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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 An IT worker who is fired because he or she has been replaced by a foreign, visa-holding employee of an offshore outsourcing firm will sign a severance agreement.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.
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.
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 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
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.
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...