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Displaced IT Workers Being Silenced
dcblogs writes A major problem with the H-1B debate is the absence of displaced IT workers in news media accounts. Much of the reporting is one-sided — and there's a reason for this. An IT worker who is fired because he or she has been replaced by a foreign, visa-holding employee of an offshore outsourcing firm will sign a severance agreement. This severance agreement will likely include a non-disparagement clause that will make the fired worker extremely cautious about what they say on Facebook, let alone to the media. On-the-record interviews with displaced workers are difficult to get. While a restrictive severance package may be one handcuff, some are simply fearful of jeopardizing future job prospects by talking to reporters. Now silenced, displaced IT workers become invisible and easy to ignore. This situation has a major impact on how the news media covers the H-1B issue and offshore outsourcing issues generally.
Put the heads of Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. in prison for violating 15USC:
Send a few dozen Silicon Valley darlings to prison for a decade over the wage price fixing scandal and I bet H1B interest will collapse.
I haven't a shred out doubt that these people are being hushed up, by whatever means necessary.
What I do doubt is the significance of the effect on mass media coverage. Other factors are in play.
Corporate media disdains adverse coverage of the H1B scandal because it is portrayed as "racist" against third-world emigres, and also because hey, business is business, right? (wink, wink).
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Corporations and billionaires want to drive down the wages of white collar tech workers by importing cheaper H1-B employees. H1-B employees are also much easier to control as well since they can simply get deported if they stir up too much trouble for their employer. This is all done under the supposed auspices of saying there aren't enough "qualified" workers in the US. "Qualified" usually meaning "won't work peanuts like we want". At the same time, these CEOs have net worths that are 100s to 10000s of times the yearly wages of even these "greedy" and "overpaid" US workers.
"I knew slashdot was right wing these days"
LOL really?! The leftist propaganda keeps me away from this site most of the time.
Yep. The obvious "fix" that nobody seems to be taking very seriously yet is making it much more difficult to get permission to hire an H1-B worker.
Corporations are ALWAYS going to push for a plentiful supply of these as a cost savings measure, but it's ultimately the government who issues them. It's about time they start putting pressure on companies to PROVE they're unable to hire from the talent pool of American citizens before qualifying to go the H1-B route.
If you are made to sign a document against your will? Years ago, I applied to temp agencies for work. I was made to sign a document wherein I could not negotiate employment with a client company directly. A lawyer told me that document does not hold up in court because no one can stop you from looking for work. While references are something you do need and you are at a company's mercy for, a lot of stuff they make you sign is questionable and may not hold up in court. Especially if you are made to feel you have no choice and are made to do it to ensure survival. As a temp worker, I just wanted to pay bills and would have signed pretty much anything if I had to. The lawyer told me that was another factor consider as well, which further weakens such documents under scrutiny of the courts. While the argument can be made, 'just find work elsewhere', in a bad economy our choices are increasingly limited.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Not exactly; it is MEANT to be a means by which an employer can find someone from outside the country if they can't find the person inside; say... if you need a java developer who can speak both japanese, chinese, and english. A niche case that's hard to fill. Instead, however, big names like HP and MS will drop thousands of developers, then run begging to the government to increase H1bs so they can bring in folk at half the price or less ... who, themselves, are in a position of insecurity and disposability, ensuring they won't stand up for better wages and rights. H1bs were not designed to undermine american skilled laborers... it's just that unscrupulous major brands are exploiting it.
If the requirement were that the person brought it had to be paid at least as well as everyone else in that market (moreso, probably, considering the point is to find someone with a hard-to-find combination of talents) or otherwise way in taxes the entire difference in wages... I'm sure these guys would find there's plenty of people with the skills already here who'd be happy to do the work.
I'd get rid of the proof and just use a tax. Require a tax of 50% of the prevailing USA citizen wage for similar technology workers on top of what gets paid to the H1B. Then allow unlimited H1Bs. That makes sure the incentive isn't economic.
The author of TFA is exaggerating and assuming that the clause in the agreement is purposely for those who are replaced by H1B people. Either he or his friends/family members were affected by this. To me, the clause to not disclose any information about being let go is very common. If you are being "fired," there are many reasons. Also, the company will NEVER want you to say anything regardless how you are being replaced. These people will find something to blame on others regardless (and in this case is the H1B people who replaced them). I am not saying that all are legitimated laid off/fired, but I doubt that the "signing" the document is REALLY for the case only.
Then the author pulls in politic which, of couse, a more effective on those who do not like H1B already. TFA has some of the fact and reasons, but over all TFA contains bias against H1B people by using the word "being fired or replaced" to make TFA more dramatic.
Just curious. Are experienced IT workers with up to date skills really not able to find jobs? What about programmers specifically ("IT Worker" can mean a lot of things)?
I'm assuming that age discrimination is impacting some of these people, but what about relatively young software developers? How many of you are young and talented software developers with at least of few years of experience and are having trouble finding work?
I left before it happened but my former company outsourced all of IT to Wipro.
This was on a system with 60,000 users.
Everyone but management was replaced with H1B- workers from India.
Outgoing staff was asked to stay and train their replacements with no severance packages.
Very few stayed and turnover documents were not made (hmm I wonder why) so the incoming Wipro workers had to discover and document the systems themselves.
I hear it was a real nightmare with lots of $$ spent on contractors to help figure things out.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Which I will not elaborate here, not exactly on the nature being discussed. My lawyer told me, this kind of provisions only are enforceable while you work for them by our local laws, and since you are not an employee anymore, this clausule is void. That guy knows what he is doing...
if you need a java developer who can speak both japanese, chinese, and english.
And who probably knows what "both" means...;-)
I have been displaced on more than one occasion. Atos laid me off so they could hire a cheaper H1B worker. (Not a loss as they are a sweat shop)
Atos has several NO-Outsource government contracts and before my layoff they were discussing outsourcing them and putting one American to answer the phone so the government did not know it was outsourced.
There was a company that was backed by the airlines where the CIO was Indian and the whole IT group was H1B's. I was the only white guy there and I was laid off from them officially for "Not meeting there expectations" and was replaced by an H1B worker.
HP had several H1B workers working 80+ hour weeks and only reporting 40 hours. On the promise that they would "Make it up to them." They replaced me because I was saying it was illegal to do, yep they brought in another H1B to replace me.
Between H1B's and outsourcing work to India, IT has been a crappy field but I still make money at it.
The problem is defining the prevailing wage. The categories are overly broad. The average salary for a programmer includes all of the kids writing terrible PHP after reading a book about it for a couple of weeks and then getting a job in their parents' company. Getting someone who can write decent kernel or embedded C for the price of an average programmer is difficult. Getting any kind of programmer in Silicon Valley for the average salary nationwide is impossible.
And why would you make it a tax? If you can identify the rate that other, similarly qualified people are making, then you can just require that H1Bs get paid 10% more than that. The point of systems like the H1B scheme is (meant to be) to expand the labour pool when there are more jobs for competent people than there are competent people, not to drive down local wages by displacing people who want to work with people who are willing to work for less than the prevailing wage.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What, "Japanese, Chinese" isn't a single language? Next you'll be telling me "Overseas" isn't a single country!
We all want to have a monopoly on what we do for a living. We want limited competitor and supply s and be able to charge high prices. As consumers we want unlimited choices, lots of supply, and low prices. A free market will provide the latter and a command economy is required for the former. What we have now is the worst of both. Those with political power use it to restrict start up and small competitors while trying to have unlimited supply of cheap labor.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Thats not the way corporations use it though. Here in the Bay, an Indian corporation was illegally importing Indian workers to do his IT work, Microsoft lays off employees here in the Bay and Seattle and them goes before congress asking for more HB-1 Visas, etc. It's a scam to get cheap foreign labor. And if the labor isn't up to par, they have one US employee training them all knowing he is going to get laid off once he is done.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
And, well, fuck the non-disparagement agreement. It's not disparagement to post factual information.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Most (not all) of the H1-B's I ran across as an independent s/w contractor for 20 year in Silicon Valley did not work as employees for what would appear to most people as their "employer" (Facebook, HP, Adobe, Oracle, etc.) Instead, they were actual employees of job shops who were renting them out to the corporations at a mark up. So if the corporation terminated any of them, they were still legally employed by their job shop and, likely, soon sitting in another cheap seat in another corporation in a few weeks. As long as they work for dirt cheap, they get a seat. Meanwhile, those of us who have families to support and live here full time have to charge enough to pay the bills, unlike 20 somethings who dorm themselves up with 3-5 other H1-B's (all arranged by their job shop, I might add), sharing rent, a single car, etc. The whole thing is an insideous insult, IMHO, to American citizens. Those screaming loudest for "moar" H1-B's are corporate overseers who just want cheap labor so they can stuff their pockets with the results. Just my 2 cents. You try doing what I did for 20 years and see what you think. This shit is not theoretical...
Land of the free? Home of the brave? Greatest joke of all time!
Fuck the USA and fuck their corporatist oligarchy.
We have the world's largest prison population. How could we not be the land of the free?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Actually, depending on the terms of the dismissal (particularly how much notice is given), severance pay is not a benefit in the US, but required by law - http://www.doleta.gov/programs... In many of these cases, however, they're basically offering you that 3months+ of pay to be quiet (among other things). Even "I worked for a tech company that I'll not name, and was laid off when they hired foreign workers" may be in violation of the terms, especially when you start to ponder the strength of their legal team vs. yours.
"Much of the reporting is one-sided — and there's a reason for this."
There is more than one reason. The article gives one reason - and this was news to me.
However the other reason is that for some reason the reporting is very biased in favor of open borders. This is a situation where the well-known obvious liberal bias of most reporters fits perfectly with the often alleged corporate bias of the owners of most major media outlets. Diversity meets cheap labor is the perfect storm.
How often do we here about the need for "comprehensive immigration reform"? The very word "reform" shows the bias. And we already did it anyway, we traded amnesty for increased enforcement. The amnesty occurred but we never go the enforcement. Now the very same deal is being offered again? How often do you hear this outside of right-wing radio and (possibly because I don't watch it) Fox News? Yet it is central to why so many people are dead-set against a comprehensive deal. For a deal you need trust and there is no trust. But you don't see that reported in the Washington Post.
Build a border that can be enforced, then we'll talk amnesty (and I'll be in favor of it too). But we can't make a new agreement until good faith is shown through the fulfilling of the terms of the previous agreement. Would you go back and buy another car from a salesman who never delivered the previous one you bought and paid for?
One we have the trust, we can talk about the H1-Bs too.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
American companies should be required by law to hire Americans first and foremost, not try and save money by hiring some cheap developer from a third world country.
Nice idea. Too bad it doesn't work very well when you try. Want some history? Look at the Jones Act. Its stated purpose is to keep American flagged vessels (and crews) viable. Didn't work out well as the companies used one or another loophole to sabotage most of the effect of the law. Took them about five years to figure it out.
Not sure what the answer is, but when you have something that can move across international boundaries (cargo or programmers), it's hard to stop them from doing so.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It is hardly just 'major brands', I live in nowhere Pennsylvania and for all IT jobs I'm now asked on the application if I'm an H1-B visa holder and so need the company to authorize me to work in the US... The assumption across the country now seems ot be that IT workers are H1-B employees...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
The article puts the lie to the idea that these H-1B workers are filling jobs that there are no good American candidates for. The article, and one linked in it, talk about existing workers training their H-1B replacements. So, there are manifestly American workers who can do these jobs. They are doing them right now! The article also says they are often older workers being replaced. You know what that means; these older workers are highly compensated. As usual it's about the bottom line, with humans as resources to be exploited.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
There are limited advantage to Americans in H1Bs getting higher wages. There is a clear advantage to Americans in taxes being offset. Tax displacement helps boost underlying standard of livings and thus redistributes wealth to the people being harmed.
Depending on the language in the contract, posting factual information could very well violate these agreements. I believe you're thinking about libel or slander (i.e. false statements). Disparagement, however, doesn't have to be false. It merely has to cast the benefited party in a negative light. This can be a huge grey area and given the insane cost of defending a lawsuit, I understand why people subject to these provisions might be very reluctant to speak.
I'd get rid of the proof and just use a tax. Require a tax of 50% of the prevailing USA citizen wage for similar technology workers on top of what gets paid to the H1B. Then allow unlimited H1Bs. That makes sure the incentive isn't economic.
Ooh, I have a better one! Why not require that we pay the H1B the prevailing USA citizen wage for similar technology workers. That way, the workers get the money (they're the ones who should get the money) and it'll still make sure that the incentive isn't economic.
I'm so smart - I think I'm going to get a patent on my brilliant idea and then see if I can get my congressman to make it a law.
Do you have ESP?
This is all done under the supposed auspices of saying there aren't enough "qualified" workers in the US. "Qualified" usually meaning "won't work peanuts like we want".
I think this is an important point in the debate. They're not exactly wrong when they say that they can't find qualified workers, but the problem is that they have trouble finding qualified workers within the salary range that they've already determined. Given this, there are two different conclusions that can be reached: either (a) there are not enough qualified applicants; or (b) the pool of 'qualified applicants' is being restricted too much by low wages.
Both are true, from a certain point of view. Any time you would say, "there are not enough qualified applicants", there's a good chance that you could still find enough if you were willing to pay enough. But perhaps the "enough" that you'd have to pay is simply unreasonable. So in my opinion, that's really the question that we need to answer: Is the 'enough' that you'd have to pay in order to attract qualified applicants unreasonably high?
"They cannot make you sign, and if you're getting let go anyway, they can do nothing."
Of course they can: your severage package. Do you want a decent amount or peanuts? Then please sign on the dotted line.
how often do you hear of companies shit-canning your resume if you are found out (public record) that you sued an employer OVER ANYTHING, even valid complaints?
right, you don't hear of it.
the real shit in this world is never reported. but its been like that forever; its how mankind works (or, fails to work, in this regard).
the one law of the jungle: if you can get away with it, you can get away with it; especially if you are big and can lay down a serious smackdown to challengers.
there is no other justice than this, in the world. those with power, get away with shit and you and I have essentially no say. we take whatever crumbs come our way.
sad, but if you think about it honestly, its what we have in this world.
reporters? since when does the news report real news? since when does the news challenge those in authority? not since the past 20 yrs, since 'news' is now part of the entertainment and profit-centers of tv (newspapers are nearly dead, btw).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Wait, do they have to sign the agreement? Or are they paid extra for the agreement?
Nobody *has* to sign any agreements when they're being terminated.
However, many tech workers don't know that. Others are more worried about things like how they're going to find a new job if they get a bad reference from this one, so they sign on the dotted line. Still others want the "bonus" that's offered for signing.
You know how in Hollywood they say "Be nice to everyone you meet on your way up, because you'll see them again on your way down?"
IT is the reverse - "Be nice to people on your way down if you want to have any hope of getting back up." Employers are not likely to hire "complainers" because next thing you know, they'll be whining about having to put in 80-hour weeks and work/life balance and overtime pay.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
> This is all done under the supposed auspices of saying there aren't enough "qualified" workers in the US. "Qualified" usually meaning "won't work peanuts like we want".
Yes. If you've worked in a company that gradually fired locals to replace them with H1-B employees, you'll see how capable the replacements actually are -- no communication skills, no diagnostic skills, just a frightened willingness to work long hours. And oddly enough, when bad things happen, the company will just accept it if it can be shown that the employee was following a process.
Ostensibly, one of the qualifications that US workers supposedly don't have is following process. The expectation is raised that the job be fully documented -- that everything that happens in the job have a procedure to carry the employee through, and then the employees need only follow the procedure for a given issue. If you've worked in IT, you know how little of the job falls in that category. And so, much of the process becomes "raise a ticket with the vendor", and then when they find out that the vendor is only responsible for what the vendor sells, not how it's used, things get really interesting.
It's the worst of false economics. The company can show an immediate reduction in direct labor costs, but start to lose agility, robustness and reliability almost immediately.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's not what it was supposed to be originally. When American companies found out they had a similar control over H1-B employees that they have over "undocumented workers", IE, they're frightened, willing to work long hours for low wages, and are unlikely to cause trouble, then the idea just sold itself.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Me.
Mind you, this was 20 years ago, but I had made a remark that my previous employer must be having a paperwork problem with their Employee Stock Ownership Program, because it was June, and the plan required annual reports by the end of April, and I had still not received one.
TWO days later, a registered letter arrives from a Law Firm, warning me of the consequences of slandering my previous employer. . . .
I shut up. The Annual Report (and my final ESOP certificate) arrived in September. Needless to say, I liquidated immediately and rolled it to an IRA. . .
Mind you, that was over a CASUAL COMMENT on compliance with a filed financial plan.
As others have mentioned, employers would weasel out of using an realistic "prevailing wage" for such a system. For example, they'd make programming jobs look like phone jockey jobs and pay based on the phone jockey rate.
Here's an even better idea: Let corporations bid (annually) on the H1B slots, with the funds to go in some displaced worker program or unemployment fund. Have limits set on the total number of slots to be bid on...a limit which could only change by congressional approval (politicians would hesitate to increase this limit...doing so makes them look like enemies of the American worker).
I recently became friends with an Iranian woman and her family that are trying very hard to emigrate to the United States. She is currently in the process of trying to get hired and sponsored by one of these job shops because she has practically no other choice for employment here. Everyone in her family is very intelligent and hard working and my friend herself has masters degrees in computer science and business administration. She's an atheist, however, and she can't go back to Iran without a risk of being "outed" and imprisoned or executed.
Previously when I thought of "H1-B" I thought of exactly what you described. Young people with nothing to lose dorming up and working for peanuts because it's the easy way out, driving down wages in what should be a very competitive highly skilled job sector. I'm glad I met someone who showed me the other side of the coin. I consider myself a liberal and a humanist and I'm ashamed at myself for having held such a xenophobic view and expressing frustration with the people who are coming here seeking H1-B and similar visa work. Truly the only entities that deserve any derision for the wage depression and unfair labor practices are the sponsoring companies who pay such paltry wages and the tech companies that create demand for cheap foreign labor.
As a contractor, I will always be replaced by someone else. I make 80% more money than someone who stayed in the same position for years and accepts 2% raises as being normal. Hoarding documentation will only make my job harder and add to the corporate dysfunction I was hired to fix.
I can see this occurring in the past, but not the present. Everyone complains about everything online. If you really dig into someone's background, eventually you're going to find something objectionable. There would be hordes of people displaced if this was truly going on in significant numbers. A company can go after a worker, but it's going to be Streisand Effect. When they need to hire new talent, their candidates are also going to do a search. Who is going to want to work for a company that's notorious for silencing its workers?
At best, the employer might be able to reverse-direct-deposit the severance if the complainer wasn't smart enough to move the money. The courts aren't going to take a person's house or retirement savings, and that's probably as much "wealth" that the average American worker has at this point. Want to rat a company out? Grab a disposable phone and tweet away.
This. Every time I hear "we can't find enough employees" I substitute "... at the lowball pricepoints we're willing to give out". It strikes me as odd that the laws of supply and demand somehow are allowed to disappear when it comes to people/employees. If demand is so high, wages should be pushed up. They're not. Over a course of years, the tools for people to fight a more fair fight have been peeled away. As a kid I still remember the PATCO strike. Government intervention against workers collective bargaining, and then all the way to Wisconsin and governmor Walker. Suppliers can't be squeezed. Profits should never be squeezed. Lets squeeze the employees.
That and the fact that employee wages are inputs to the system. Even Henry Ford, hard right capitalist, realized you can't squeeze wages so much that people can't afford things.
Posting as anonymous for obvious reasons.
I managed a team of developers at a shrink wrap software shop for ~3 years. It was actually a really solid place to work from a cultural and technical point of view. Unfortunately, the CEO was a bit of a hot-head and injected mass drama every time he came out of his office.
I had a quarterly check in with him, and give him an accurate description of my active projects and my thoughts on the direction he wanted to move in. I expressed my concern about the quality of some of the 10+ year old code that was at the core of the features he wanted to expand on. Turns out that negative feedback was not what he was looking for.
Next thing I know the CIO is stopping by asking me what it is that I actually do day to day. Then my lead architect mentioned that the CEO stopped by and talked about taking a "more active role" in the team.
Not long after that, I was given marching orders and a severance package. The severance was predicated by the signature of a pair of contracts covering confidentiality and behaviors.
About a month and a half into my severance, I get an irate call from the HR director claiming I've violated my severance agreement and that they will be seeking recomp.
I hired a lawyer, talked it out with him. Either we ignore them and hope they don't come after me, we call their bluff and threaten a counter suit, or we pay them off and nullify the contract. At this point I was tempted, ooh so tempted, to just say, "OK". Because with no contract, there is no confidentiality agreement, no non-disparagement agreement, no non-compete agreement.
As soon as my lawyer pointed out that if the employer broke the contract that they wouldn't have standing to come after me for the other aspects of the contract, they backed off and paid out the rest of my severance.
It's nice to get the money that was owed to me, but the annoyance of the contracts sucks, and I will definitely avoid any such contracts in the future.
In the end though, I will never put a review of that company on Glassdoor. I do not talk about my separation with my friends from the company. And the details of my severance package will never be shared. Because fsk are lawyers expensive.
Well - the cagier employers out there will say your final pay won't be disbursed until you sign.
I know that in the bay area, employment is HARD to get (if you are not an h1b, not young and you were born here). they really look for any reason to not hire you, at that point. and if they did do some research on your name and a suit came up against a company, for any reason at all, I'm 100% sure that you'd not hear the reason, but you'd be marked as 'not a cultural fit' and you would not get that job. or the next. or the next.
is it worth that risk?
do you want to leave your field? I don't. I'm too old to start all over again and have too much invested in my field.
they have us.
the simple fact that we are not union and we have no collective power means we are at their mercy.
if you don't see it, its because you are probably still a 'golden child' and are in demand. once you get over 35, things change and you are no longer the GC. if there is any dirt on you, you won't get the jobs you want.
they know this. most of us know this. and it won't change for as long as we stay independant and refuse to be a collective (ie, union). I understand unions have a bad rep but the alternative - in the IT field - is having essentially no power.
I was cocky when I was young. boy did I learn, though! wish I knew then what I knew now (isn't that always the case?)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."