Slashdot Mirror
Ten US Senators Seek Investigation Into the Replacement of US Tech Workers
dcblogs notes this story about a bipartisan group of U.S. senators that has asked for an investigation into whether companies are firing American workers and replacing them with foreign workers for the sake of cutting costs. "Ten U.S. senators, representing the political spectrum, are seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors. They are asking the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department to investigate the use of the H-1B program "to replace large numbers of American workers" at Southern California Edison (SCE) and other employers. The letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the secretaries of the two other departments, was signed by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the Justice Department. The other signers are Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime ally of Grassley on H-1B issues; Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), David Vitter (R-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Neither California senator signed on. "Southern California Edison ought to be the tipping point that finally compels Washington to take needed actions to protect American workers," Sessions said. Five hundred IT workers at SCE were cut, and many had to train their replacements."
They could be serious.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Utilities are renowned for being dysfunctional political quagmires that are deserts of innovation - my wife worked at one for a few years and hoooo boy, the stories she could tell. Frankly, this is probably a *boost* to those US engineers' careers.
10 major shareholders representing 40% of open an investigation into why the company still has American workers and hasn't fired them and replaced them with foreign workers to cut costs.
research how they layer themselves from defacto worker lawsuits with shell contractor companies... https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I don't have the visibility to say whether this is endemic, but I observer that a manager in my own organization stated openly not long ago that H-1B would get preference in new hires or backfill hires for budgetary purposes. And he has been as good as his word. About half the organization is now made up of foreign contractors, and the percentage is growing.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
of the bill. They are complaining yet still signed on to support increasing the H1-B's. That tells me this is all smoke and mirrors. When will Americans realize they need to vote out every one of these bastards. Clean house - no one gets to keep their job.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I remember when I had to train my replacement. After a couple of days, he never came back.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It's standard to get ex-employees to sign agreements agreeing to keep their mouth shut in return for severance packages.
I believe this is just political posturing before they sign the bill to substantially increase the number of H1Bs. Now they can say that they "attempted" to punish companies who violate the rules of the H1B program.
From TFA:
"This letter is a significant development in this contentious issue. It arrives at the same time that lawmakers are pushing a substantial increase in H-1B visas under the I-Squared bill, legislation that would raise the H-1B cap. Two of the co-sponsors of the I-Squared bill also signed the letter asking for an investigation into H-1B program practices."
Just ask John Galt.
Or most slash-dotters who rant about unions.
I forget what 8 was for.
don't tie the job to H-1B and or have a high min wage with forced OT pay.
have the min wage start at 80K+COL with OT at 40 hours and X2 OT at 60 hours and X3 OT at 80 hours.
Next question?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
And the race to make US Tech Workers accept the lowest pay possible continues.
Get good
It's not about skill. We're flooding IT with zero-skill imports with degrees that aren't worth the paper they're written on.
You may argue that if one can be replaced by another with only a few months training then there isn't much skill involved to begin with, but lets not pretend we are importing a bunch of high-end talent. That is not the case.
Aside from the normal arguments about a shortage of workers *at what offered wage level* etc, etc., the more interesting question here is a question of demographics.
When the world offers you endless numbers of reasonably well-trained workers who can fill your job openings at 1/2 the cost of US workers, what is a country to do? How long can a country resist that pressure? We may politically shout for better wages and training for US citizens to fill these jobs, but the deeper issue is that borders/barriers are less and less effective lately against a flood of competition from people who are cheaper and better (or hungrier).
Americans I believe will have to come to grips with the possibility of a stagnant or even decreasing standard of living as the rest of the world takes what was once our position. No amount of restriction of H-1B visas will prevent that.
is the reduction of intellectual strength and tech development from foreign countries. If you can gather 100 000 highly educated and motivated people from foreign countries every year, and bring them into the U.S, then it's a "win" because these people's efforts will benefit the U.S instead of their home countries. This may displace Americans and put them in lower paid jobs, but that's not as urgent as the fight against the rest of the world. The people at the top of government wants all tech development to happen and be based inside the U.S economy, and pushing to increase the H1B1 caps is one effort to achieve that.
The only time these investigations will happen, is when H1B1 visas are spent on cheap, Indian labor, instead of those brilliant minds that are actually wanted.
I but they couldn't pass an audit.
It's not all surprising that neither Boxer or Feinstein signed on to this investigation, if indeed this is what it turns out to be (I share the skepticism that this is for real at all). Boxer is retiring at the end of her term in 2017, and Feinstein has always been a closet Republican. In any event, both Senators know who butters their bread, and that's Silicon Valley; perhaps the largest users (and abusers?) of the H1-B Visa program. They are also both from the Bay Area.
I know what you mean. We need vastly more H1-B MBA's. American MBA's labor costs are SO uncompetitive.
Gerrymandering + unlimited money in politics means we're pretty screwed. The corps realized early on they just had to buy off _all_ the local elections to win the country. We'd need to change our entire political system, but we have too many divisive issues (Abortion, Gay Rights, Gun Control) to get anything like that off the ground.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Ten senators receive lucrative offers to join boards of tech companies after their terms expire. Investigation is shelved for lack of evidence.
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
FaceBook: "I thought it was YOUR turn!"
Captcha: "dunces" (I am not kidding).
How are software development and computer engineering not included in the IT field? Or are you one of those people who, completely inexplicably, say "IT" when they really mean "System Administration"?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
we can only stop the mass immigration invasion of cheap foreign labor when we realize that the plutocrats/corporations have been molding the minds of young americans via the educational curriculum using anti-white race-guilt propaganda. They tell young and impressionable whites that racism is the ultimate evil, and that being against the foreign invasion of third worlders is racist. Stop the multiculti indoctrination of edupropaganda --that is the first step.
Also: Create a local IT union. Seriously. You people keep complaining that you're getting fucked and fucked and fucked and yet the moment someone suggests creating a union... well... comments to follow.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
and don't stop rolling until they reach the fiery pits of Hell.
For US: tech workers will suffer from unemployment or suppressed wages For H1B holders: The Tata's and Infosys' of this scheme will dangle the green card carrot in front of you while raping your wages to the tune of 50% For US companies: Economy will look like a spaceship, which no one can stop from going up Then the tech bubble will blow stockholders will suffer Indian H1B workers, who were waiting patiently for their green cards will be sent home with nothing to show for Recession will depress the job market for the American worker Who will benefit from this ? The few C- level executives with a golden parachute exit plans. It will not be their problem to fix the mess. It is the next sucker's problem to deal with. Tell me what is good about this plan ?
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Give a work permit to anyone with $250k+ of W2 income per year: they'd have to post a bond for the equivalent in taxes for their first year.
That would cover 90% of foreign job creators, and exclude 90% of job destroyers (cheap indentured servants).
Full disclosure: I came to the US 17 years ago as an L1, then H1B.
In that time I've created lots of jobs and paid > $10m in Fed and local taxes, but I'm a strong opponent of the current H1B system.
It's crony capitalism at its worst.
Yes, really. You just cited a well-known myth about Fordism. Read this.
The focus of Fordism is mass-production, and the means of achieving it. The hearts-and-minds-winning notion of "paying his workers enough money that they could afford to buy his products" does not mean "paying his workers more than he makes off of them," which is logically impossible.
Rich people don't create money out of thin air. The government prints money, of course, but it does so as an abstract representation of wealth. How much wealth a dollar represents changes based on the ratio between the number of dollars in existence, and the amount of wealth in existence. Since wealth is an abstract concept and impossible to measure with precision, this whole enterprise is inexact.
But wealth is ultimately the product of human labor. Humans grow food that wasn't there before, or build cars that didn't exist before, and poof, new wealth exists. Rich people don't do this kind of work.....they just extract the value from their employees who *do* do this kind of work, and give them a fraction of that value back (in the form of wages).
Economics is a complicated subject, as it turns out. But it should be easy to understand that rich people don't become or stay rich by paying their workers more than they make off them.
Is that you, Carly? Yes, as a US citizen (or permanent legal resident), I not only deserve better access to the job, I have a legal right to first crack at it. Pulling in H1Bs as initially set up is to fill short term gaps in the labor market. Cost of labor is immaterial.
Are you in favor of open source? How can you reconcile appeals to openness, fairness and universality with your stance on narrow protection of your race in your homeland, advantages you obtained through sheer luck of birth?
Put it more bluntly, why are you any more decent than the fucktards who run Comcast and AT&T?
...and, frankly, I don't have a problem with that.
If you want to incur the hassles of off-shore workers in different time-zones and all, that's fine. You will probably find an appropriate balance between on-shore and off-shore environments. I know some companies who have QA teams off-shore, for example, so that they can basically get 24-hour coverage. The developers make the bugs during "the day", QA finds the bugs during "the night", developers come in the next morning and find a load of bugs waiting for them to fix.
It really depends on what you're doing. It can be tough to afford to pay someone to live in southern California or The Bay Area or New York City. If you can find someone who can live and do the work in Harlington, Texas, or Argentina or Cambodia or Portugal, more power to you.
I have a problem with you bringing someone over here to do the work at the cheaper prices.
Are the politicians going to take a meeting to form a committee to evaluate the possbility of an investigation into h1b practices?
No shit they are firing American workers, and Zuckerberg is one of the leader in this field.
So if you're using Facebook.... fuck you from the bottom of my heart.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
About 15 years ago I was working at a large Agricultural and Construction Equipment Manufacturer in the International Corporate Finance Center. My job was outsourced to a consulting company that only hired H1b.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Please let me for a moment play devils advocate.
I know that many of you will respectfully disagree, but I must . . .
These 'evil' corporations you see are required to maximize the return for their shareholders. A corporation is for its shareholders. Not the employees. Not the customers. Not the public.
The shareholders elect the board of directors. The board of directors know that if they do not put the interests of the shareholders up front (by legal means), then they will suffer the consequences. Board members can be sued. Of particular ugliness is the so-called derivitive lawsuit whereupon a shareholder can act on behalf of the corporation and sue the board because they feel that the corporation is injured by the director's actions.
I came close to being a defendant of a derivitive lawsuit once. It was at a non-profit. It was thrown out, but it got very scary!
The structure of the corporation where the shareholders are of the ultimate authority forces them to maximize profits by using all legal means. If that means using H1B workers, then so be it.
Most Respectfully Yours Mrs. Cleara Plastique
you can't simply make a claim without counter-data
It's not all in the past either, Gates was there just a year or two ago and walked out with another H1B increase, followed by a Foundation announcement of $20 million for schools in India.
vi? Who's that?
If you want to use the throw back arguments to the founding fathers, why do you neglect the fact that our founding fathers had no welfare system? I'm not claiming Welfare is a completely bad thing (our implementation is broken) but that financial burden did not exist for any US Citizens. Compare that to today, where about 20% of the population is receiving Welfare of some kind.
This is not some new problem or revelation, go read a few of Milton Friedman's books and spoke directly about the problems with immigration in the 1970s. The same exact problems we have today since it was never fixed.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The flaw is that the foreigners are coming for a limited number of jobs and are exploited by the Visa system that doesn't allow them to compete for wages lest they be unemployed for a couple microseconds and thus get deported.
What we do is pass the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax will increase GDP a predicted 10.5% the 1st year, and then achieve full employment the 2nd year. After that, we can then throw open the immigration to any and all who wish to come. When they get here, they 1) will plan to stay and 2) market themselves to the highest bidder.
Since jobs will be plentiful under the Fair Tax, which does not tax corporate profits and therefore makes the USA the world's biggest and best tax haven, our only problem then will be to become equally skilled with the foreigners. That shouldn't be a problem. With the USA returning to making most of the worlds' products, we should be able to employ all who want a job.
I used to think like you when I was a child, too. See these grey hairs, son? They mean something.
Slashdot, always concerned about equality, the evils of mass deportation, international development, free movement, and promoting libertarianism.
Until a scenario comes up where they're personally impacted, then it's close the borders and toss the foreigners out.
I know right? It's almost as if it's not a single hive mind but over 3,000,000 registered users all with different opinions. But that's so crazy it couldn't possibly be true.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Ninety senators are fine will selling out their own country.
(Actually, I am shocked that number isn't higher.)
Severance packages are finely tuned to be just large enough that the employee can't afford to sue the company for wrongful termination.
In the company I work for, they routinely lay off US workers( and other expensive countries as well) , and hire their replacements in the low cost countries du jour, currently that is Bulgaria and partly India. People take their packages, and find new jobs. The packages have language about not suing the company etc.
To end this practice, severance packages would have to be mandatory, and they could not contain any language about not suing the employer.
Also, a laid off employee should not have to pay for expensive legal counsel to have his case of wrongful termination reviewed. The employer broke the law, the employee should not have to sacrifice coin to see justice served. That should be the risk th company's HR should have to face. If someone is wrongfully laid off, they should get to KEEP their package, AND get their job back if they want it, or offer the company to buy them out of the court ordered employment by paying a substantially larger package.
If they made into law the provisions I described, companies could no longer treat employees as commodity resources that could be optimized and tweaked to the current recipe as if they were canola oil vs corn oil.
The size of packages would probably go down, but there would also be fewer opportunistic layoffs. Adjusting the staff levels from one month to the next to make the numbers look slightly sweeter for the quarterly report is not a way to run a company.
Now, the danger with stronger worker protection is to end up like France, where there are constant strikes.
But at least in France the workers are not treated so poorly that they the go on postal rampages.
diversity is strength for Capital but diversity is weakness for Labor... now you have some clue as to why all the rich and powerful institutions are cramming diversity/multiculturalism propaganda down the throats of young impressionable white kids via the educational curriculum... white guilt instilled in young white minds manufactures consent for more mass immigration
these grey hairs? They represent wisdom. Trust me on that...
Expect these big IT companies and many others to show up with cash in a hat to hand out to legislators to make this go away.
Would someone please write a firefox plugin that changes these words so things are easier to read:
Lobbiest - Handler for Organized Crime
PAC - Organized crime Front
H1B - Bonded Servant Program
Offshoring - Bonded Servant Program that includes nets around the building.
If people started seeing this in the articles it would be easier to explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
This is what is happening in the US. It makes me sick. They advertise a job with minimal information; disqualify the US worker on the basis that they are under/overqualified, request too much pay, need to relocate, etc; and then turn around and hire a foreign worker.
The video I linked will make you sick to your stomach to find out that we have US citizens actively trying to screw over other US citizens in the job market. This ends up hurting everyone.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Many discussions reach a sort of general consensus, that consensus is the opinion to which I refer.
Um, which slashdot might be? As far as I can tell about half of the regulars come here for a good argument. There's always good argument to be had by the wingnut libertarians and the people who think some form of welfare state is a good idea.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A nation is defined by its borders and the people of that nation have every right to take actions which serve their collective best interests. If that means defending those borders and limiting the number of people who can cross over and take up residency, so be it.
"A side assumption, equally optimistic, is that managers have enough savvy to tell whether displaced employees have done a good job documenting the work they do, or are just having them on."
This is the real issue. As mentioned previously, the reason this all exists is short sighted CEO's ruining everything for gains to hit performance measures and/or bonuses.
I tried to explain this to someone once in the context of where I work and my job. Without trying to sound prideful, I know more, do more, and am capable of more than anyone in my organization at doing what I do. Now that is in the context of my small piece of the puzzle of our organization. That said, EVERYONE is replaceable, myself included. Would the new person coming is do a good a job? No. Would the business suffer as a result? Absolutely. It would probably take a sufficiently trained and educated individual, who has some experience doing what I do probably about at least 5 years of employment to get to a level where I've been for years. During that time period, things would go to hell.
However, you are assuming that management really cares. They do not. Not about the business, and not about you. There are exceptions, however generally speaking this seems more par for the course. Three things: One is that so long as management meets whatever performance measures they need to hit in order to fulfill whatever employment obligations they have the rest doesn't matter. If that involves getting rid of you and getting someone 20k cheaper to meet some quota their manger gave them, then so be it. Two is so long as they can get their bonus or or their measures they will use this to advance their own job somewhere else, the faster the better. Three is none of them are around in the management position long enough before moving on to the next to really see any of the negative repercussions of their decisions and how that affects business. By the time it does, they have handed that "portfolio" of problems off to another manager, and is now their boss, and what are they going to do, blame the guy farther up the food chain from them? Not a way to advance very far in management.
So while some people may think they're irreplaceable, they are making the incorrect assumption that management really gives a shit about the business or what will happen should you leave. About the only time this will come into play (likely after the fact), is if it PERSONALLY impacts them as a manager (i.e. their ass is on the line).
So I guess what I am saying is it really isn't so much if the managers have enough savvy, it is if they actually care at all. So long as they get paid, their advancement assured, most probably don't. Depressingly sad I know, but true. That said there are exceptions, however likely too few to really make any difference in the grand scheme of things.
Fuck - people were hiring Indians since the 1990s to avoid paying local American wages. I've worked in I don't know HOW MANY companies that do that. My wife works for a giant corp that does that now - she manages teams of programmers located all over the world. And here, in 2015 "a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has asked for an investigation into whether companies are firing American workers and replacing them with foreign workers for the sake of cutting costs." Like it's fucking news.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Who gets Senators reelected? Answer: Big Businesses. Big business wants the H1B visa program to be expanded. In our American Corpocracy, they will most certainly get their way. But the Senators are still a little nervous. Selling out to big business on such a high-profile labor issue is going to get noticed. So they're posturing, pretending to care about the poor displaced masses. Let's face it: If you are in the tech industry, you are a modern-day garment industry worker. Business is going to commoditize this work so that it can be done in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is inevitable.
I live between Hartford CT and Springfield MA. The insurance capital of the world. I used to be an employee of an insurance company but I can't tell you which one. I have been outsourced by a large outsourcing company and I was an employee of that company for 3 years. They brought me back as a contractor for that large outsourcing company for the last 5 years. Same job / pay no benefits. Most of the grunt work done has been sent over seas to the Sub continent. I work from home now so at least I can save on the price of gas but of course I have to heat the house when I'm home so nothing is really saved there. I challenge any of these Senators to go into any of the insurance companies in Hartford or Springfield and look around. Figure out the ratio of American citizens to foriegn workers on H1B Visas. I would guess it's almost 7 out of 10 workers are on H1B visas now. Even the contracting companies (Body Shops) don't want to hire Americans because they can pay their fellow countrymen less wages and cow them better than they can American workers. That does not take into account how much work has been sent over seas. One more question: The work sent overseas, the profits from that work done over there never ever comes back into this country because the Large outsourcing firms will just claim that it's money made over there even though they are working on infrastructure over here. There is a lot to investigate but I doubt they will. Sen. Bluemthal was already on the horn asking for more H1b Visas. The Senators know which end their bread is buttered on.
Paul E. Bahre
If more controls are put in place, the work will simply move offshore. I work for a large financial institution, and they decided the best solution for technical labor was to build a large organization offshore, and these are not just call-center folks. These are highly skilled technical workers. And they are doing jobs that could easily be done here, but obviously for a lot more money. This way they avoid the overhead and headaches of H1B sponsoring altogether. Not saying it hasn't and doesn't happen in this company. But the offshore labor is a lot less expensive, and to some, that is of primary importance.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
About time , How it all works out i don't have a lot of faith. The Corporate Tit is very bloated with cash our Political hopefuls have to suck from to get elected and to help them stay elected. Sorry any faith i had vanished when My country borrowed billion from China for Corporate Americas failure.
Jack of all trades,master of none
That's what the gov't has effectively decreed with the H-1B program.
Until engineers are offered compensation like doctors or lawyers, who's to say the market has failed to produce enough skilled workers? This country's supposed to be big on market economics, but H-1B is a gross government-sponsored distortion of the market. These days, a lot of smart kids are smart enough to prefer fields like law, medicine, finance, etc where they they have a shot at some solid money and security.
Questions: why don't we have enough strong local candidates? Is market theory wrong? Are Americans stupid? Why aren't we attracting top candidates to the field? Is it due to lack of STEM education & funding, not attracting girls,... all the usual platitudes?
Answer: it's the money, stupid. H-1B significantly disrupts the local labor market, depressing wages and job security.
H-1B's been expanding since its inception in 1990, supposedly because the market continues to fail to provide enough skilled workers. Yet, all it's succeeded in doing is capping tech wages and trashing job security.
Too bad I was talking about cars, then. Why is it that every time this factoid is mentioned, people try to move the subject to automobiles, total?
It's like someone saying GM produces more cars and trucks than Honda, and then someone saying Honda is the largest engine maker in the world because in addition to cars, they make ATV's, riding lawnmowers, and personal watercraft. The later is a true statement....but a non sequitur in response to the first.
Why US is importing most racist people on Earth?
Hinduism is nothing but Casteism, a covert mask for Racism;
Google "map shows most racist people on earth";
You'll be SURPRISED;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Casteism