7 days a week.

Re:Really?

[RightSaidFred99]

Willing slaves huh? You is smart.

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh why don't you get stomped by godzilla you japanese race traitor.

Re:Really?

[narcc]

You'd be willing to work for free too when the alternative is being beaten to death.

Re:Really?

[LifesABeach]

I thought overboard was how personel handled this type of issue?

Looks like a win/win

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't punished then after all? $3,500? If I were a company I'd try this over and over. Some would be a hit and some would be a miss. If the worst case scenario is simply paying what was owed then BAYAM!!! Profit.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA was founded to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people - that is, ordinary people. At the time, Europe was governed by a small hereditary ruling class living out lives of frivolous luxury by exploiting everyone else. The founders of the USA wanted something different.

Their goal was not to create a a country where ordinary people were fully employed producing luxury goods for the hereditary ruling class - spurred on by the faint hope that once in a blue moon an ordinary "Cinderella", with the right physical proportions, would be able to become a member of the hereditary ruling class. Their goal was a country where ordinary people could live secure comfortable lives free of exploitation and oppression by a hereditary ruling class.

I've been to countries without an effective social safety net or minimum wage. And, yes, unemployment is lower: you'll see little a girl standing out in the middle of a busy intersection beating a broken drum hoping that a few drivers will pay her for her performance a coin or two so she won't have to go to bed hungry yet again. In a certain sense, a triumph of capitalism - even the young children are employed providing entertainment for the upper class.

Full employment isn't the point. Yes, there's a lot of work that needs doing - and despite their claims of greatness the rich simply aren't capable of doing it all - ordinary people do need jobs. The point is that ordinary people need good jobs - jobs that pay enough to live securely and comfortably. And to the extent that such jobs are not available to everyone who needs one then there's needs to be a strong social safety net.

minimum wage in india

[Anonymous Coward]

This amounts to Rs. 15,000/month which is equal to a personal driver salary in bangalore.
I dont know any one who is remotely connected to IT who will work for this pittance in India.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

(To argue as a modern conservative)

But they did have that choice, right?

Isn't it better that they had that choice?

Or do you not want them to have choice?

Re:Impossible Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between coming close and hitting it when you're at that level.

How?

[kenh]

Where did they find housing in Fremont they could afford at $1.21/hr?

How did they feed themselves?

How did they afford the plane ticket to SF?

Let me guess, the company paid for all the above, and subtracted it from their wages... That's about the only way you can approach $1.21/hr.

Now, about that 121/hr work week - that has them working 5 days straight per week, with Saturday and Sunday off... Or about 17 hours a day, every day of the week.

Let me guess, the folks filing the claim subtracted sleep time and founded every waking hour as a work hour because they are either in company housing or at work...

Bottom line, I think their supporters are working too hard to make their case - like the homeless advocates who redefined homeless to include folks who would be homeless if they list their jobs and only have a few weeks savings to live on...

Re:How?

[dbIII]

Now, about that 121/hr work week

I've done weeks like that during plant shutdowns but never for more than five weeks in a row. Possible, but stupid for a wide range of reasons. Medical interns put in those sort of hours too but get sleep here and there during that time when they are on duty. Not just possible, but widespread, and stupid for an even wider range of reasons.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do some basic research on India wages and you'll find your assumptions are off base. I have actually worked in India as an IT Manager for 2 1/2 months out of the last 4 months.
Network Engineers with CCNA and three years experience make around 30,000 INR per month. 30000 INR is equal to $545 USD per month. $545 USD per month is just about equal to $3.40 if you work a 40 hour work week. It is highly doubtful that these PC Installers were paid as high as a Network Eng. It is highly doubtful that they would have only worked 40 hours a week while in the US.

Sorry, dude: It's not competition like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, dude: It's not competition like this... I've just read a lot of your previous posts, including the fact that you're a smoker, and frankly, in an open plan office, people are not going to want to work with you over the smoking. They'd probably rather have someone who smelled like yeast or butyric acid (feet), due to B.O..

There's half a dozen drug references in your posts, including to cannabis and cocaine, including a reference to metabolites being found in a hair sample during drug testing. Your grammar occasionally degrades, as it might with drug use.

In addition, such as on Aug 25th, you've made some relatively racist comments about Indian recruiters, which you presumably determined by their accents. You did again on Mar 29, referencing "white trash".

You also appear to be in Detroit (references to Delray, Zug Island, the Marathon oil refinery, other references to Detroit); this is not an area of the country where you can expect employers to locate and hire you, you likely can not expect to work remote without a track record with the employer, and don't expect to get relocation costs paid these days.

For a small company, you should also perhaps (due to a mention of a preexisting condition) *not* expect to be invited to join a small employer insurance risk pool, even if they were to overlook the smoking, now that the ACA has kicked in and forced them to be insurance company customers.

Your problem is definitely not competition from some L1-B folks shipped in temporarily from Bangalore because they were already employed by EFI, and the were going to be having downtime anyway as the company headquarters were moved from Foster City to Fremont (a trip across the San Mateo Bridge, about 25 miles south of San Francisco). It helps that they already had NDAs, and were unlikely to blab company secrets, having been employed by EFI in Bagalore for 18+ months.

I feel for you, dude, but you really need to clean up your act if you want to be employable (or alternately, start your own consulting business, but at least lose the smoking during the time you shower in the morning, and the time you're done meeting with your clients, and definitely don't answer phone calls while you're high, and probably avoid being responsive in email that might trigger a phone call, if you absolutely must get high.

Re:Sorry, dude: It's not competition like this...

[raind]

Sorry dude, I should have said finding the work I want. Actually I do what I like. Thank you.

Criminal organization

[dutchwhizzman]

This is clearly a crime, thought out well in advance by a group of people. Membership of a criminal organization afaik is a felony. Are the owners and management of this company prosecuted for this?

Re:Really?

[Hognoxious]

The USA was founded to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people

Where people = well-off white men who own slaves.

Slavery is alive and well

[Anonymous Coward]

> Some employees worked up to 122 hours a week.

This is truly insane. What was the Civil war fought for? The offenders need to be punished the way Gen. W. T. Sherman punished the southern slaveowners during his March to the Sea - by pillaging their ill-gotten property and razing it to the ground.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA was founded to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people

Where people = well-off white men who own slaves.

The original implementation left a lot to be desired but the underlying ideal is something that Americans should rightly be proud of: government for ordinary people where a person is not artificially limited by the circumstances of their birth.

Fighting back

[Anonymous Coward]

American Tech workers are getting shafted because we can not compete with this imported slave labor. Every time these head hunting companies, large corps etc. scream they can't find workers, and ask for 200k more foreign workers to be permitted into the US and are successful...they become emboldened and the outcome is something like this incident. This company knew exactly what they were doing. I guarantee they did not forget to bill their they customers/clients at the USD rate.

I have watched some talented engineers leave the data space over the years and enter into different fields because they got tired of being treated like dirt because of a saturated cheap market comprised of less talented/cheap tech's that are brought over here like this group. If the US is not competing it's because our standards have dropped!

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I thought they created a country where only white male landowners could vote, and black people were slaves.

fine of $3,500, what a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

wow fine of $3,500. I guess the company won't do that again!!

Wow way to not tolerate it...

[nedlohs]

So as long as they think they'll only get caught 11 out of 12 times it's profitable to keep trying.

Re:Really?

[Shortguy881]

"with the right physical proportions" - They must be fat

Re:Really?

[SecurityGuy]

Mark Cuban? Is that you?

Re:Really?

[Java Pimp]

Why is this modded troll?

Oh no a slap on the wrist with a wet noodle

[Atrox666]

A company like this should be seized and auctioned off with the employees getting first refusal on any deal.
Any stock owners should be allowed to sue the board of directors for their loss.

Unless this kind of activity ruins careers then it will continue.

This is abuse, fraud and theft.

$3,500

[Anonymous Coward]

Fined $3500 - savaged by a lettuce leaf!

This is incorrect

[PPalmgren]

FLSA mandates they pay time-and-a-half for all hours over 40 per work week, unless, being in the tech field, they were exempt by the specific type of work and making at least $27.55/hr. Obviously this isn't the case.

Its also likely that because of willful infringement, the employer is responsible for paying ALL of the employee's share of employment taxes and income taxes, plus the necessary employer match for the employment taxes. They were also likely fined by the IRS and State Unemployment for the willful infringement on the tax side, which wouldn't show up in the punitive back wages fine listed above.

In short: The workers got paid overtime, and the total penalty is probably the above mentioned $3500, plus about 40% of what wages were listed. Also, if it ever happens again, they'll likely get some jail time.

WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

A $3,500 fine? This fine does not jive with the claim that "We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior from employers." If you want employers to steer clear of these practices, make the fine $3,500,000 or so.

Safety Net

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Here is my proposal.

A negative income tax to help the lazy, the unemployable, and the unemployed.

(Poverty Level - Federal AGI) / 2 = Credit
Cannot be claimed as a dependent.
Must be a legal resident.
22+ years old, qualify.
18-21, must be living away from relatives (7+ months of the year; think college students if their grants are less than the poverty level)
17-, must be living away from relatives (11+ months of the year) and be emancipated

I'd also create an OPTION for self-employed individuals who are sole-proprietors. Allow a $2k business deduction in lieu of itemizing. This in purpose makes the first $2k tax-free when it comes to self-employment taxes.

I also would like to see true universal health care. Perhaps single-payer.

Re:Safety Net

[amiga3D]

Better yet. This country is rich and can easily afford to house and feed a significant portion of it's population. The problem is that we pay them to have children and thus that portion of society grows at a greater rate than the more productive members who have much less children. The solution is to pay people to be sterilized. That way those that don't want to work don't have to and they wont be passing on that culture to another generation.

Re:Safety Net

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care if I get modded down for saying this.

Such a thought would make Hitler proud.

Re:Really?

[Dishevel]

You are so good at this debating thing. There is no possible way to lose using logic like yours.

So the argument goes like this ... "You would be willing to pay a fucktard $15/hr to flip burgers too if the government was holding a gun to your head!"

Did I do that right?

Re:Really?

[Dishevel]

Actually there were many founding fathers who thought slavery was a bad thing. It was at the time a difficult thing to fight. Slavery had been being done everywhere in the world since the dawn of man. The Jews were slaves to the Egyptians. The Romans built an empire from the efforts of millions of slaves. Even the tribes in Africa enslaved members of other tribes.

But I am sure that when you speak of slavery you only think of the harm done to blacks in the US. Other kinds of slavery were different, Right? Try to remember for a second that those founding fathers created something that was much better than anything that came before it.

They were well off. They had money and power. They risked it all. No one knew if the revolution could be won. The British were all powerful at the time. They risked their wealth, their power, their lives and the lives or their families by becoming Traitors. Had the revolution failed they would have been hung as traitors. Their families would have been lucky to get off with only having all of their lands and possessions taken.

They were brave and they risked much more than you or I can imagine doing. You go ahead though and sit there with your awesome knowledge of all things and point out what pieces of crap they are and how you would have done it soo much better.

Re:Really?

[amiga3D]

When there is no real free market then there is no choice. The current era of corporate collusion can hardly be called capitalism.

Re:Impossible Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked 18's 7 days a week for 6 months. We ate at our desks and the "commute" was about 4 mins from bunk to office. With bathrooms and chow in between.

seriously, not troll

[Anonymous Coward]

no idea, I tried to mod him up, but hes too far modded down, I should have used my mod to mod the other post troll instead it seems

Jack Welch (GE), Tea Party, Republican WET DREAM!!

[cboslin]

Mr Welch is famous for wanting to put a factory on a barge and anchor it off the cheapest labor source country available, even he did not expect to be able to get away with his low wage crap in the USA!

Tea Party and Republicans want Right to Work for Less, will say its unfair, but secretlly love it. As their Koch Brothers and other Citizen United enriched cauffeurs push for...after all you don't support their anti-labor pro themselves BS you will be primaried.

WOW, $3,500 is all it costs a company to get away with this...that is super cheap. Can you hear the flush of high paying tech jobs increasing to India because of this. A better solution would have been to put the business out of business.

After all the Supreme Court, thanks to Citizen's United, has judicailly stated that corporations are people, time for a few of the bad actors to get the Death Penalty.

So many states, Republican and Tea Party controlled, are failing financially right now, when will people learn, their polices (all of them) do NOT WORK! They never did, they never will. This BS started in the 80s, with President Reagan, and they could get away with it because this country had a huge middle class (huge supply of families with money that could buy goods and services). Both parties, Republicans and Democrats have slowly whittled away at the middle class to the point that the wealthy 1% can no longer maintain the economic viability of the country...thus we get recession, depression and low wage jobs.

Low Wage jobs are not an equitable replacement for Higher wage middle class jobs that have been lost and will never come back thanks primarily to the Republicans and Tea Party's unwillingness to do what is right for this country.

So many countries have lost their vertical markets for their products because this cheap offshort labor steals their products and undercuts them in the market...don't look to most Americans to cry for you....you cheap businesses have done this to yourselves.

Ironically insane as they keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result...idiots.

You can not be pro-family and anti-labor.
You can not be anti-single payer health care and pro family.
You can not be pro religious and care nothing for the least among you.
You can not be pro-family and create an environment where two paychecks (from the mother and the father) will not provide the same standard of living as that parent's grandparents.
You can not be only focused on religion and kill families financially, what do they have left to tithe with?
Heck if two parents have to have three or four jobs to have a standard of living less than that of their parents and grandparents...have you really helped them at all? NOPE. This is what Republicans and Tea Party candidates say they are for based on morality...put up or shut up.

Full Disclosure: I am no Democrat, NAFTA was not good for us, but I recognize the only political party at the national level to balance the budget was the Democrats with President Clinton. Republicans and Tea Party have never done that.

And why every vote Republican and Tea Party, they have nothing new and only come up with any plan after being lambasted for not having one...remember the conservative yahoo standing up holding the blank piece of paper at President Obama yelling, here is our plan....telling, very telling.

Say Balancing the budget is not needed, I understand the financial benefit of a very strong economy, yet Republicans and Tea Party fail to learn the lessons of the past...you can not economically pull yourself up in a climate of Austerity with only lower paying jobs being created and expect that to happen.

Hey politicians, all of you, How many high paying jobs have you created today? Last week? Last Month? Last Year? While you were in office?

Jobs that pay under $14 per hour do not qualify.

If one company can do it, others can, but won't.

In n Out pays (for a decade now) a new high schoole

Re:Really?

[Hognoxious]

Because whatever the purported ideals are, it's the implementation that really matters?

Re:Really?

[Hognoxious]

Actually there were many founding fathers who thought slavery was a bad thing.

Clearly not enough, or that unpleasantness 100 years later wouldn't have happened.

They were well off. They had money and power. They risked it all.

And that gives them the right to cling on to them?

You go ahead though and sit there with your awesome knowledge of all things and point out what pieces of crap they are and how you would have done it soo much better.

Irrelevant. How about you go ahead and tell me how they were able, two-and-a-bit centuries ago, to come up with a set of rules that would cover spaceflight, nuclear bombs, and the internet.

You're no better than the Taliban.

Re:Really?

[Dishevel]

It is all good dude.

Not everyone has the ability to learn after they think they already know something. I am sure you can still be useful as a burger flipper or a university professor.

You're right!

[rsilvergun]

It's a good thing this is the only time in recorded history labor practices have ever been abused. Whoo. Dodged that bullet.

Jokes aside, the assumption is that there are many, many more of these abuses going on, and that their aggregation is what depresses wages. I suppose the argument could be made that these are few and far between, but then there's no real harm in harsh punishments, is there?

If they really wanted to punish the company.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Dept. of Labor really wanted to punish this company, hint: It's obvious they don't with a $3500 fine. DoL would immediately terminate any visas they currently possess and bar them from having for any visas for a period of time, say one year and force them to go through the entire process as if they were a new company requesting visas. Jailing the executives is a good idea but won't stop the next CEO, CHRO, or any other "CO" from doing the exact same thing, only making sure they don't make the same mistakes the former "CO's" made as they are sitting in the Federal country club with barbed wire fencing. Yes, a few decent foreign nationals on visas will have to go home, but perhaps it's a favor so they aren't the next victims, or more accurately do not participate in the exploitation of the next bunch they bring in.

If DoL really wanted to punish this company.

[weweedmaniii]

If the Dept. of Labor really wanted to punish this company, hint: It's obvious they don't with a $3500 fine. DoL would immediately terminate any visas they currently possess and bar them from having for any visas for a period of time, say one year and force them to go through the entire process as if they were a new company requesting visas. Jailing the executives is a good idea but won't stop the next CEO, CHRO, or any other "CO" from doing the exact same thing, only making sure they don't make the same mistakes the former "CO's" made as they are sitting in the Federal country club with barbed wire fencing. Yes, a few decent foreign nationals on visas will have to go home, but perhaps it's a favor so they aren't the next victims, or more accurately do not participate in the exploitation of the next bunch they bring in.

This is shitty pay, even by Indian standards

[balajeerc]

As a developer in Bangalore, I can tell you that $1.21 per hour for 100 hours a week, for say, 4 weeks a month at Rs. 60 to a dollar, comes out at Rs. 29,040 - which is shitty pay for tech support employee who is putting in such a grueling work routine. By that, I mean that I would be hard pressed to find IT employees even in India to work at those rates. I would only be able to find unskilled labourers to work at those rates. I'd urge the local government there to check if the company is digging a secret tunnel or something of that sort , which is about the only the only sort of work they would be able to muster with labour that comes at those rates.

Re:Really?

[Swave An deBwoner]

All the time you eat. That's a no good. We got to get-a money.
Right now, I'd do anything for money. I'd kill somebody for money.
I'd kill you for money.

Red looks slightly worried.

Ha ha ha! Ah, no, you're my friend - I kill you for nothing.

Red smiles.