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IT Worker's Lawsuit Accuses Tata of Discrimination
dcblogs writes An IT worker is accusing Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of discriminating against American workers and favoring "South Asians" in hiring and promotion. It's backing up its complaint, in part, with numbers. The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in San Francisco, claims that 95% of the 14,000 people Tata employs in the U.S. are South Asian or mostly Indian. It says this practice has created a "grossly disproportionate workforce." India-based Tata achieves its "discriminatory goals" in at least three ways, the lawsuit alleges. First, the company hires large numbers of H-1B workers. Over from 2011 to 2013, Tata sponsored nearly 21,000 new H-1B visas, all primarily Indian workers, according to the lawsuit's count. Second, when Tata hires locally, "such persons are still disproportionately South Asian," and, third, for the "relatively few non-South Asians workers that Tata hires," it disfavors them in placement, promotion and termination decisions.
Corporations are people to, and they speak; how?
My first experience with them was back in 1999. They came into our office saying they could provide programmers at 60% of the cost of the existing contractors. Even less if we were willing to hire a woman.
Not that Tata isn't crooked but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of western programmers applying was lower too. Seriously, if you've worked with Indians before, why would you even consider a workplace that was stuffed with them?
get rid of the H-1B job lock and set a high min wage for them maybe with X2 OT (or ever higher min wage) at 60-80+ hours a week. Then the issue will go away.
We are getting undercut by those wanting to live the same life as us. What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style. As an entry to mid level technology person I would be concerned because you are being undercut by people possibly as competent as you minus communication skills. Experienced technology people usually have an edge due to their emersion into the North American corporate culture as well as their generally better communication skills. Keep in mind that I'm generalizing but doing so based on personal experience.
Nature's pillows.
I'm assuming that the suit really means "against white people" (race is a protected class), and we just got a bad summary, as usual.
Doesn't matter what the actual law says. The actual, unwritten law that everyone follows says that you cannot discriminate against straight white men. Lawsuit won't succeed unless they dig up some incredibly damning emails.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
The United States is an exception in caring about racial discrimination in the world. This seems to surprise many Americans.
Why would you assume it's a lawsuit to try to help a particular race, like white people? Presumably it's about the 80%+ of the world, comprising many races and ethnicities, who aren't South Asian.
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Your link said people cannot be discriminated based on race, nationality, or citizenship. How does hiring almost entirely from Indian H-1B applicants not tick all 3 boxes?
Diversity, maybe?
It does not work — despite decades of efforts, Blacks and womyn still earn less than others — for whatever reasons.
It causes ugly discrimination of other kinds — with government contracts officially favoring womyn-run businesses and colleges openly penalizing certain races.
It costs businesses billions to avoid such lawsuits, and millions more in damages and fees when the avoidance-efforts fail. And not just businesses — government agencies too pay (with our monies) to avoid being sued. Even worse, the prosecutions by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are of the "guilty until proven innocent" variety, with most targets agreeing to settle because the Executive can run them out of business before Judiciary gets to even hear the accusations.
And finally, even if it weren't for the failures and abuses, the whole idea is immoral, because it seeks to punish thoughtcrimes — one is guilty, because one had (or is suspected of having had) certain illegal thoughts.
Can we just stop this nonsense? If Tata — or anyone — want to discriminate, let them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Because they've decided amidst countless interviews, market studies and business process reviews that there are no eligible candidates located in the United States who are applying for the positions. \sarcasm
Thirty four characters live here.
What rights? There is no right to employment.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Just another speed bump on the race to the bottom.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
the lawsuit is based in US for their US based business.
The comments below that article are interesting, and they- as well as the article- mirror my experience exactly.
I used to work for a domestic (US) majority (65%+) Indian company. Not small, at least 5,000 people. The CEO and CFO were Indian, and the rest followed. Not knowing their H1-B figures, I distinctly got the impression they were using the place for an immigration/sponsorship factory for their friends, extended family, caste, whatever. Management? Virtually 100% Indian. Layoffs? Huh, no Indians in that round, either. It was pretty obvious how non-Indians were treated like crap, but no one was in a law-suitin' mood because this was just after the dot-bomb crash and tech jobs weren't falling off the trees anymore. I realize everyone is an individual, blah, blah, but it seems endemic to native Indian culture that if you're not Indian you ain't shit.
I'm probably going to get yelled at for saying this, but the thing that pissed me off the most- another cultural thing- is that they weren't interested in working together (amongst themselves or with non-Indians) to find the best solution to a problem. Technical discussions always degenerated into dick waving arguments. They were more interested in getting *their* solution jammed through for a personal victory than the greater good. It was disgusting.
It starts.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It was called the Equal OPPORTUNITY Commission.
It's not that you have a right to employment. You have, in the US, a right to an equal opportunity.
Yeah, I know. That too.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
realistically its profit driven and they are only exploiting the laws that the congress has passed. this is exactly why citizen united is win/win.
Unions stand up for union dues. They don't give a shit about you beyond that.
get rid of the H-1B job lock and set a high min wage for them maybe with X2 OT (or ever higher min wage) at 60-80+ hours a week. Then the issue will go away.
What! Are you crazy or something man?!? You can't do that, Zuckerberg, Gates and the Chamber of Commerce wouldn't have it!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
> and people say unions are bad this is what happens when we don't have unions to stand up for workers rights! ... from where I'm from, union is so powerful that they could dictate the outcome of elections. That's how they justify their existence -- have pet politicians who listen to them if they want to get elected.
Yes, we need unions to stand up for the union officials and to justify their existence. Don't believe me
Except unions — such as by defending the incumbent workers — contribute to inequality, rather than fight it.
If Tata's workforce — 95% South Asians according to TFA — unionized today, would that be helping other races make satisfying careers in the company?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If Zuckerberg and his ilk have their way this would be the norm through legislation by politicians he bought and paid for.
What rights? There is no right to employment.
True. However, workers can undertake actions to increase their bargaining power and thus wages, as can any other supplier. My hat you pay a wage is no different than any economic transaction. If workers can improve their position in negotiations than so be it. You're free to fire me and I am free to walk but often that is in neither of our best interested so we need to come to some agreement we both can live with.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I hate to blow the bubbles, if you go to any branch office of multinationals around the world, you will find the majority of people at the top there are from the origin countries. One would argue that it is only limited to the people at the top, i am sure there is some sort of discrimination taking place but at a lower scale comparing to Tata.
But if you raise the minimum wage to say $15/hour like Seattle and other places, statistics show job growth of US citizens will increase and they will hire more Americans to work! Think of your radical solutions: there are help wanted signs EVERYWHERE in Seattle now! I can't walk two blocks without passing 4 or 5 help wanted signs!
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win/win? win/win means it is a win for both sides, not a win for one side 2x.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
way to stereotype all unions there. While some, or even many, but not all of them.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
more like 80-100K + COL for H-1B's with no job lock.
America counts as a nation of origin. We're all members of a protected class in one way or another, its just that you don't notice until its discriminated against.
But if you raise the minimum wage to say $15/hour like Seattle and other places, statistics show job growth of US citizens will increase and they will hire more Americans to work!
Can you provide a citation for these "statistics" that show mandatory higher wages lead to more jobs? I have seen studies (using a methodology that many economists dispute) that show no significant job losses from a higher minimum wage, but never one that showed actual gains. Since that defies common sense, and if your "statistics" actually existed, they would be widely trumpeted by advocates of a higher minimum, I hereby conclude that you are full of baloney and just making stuff up.
And somebody finally said it out loud.
Sent from my ENIAC
I'm assuming that the suit really means "against white people" (race is a protected class), and we just got a bad summary, as usual.
"National origin" is also a protected class. You can't legally discriminate against someone just because they are, or are not, an immigrant, or are, or are not, an immigrant from a particular country. There is an exception when the government mandates US citizens for national security reasons, like TSA inspectors.
I was a local hire at TATA (TCS) doing software work at Apple... Treated me well enough, however I quickly came to realize there was little chance for advancement / promotion in that track. So I found another job, where the bias was going more in my favor. The racial preference at TCS in the US would be more "awful" if it wasn't just a small coin balancing a big stack of the opposite bias elsewhere in the industry.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
I work for a specialty IT services firm. The company is European, I'm an American. Even though we do a lot of the same services that Tata, CSC, Wipro and the others do, the company is single-industry focused and therefore most of our employees have some clue what they're doing. The discrimination claim is going to be nearly impossible to prove unless there's a real smoking gun hanging out there
The problem with IT services is that when a company outsources their IT, a new layer of abstraction is created between them and their systems. That layer also needs to make money. I know there are MBA accounting tricks that make this arrangement look better on paper, but the reality is that the outsourcing costs more in real dollars and time lost than the company could save by doing it in house. These IT services firms want the maximum profit from the arrangement, so they bill like crazy, and are constantly testing ways to provide the absolute lowest level of service they can get away with. In the case of, say, IBM or Accenture, this is done by swapping the labor out to whatever country is cheapest that year, and only keeping project managers and absolutely key people in high-cost countries. In the case of Tata or Infosys, that's accomplished by a mix of H-1B sponsorships and doing the work in India. The result is very clear, and has been for years -- unless the IT services company is willing to leave some money on the table and someone with a clue at the customer, the customer will get the minimum service level that won't breach the contract, and pay more for bad work product. The problem, like I said, lies in the MBA accounting tricks that make this look like a good idea.
That said, we have the same problem in our company, but not to the same extent as the complaint alleges. All the top leadership is European, it's been that way for quite a while, and the company is very Euro-centric. What we don't have is what this guy is describing -- our engineering group isn't given crap work assignments, etc. But, I highly doubt anyone from the US could move beyond the VP level. That's fine by me, because I have no ambition to do that. What the lawsuit alleges is that there's no opportunity at the lower ranks either.
The thing I worry about for the future is firms like Tata squeezing out the entry-level IT jobs that allow IT professionals the ability to learn and grow into better IT jobs. It's not about the people's national origin -- my job involves working with a worldwide group of employees and customers, and there are great, fair and abysmal examples of IT professionals in all countries, all races, etc. Culture can be a problem, especially in mono-culture firms. The root problem is that if someone can make more money as a...whatever...instead of an entry level IT tech, then there will be no more job/career progression for anyone, and the domestic job market in IT will stagnate.
WTF does that have to do with anything? The issue at hand is a company that lives off of H1B Visas is not hiring local workers and in fact discriminates against hiring local workers. So the notion that more H1B Visas are needed because they can't find workers if false and self fulfilling prophecy. Local workers exist, they don't want to hire them.
Moron.
NFLPA and MLBPA seem do be doing right by their members.
LMOL yeah unlike the Koch Brothers and ALEC....
Man these "south Asians" create problem everywhere they go
Yes, it's called the very low unemployment rate here. Which DROPPED after minimum wages were increased.
The 21st Century called, and they want you to get over the 18th Century.
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wrong + wrong = right!
It is different, because of the official governmental support worker-unions enjoy — instead of being treated with the anti-trust laws, like any other entity working to raise the prices of what its members are selling.
The right to organize like everybody else still exists, and has not gone away — one can join a volleyball league, a reading club, or a workers' union. So it must be some other "workers' rights", that the Coward starting this thread lamented. Which one(s), remains an open question.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I started with experience in both networking and database management. I had only basic Perl and BASH experience and two quarters worth of community college VB classes. They of course assigned me to Java development assignment. Where the best Java Dev I was onboarded with, he went to work on a DB project even though he didn't even what it means to normalize a database.
Over the course of two years with the company (including 3 months of technical recruiting) I would see this pattern over and over again. There was anecdotal evidence from many people with similar experience.
Long story short, I am glad to be gone. Given their promotion model, I could see it being near impossible to get promoted with TCS, but most of that is because they are such a flat company. I don't think it has as much to do with bias. It is just that the talented staff bleeds off to find real work that employs their skills and the remainder are all that is left to promote.
throw the baby out. The bathwater is cold
Yes, it's called the very low unemployment rate here. Which DROPPED after minimum wages were increased.
The unemployment rate dropped all across America, and in Europe as well. I doubt all of that was because the minimum wage was raised for 1500 workers at SeaTac.
Anyway, I appreciate your honesty in confirming that your "statistics" don't exist.
But won't you be among the first to complain when some company refuses to hire blacks, gays, and women?
You really can't have it both ways.
That may be one of the issues in TFA, but rickb928 brought up Equality of Opportunity here.
That Equality transcends citizenship, actually, and unions impede rather than advance it, was my counterpoint.
If you keep using the term as your signature, people will start making conclusions... Please, don't hate.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
wrong. there is a much lower unemployment rate in the actual areas with increased minimum wages than the areas that did not increase minimum wages. Shows at the city and county statistical levels.
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The courts haven't always upheld that type of thinking. I forget the details, but there was a case in the mid-west US where caucasians had become the minority in an area and tried to make use of a "school choice" law to choose their children's school that was intended to send kids in poverty stricken areas to the "better" schools in more affluent areas. The court basically told them they couldn't claim to be minorities even though they were the actual minority in their district.
Sorry, but actual drill down statistics in those areas show that in fact, the implementation of a higher minimum wage in those areas increase the literal number of jobs and decreased the literal unemployment rates.
You're confusing the media practice of showing statewide unemployment totals (where the cities carry the weight for the slacker rural areas) and the countywide rates (where the cities carry the weight for the slacker suburban areas).
Lots of help wanted signs in all the locations that actually implemented higher minimum wages. More than there used to be.
So, in point of fact, increasing the min wage in the tech cities would actually force out H1-B imports, as there is no incentive to hire foreign workers over citizens, especially with an expanded job pool.
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People like to hire others like them, it's sort of a natural occurence. However it's illegal in many places.
I remember one multinational company where we had offices in California, and one Indian woman applied for an internal job and was rejected because she did not speak Vietnamese and thus wouldn't fit in with the small QA group. I told her to take the case straight to HR because that was blatantly against all company policies, and our official language for communications had always been English and all of the rest of the buildings all spoke English. But she did not want to cause a scene and just accepted it. I know that if management had heard of this case that they would have been shown the door before the day was out. The ultimate reason for this was certainly that the group was all Vietnamese, they were very comfortable never talking to anyone outside of the insular clique, and did not want anyone coming in that make them uncomfortable. But it ignored the fact that any one of them could be transfered at any time or that they were deliberately ignoring company rules and the law.
Things like this just open the door for more discrimination, as in we won't hire old people because they just don't understand modern memes, black people will stand out too much in the company photos, women are going to be taking off time to get married or have babies, etc. So you sort of need to have laws to enforce non discrimination or it takes over due to human nature and the built in us-versus-them instinct.
Worked with them at Motorola. All non-Indian contracts were not renewed. Friends who were employed by Motorola said we were replaced by them. Was very informative when on mandatory 50+ user HR training calls, the presenters had to be reminded to speak in English for the two non-Indians on the call. How do I know we were the only ones? They asked us to speak up if we needed english.
You've never belonged to a Union, have you? Go ask the AMA and the Bar how much Their dues are worth.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder if anyone has insights on immigration status of h1b workers in light of these events?
I suggest you give this paper (http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf) a read.
This was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and it was an analysis of the studies on the employment effects of minimum wages.
From the abstract:
A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically
significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the
papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment
effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions
emerge from our review. First, we see very few - if any - studies that provide convincing evidence
of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the
broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment
effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming
evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.
Look at the top 10 H1B sponsors. Must be a coincidence that, in any given year, the majority of companies are based in India.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
I was a member of the AFL-CIO, so, yes.. I have belonged to a union. I had no choice since to work at that company you had to join the union. Although we could opt out, we would still have had to pay dues, which is part of my reasoning that they really care a lot about dues and not much else. In fact, the only time we ever heard from them was when they were announcing that dues were rising. The only people in tech that I have ever heard talking about unions are those that barely hanging onto their jobs. The talented folks that can do the work can do a fine job negotiating wages and benefits and workplace safety and such all on their own.
We're all equal under law, therefore there's only the statistical meaning.
nope. stats are national.
look, I work with statisticians each and every day. you can keep pretending that, but it won't change that a higher minimum wage in the cities that passed it has actually DECREASED unemployment.
Btw, stats like the ones you refer to are lagging indicators. Real economists do walk arounds, look for cars in parking lots (won't work in high tech cities, we are getting rid of cars), count help wanted signs, talk to specific businesses.
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Easier- require the job be independently categorized (prevents high end programmers listed as "janitorial staff") and the pay rate has to be set at 150% of the current median pay for the area for a US worker in that position. And THEN they must list that job exactly as categorized for US workers to have the opportunity to apply for- reviewed by the H1b oversight to ensure if there are qualified applicants that they are made an offer at the 150% rate. THEN- if there are really no qualified US applicants- the oversight will review the qualifications of who they bring in and ensure they actually meet those requirements. if they are willing to accept a lesser applicant- they must review US applicants and see if any meet those lowered standards.
It is not immediate, it is economic growth. Every time the minimum goes up the economy gets a boost which leads to more jobs. That growth stagnates and declines when inflation overtakes the gains. Inflation has shown NO change to its rate of growth in relation to minimum wage hikes. Ever. it grows whether or not wages keep up- but the economy suffers if wages do not keep up.
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/myt...
http://www.cepr.net/documents/...
But if you raise the minimum wage to say $15/hour like Seattle and other places, statistics show job growth of US citizens will increase and they will hire more Americans to work!
Citation needed. Preferably one with a post-analysis of the Seattle job market, with another graph showing impact (if any) on number of small businesses in the immediate area.
way to stereotype all unions there. While some, or even many, but not all of them.
So.... #NotAllUnions ???
Thats the thing though, there is no cliff, just a pile of people all trying to climb to the top.
Stupidest zombie movie ever. Seriously.
But if you raise the minimum wage to say $15/hour like Seattle and other places, statistics show job growth of US citizens will increase and they will hire more Americans to work!
Citation needed. Preferably one with a post-analysis of the Seattle job market, with another graph showing impact (if any) on number of small businesses in the immediate area.
Read The Fine Manual (it's all online, various articles in Seattle Times, ignore the state numbers, read the last 2-3 paras which cover King County and Seattle)
Seriously, do you guys not grok the 100 Gbps Internet 2 or something?
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Wrong. Much discussion of this among economic circles, and back and forth analysis. Turns out the underlying concept that higher minimum wage "must" create more unemployment is an artifact of the labor as machine 18th century argument, and has little to do with how modern hollowed-out societies function.
Look, I know you're upset, but facts don't care about your theories.
Adapt. Because there are no other choices.
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This is Tata's entire business model. They don't even try to be subtle.
Every time the minimum goes up the economy gets a boost which leads to more jobs.
You say this, and then you provide citations with say the opposite. From your own citation: A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment.
"No discrenable effect" is not "a boost which leads to more jobs".
Oh bullshit. If there's no right to employment then how do we have the responsibility to pay in order to live? You can either give people a right to employment and a right to be able to support themselves, or you have to give people a responsibility to pay for those who are denied work. You can't have it both ways. I prefer the former, although there are arguments for the latter as well. But this attitude that we can refuse to employ people and then get upset when they can't afford to live is just asinine.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Now we've gone from the low-information voter to the ignore-information voter.
This isn't a minimum wage study, it's an analysis of the minimum wage studies that were published. They list the studies they analyzed at the end of the paper.
The first 12 studies listed are federal and state.
Most of the studies appear to implicate state studies and there are some that are city-level studies.
The second-to-last listed was for Oregon and Washington. They studied want-ads for eating and drinking workers and hotel and lodging workers. They found that the change in want-ads were negative and significant for all restaurant jobs except cooks (an arguably skilled work set) and for hotel housekeepers. I'm guessing that looking at want-ads is similar to counting help wanted signs.
The talented folks that can do the work can do a fine job negotiating wages and benefits and workplace safety and such all on their own.
Yeah fuck those average people, the only people that matter are the people at the top.
It is different, because of the official governmental support worker-unions enjoy — instead of being treated with the anti-trust laws, like any other entity working to raise the prices of what its members are selling.
Except, unlike a group of producers acting in concert to exert market power; an employer still has many other options for labor. They can outsource, refuse to sign a contract and bring in replacements, move to another non-union location; unlike a monopoly where there is no other source of the product. Granted, those are not easy things to do but hey still are viable competitors to a union workforce. The government has intervened in the workplace in many ways, sometimes to the workers favor (unions, labor laws) and other times to the employers (non-competes, right to work laws,letting bankruptcy abrogate contracts and pension liabilities).
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Firstly, nobody is prosecuted for discrimination. Discrimination is not enforced by criminal law; it's enforced by civil ones. You are sued, not prosecuted, for violating them.
Please go back in time, and ask black Americans their view on the matter before such practices were outlawed. Ask some women how harmless it is to get paid less than men for the same job.
By no means are things hunky-dory today, but they are indisputably much better than they used to be. You certainly can't change attitudes through laws, but when attitudes keep people from wanting to do the right thing, laws certainly nudge them to do it anyway.
If you are an immigrant, you are going to choose a place because it's less-bad than the one you came from. That doesn't mean that they deserve to be taken advantage of simply because it's possible. I'm pretty sure that if those Indians in Dubai could find a job in say, Europe, doing the same work for the same pay, they'd certainly choose to go there.
For Companies yes. That is why they want more H1-B's to drive wages down to slave wages an help line the pockets of executives. I think companies should have to pay monetary penalties for every H1-B they hire.
My last company I was asked to help my boss write a job description targeted to a specific persons resume - it was a person from India with an H1-B. The person was "submitted" by another person in the company that was an H1-B. I informed my boss that by law he had to look for an American Candidate first. He told me that if an American candidate fit the job description he would hire them. When the job description is tailored to a specific persons resume the chances of someone else fitting it are slim. Been there, done that. I told my boss I could not with a clear conscious help him do something so underhanded. I immediately started looking for another job and found one and started my new job within 4 weeks. I couldn't work for a slimy company like that. Granted anymore, just about every company is becoming slimy.....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
And thus the large increase in help wanted signs is a unicorn.
Right.
Keep telling yourself that.
While we crush your failed economic policies.
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That's too much work, they'd rather sign the contract, then have the right wing fall all over themselves to scream about how horrible the bank^Wlabor unions are for forcing poor widdle homeow^Wemployers into signing contracts they can't afford/can't understand/whatever the excuse is this time.
Especially since by the time the contract has been found to be "too expensive" the guy who signed it has already taken his gold parachute and jumped.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Read The Fine Manual (it's all online, various articles in Seattle Times, ignore the state numbers, read the last 2-3 paras which cover King County and Seattle)
Seriously, do you guys not grok the 100 Gbps Internet 2 or something?
Sure we grok it. Do you not grok the idea that if you are not pulling numbers out of your ass, then you probably have the reference material right in front of you, and can therefore paste the information a hell of a lot easier than having us go looking for supporting numbers for your made up statistics for you?
Or we could stop charging people to live. (read: stop allowing those who hold all the cards to charge others to live, or at least, stop enabling their ability to do so).
I make about the mean US wage and consume very comfortably, and if it weren't for rents I have to pay and money I have to save as quickly as possible if I ever want to stop paying those rents, I could continue consuming at that level for around a full time minimum wage, or working half days at the median wage, or two hours a day at my wage.
An average (mean) American like me has to work about four times as much as I need to just to pay for quite comfortable consumption, just because so few people control all the assets and the rest of us have to spend our income renting those assets and struggling (if we're lucky) to stop renting them.
It's just adding insult to injury that about half of Americans make half or less of that average. (The median is about half the mean).
Fix both of those problems (make mean and median income coincide, and get the assets like housing distributed so that the people who actually use them actually own them and don't have to borrow them from others at a fee) and we could all be living very comfortable lives of luxury very easily.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Oh and I guess I forgot to tie it back in to the topic at hand: the average person only needed to work two hours a day to live a comfortable lifestyle, there'd be a lot more need for more people working the rest of the day to keep up productivity, labor would be more in demand, and more people would be employed for the few hours a day they'd need to get by, so there wouldn't really be the need to worry about either a right to employment or a right to welfare because work would be plentiful and easily cover one's own needs.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
And thus the large increase in help wanted signs is a unicorn.
Even if this "large increase" existed, it would not be evidence of causality. But the city leaders say there has been little impact on jobs: City manager Todd Cutts says there has been no impact on sales tax or property tax, and no change in the number of business licenses issued. ... “We’re not seeing the big benefits that proponents said we would because so few people are affected,” said Guppy. “And at the same time, it’s not having a ripple effect through the economy. It just affects so few jobs, it’s not having much impact.”
As much as most of us would like to fight it , at some point the US will not have any other choice but to Unionize IT workers. This is basically the same as what happened to labors, they were working long hours for low pay, and replaced by cheaper labor. This is exactly what is happening with H1B's , cheaper labor is forcing Americans to take lower wages for the same work.
....black people will stand out too much in the company photos...
Wait a second, I always heard that the reason you don't hire black people is because they insist on wearing spats on 'casual Friday'.
I feel so foolish now.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Every day is a spats day.
Yeah fuck those average people, the only people that matter are the people at the top.
You believe that people who can't do the work they were hired to do deserve just as much money as the company's competent employees earn?
False equivalency is False
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If you haven't heard anything from them it's because you haven't been listening. They are very active on workers rights.
And there's two sides to the coin. Why should you benefit from their hard work campaigning for higher wages without contributing to the fight? Read up a little bit about the history of the American Work pre-Unions. What was the phrase? Nasty, brutish and short.
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OK I've read "various articles in the Seattle Times.
I read the one about the state auditor being indicted.
I read the one about the infant getting shot in the head in Kent in a drive-by.
I read the one about the whooping cough outbreak (which erroneously claims that herd immunity for Pertussis is mathematically even possible, given the diseases R(0) would require 94-96% immunization, and all unimmunized persons be uniformly distributed throughout the population.
I read the one about Shawn Kemp co-hosting a party because Thunder missed the playoffs.
None of these "various articles in the Seattle Times" supported your position.
Link one supporting article from the Seattle Times which is a post-analysis of the job market following the minimum wage being raised. I'll waive the numbers on the small businesses which have gone out of business over the minimum wage being raised (for now).
He decided to become an independent contractor, mostly because he was having so much trouble finding a job during the last big recession. He finally got a job as a contractor to a contractor basically. This firm is your typical contract programming shop, and they would contract to him, didn't bring him on full time. He's American, of Pacific Islander descent (native Hawaiian) the company is mostly Indian.
He continually faced a culture of "You can't know very much, you aren't Indian." Not stated outright, of course, but that attitude. He'd have Indian guys glommed on to a project he was doing who were utterly unhelpful, he'd consistently be the second or third choice, after Indian programmers had failed to be able to solve a problem, and so on. All the while he was kept contract.
Well, he's actually a really talented guy and got a really good reputation with the clients since he would deliver work on time, and as promised, and the rest of the consulting company was not so good at that. He ended up just getting more and more contracts on his own. Finally they realized what they were losing and tried to hire him full time, for an insultingly low figure, and he said no. Now they still bother him with jobs they want him to do from time to time, but he's booked solid, and not very interested in them.
Lol. Do you not get that I spend a lot of time talking with economists and financial experts around the world?
I think that there are a few problems that people have with your statements, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether they're true or not.
First, that bit that I quoted is a logical fallacy usually called Argument from Authority.
Second, you are making a lot of claims without providing evidence. Since you are making the claims, the burden of proof falls on you; you don't get to dismiss the counterarguments that others have posted (often with backing evidence, like links to studies and papers) since you haven't provided anything to counter them aside from unsupported assertions.
Seriously, do you guys not grok the 100 Gbps Internet 2 or something?
I think we do. Part of the point is that it's wonderfully easy to link to information, since you seem to have it available in abundance. Personally, I'm completely ignorant of the Seattle area. I'm sure that I could find some kind of information about the situation up there, since I'm fairly handy with a search engine; I don't know if it would reflect reality though, or if I'd just find the mouthpiece of someone with an agenda besides truth.
Just for the sake of being clear though: I don't think you're trying to persuade anyone of anything. I think you're just trying to make a lot of noise and see how many people you can hook with a troll line. Congrats; you seem to have a good catch.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Thank you for your integrity.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
It wasn't TATA, but another consulting firm about 2005. They placed an ad for consultants who coded in COBOL, knew DB2, etc. Standard business programmer at the time. I thought it was strange that they were advertising in a weekly local supermarket ad rag instead of the local or regional newspapers.
I applied and through a bit of investigation found a phone number to follow up my application and resume.
The guy BLATANTLY told me "We're not hiring any Americans".
I was understandably angry. SO, then I went to their building, which was only about 5 miles from my house. (DUDE, even if the basic job SUCKED, that commute would have been worth it) and EVERY single person going in or out was Indian. I don't mind them. It's the fact that they turned their office into an H-1B only club.
I did file a complaint with the Employment Commission, but it went nowhere of course.
I don't plan on working in the historical time before unions. I also don't agree with using dues to push political agendas. It's no wonder they're losing members and money. The teamsters hit this head on when they tried to unionize the southern auto workers. The workers didn't see any value in unionizing and instead felt that it would be a bad thing for themselves and the company.
If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?" If he answers it, then he has already injected Cancer into your society;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Casteism
Impose tax on corporate revenues, not profits;
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
Casteism
Being against H-1B abuse is not (always) about race. It's about abuse.
In tech, I've worked with many Indians and they are a mixed bag. Just like Americans and any other group.
Just because you were born in some country and don't speak English doesn't make you less intelligent. There are plenty of Nobel prize winners who don't speak English, but if they were to come over to the US and try to navigate the healthcare system they'd probably be labeled slow.
Point being, I've met lots of really bright Indians, the ones I hope to work with again.
And I believe in the H-1B program for it's original purpose, bringing the truly gifted with special skills to the US. We need the ability to do that as a country.
Unfortunately it was first being abused to drive down wages in tech. But now, it's just being used to stuff companies with Indians and crowding out American workers. H-1B's in tech in the SF bay area, the one's I've known, get paid well so it's not that much cheaper to hire them. It's bringing in more people who have the same cultural background. For small companies, I have a practical view of that. But for billion dollar corporations, I would bring down the hammer. That's not the American way.
To stem the abuse they should require a greater burden of the companies:
1) Prove that the skill required isn't just not available, but untrainable. If you don't hire Americans, then Americans will never develop the skill. Java is not a unique untrainable skill. A particular Java library is not a unique untrainable skill, even if I've never used it before.
2) Prove that the person you're hiring has the required skill
3) If it's so rare, pay this person 125% of prevailing wages for having that skill. This also gives reasonable motivation to train a local.
4) Open an anonymous whistleblower line with monetary incentive for successful prosecution and settlements
If Facebook, Google, Apple, etc really want Americans to go into STEM, give Americans opportunities. That's how motivate them. Give them role models, people they know who work in technology and can mentor them. If you don't hire Americans, there will be no American mentors.
What these companies who want to increase H-1Bs and STEM education are really trying to do is reduce labor costs by increasing the labor pool. There are way too many STEM grads in the US now. Labor shortages should drive wages higher, but wages have been stagnant for years.
passetspike!
politicians and corps :) win/win