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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.
They can just do this and then they save millions in labor costs and healthcare...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.)
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Log in or piss off.