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Disney Replaces Longtime IT Staff With H-1B Workers
Lucas123 writes: Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of eight co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a leading group advocating for an increase in the H-1B visa cap. Last Friday, the partnership was a sponsor of an H-1B briefing at the U.S. Capitol for congressional staffers. The briefing was closed to the press. One of the briefing documents obtained after the meeting stated, "H-1B workers complement — instead of displace — U.S. Workers." Last October, however, Disney laid off at least 135 IT staff (though employees say it was hundreds more), many of them longtime workers. Disney then replaced them with H-1B contractors that company said could better "focus on future innovation and new capabilities." The fired workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting. "Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," one former employee said. Disney officials promised new job opportunities as a result of the restructuring, but the former staff interviewed by Computerworld said they knew of few co-workers who had landed one of the new jobs. Use of visa workers in a layoff is a public policy issue, particularly for Disney. Ten U.S. senators are currently seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors. Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position."
companies to run with minimal staff and still "produce" as much if not more than before. Yet we still run around with the fiction of the "work week" and a "career"... These concepts are obsolete. It's time for the leisure society with resources for all. To deny this is to say we don't have the technology to do so.
Yet we have the technology to outsource everything. But this only benefits the few. If it benefits all, then it's wrong.
"We were running low on our 'being an asshole' quota this month. Now be sure to continue to watch as your wives and kids demand and purchase our products, chumps."
Mind you, that was just frustration talking... because seriously, what is anyone going to do about this?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What's all this blabber about STEM in American education and code.org and we need more tech workers? What I'm so confused. Companies like Google and Facebook would never be so evil as Disney, right?
So good old uncle Walt would not hire himself these days. Greed can exist far beyond the graveyard.
To summarize: Disney feels comfortable lying. Response: Don't buy anything from them.
Perhaps Mickey should be replaced with an H1-B worker
Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing,
A) What were you doing you could be replaced that easily?!
B) Companies can drop you any time, out of nowhere. Keep some savings, and keep skills up so that if you need another job, you can find one... it's really easy at larger companies to drift into something that lasts years, if not endlessly. Don't let such things trap you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit. If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
The first part of your comment is worth expanding on a little:
You are correct, but define "cheaper". Is the extra time required to complete a project due to language barrier cheaper? Is the $150/hr per head you're paying to hire H1-B contractors making $20/hr "cheaper"? Is the extra liability insurance... well, you get the idea.
It only seems cheaper at first... until the invoices roll in, deadlines slip, and things start getting ugly once the contract agency does... because what are you going to do about it if the contracting firm decides to pull all their guys out at the end of the week? ;)
But anyway... as you were.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I just wanted to say Thank You, and no hard feelings. It seems we've found a couple of interns that will do your entire departments for a pepperoni pizza and 2 liter of coke per shift. You have 6 hours to train your replacements and will be expected to have vacated the premises or security will detain you until the police arrive and you will be prosecuted for trespassing.
Don't forget your NDA, you can't say anything about what this company does.
Thank you very much, and hit the road bud.
IAAL. Learned in a stint at an immigration law firm, that H1B means you write a job description that only your candidate can fill. For example, if I wanted an airplane engineer who knew jumbo jets, I could get a thousand Americans for the job. If I needed a jumbo jet guy who also could work on Bleriot biplanes, that might be a lot less. If I also said he needed to be fluent in Mandarin and Farsi, I've just written an H1-B for my candidate. The key to success is making sure that only your guy can meet the job description that YOU create. Had a friend who was H1-B, even though he was raised in the states...he never bothered for the green card, took the easy way through school, etc. Had a falling out with his boss, and the H1-B went "poof". This essentially American had to relocate to Europe, and when he didn't self deport, was excluded for five years. H1-B means your employer owns your ass. Sadly, it is now a means to "on shore" a docile labor force.
These contractors are indentured servants of the contracting company. They are forbidden from looking for another job and must do as they are told for the 2 years they are here. Then poof, they are gone and a new set of indentured servants are sent in.
I hope Disney gets hacked like Sony did and all the dirty email can be hung out for all to see.
That's how it seems to me. God bless America but not Americans.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Why does America still wallow in a recession? It is by those that beat the drum for the H1B harvest.
Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position."
uhhh...enforcement of any such "protection" is up to the executive, not the legislative branch. Where's Obama (and the Justice dept.) on this?
Because it is illegal to replace employees with H-1B contractors,
The complaint is that companies are hiring people from outside the US because they can pay them less. The answer to that is simple: crack down on wage discrimination.
The H1-B program should be changed such that only the company that is the end recipient of the work product of the H1-B worker can apply for a visa.
Those companies that provide on-site engineers to other companies should not qualify for H1-B visa sponsorship. In this way many abuses would be stopped.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The fired workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting.
Is there anyone who believes that wasn't the primary motivation? Even the corporate spin: "focus on future innovation" is standard corporate-speak for "spending money elsewhere."
It's not even 'spin,' that is the most straightforward way to interpret Disney's corporate statement.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
http://www.dailymotion.com/vid...
With out them we can be replaced by contractors and it's the contract firm that is the one useing the H1B's
In that way H1B workers are perfect for American businesses. The workers can't find new work, can't be hired away from your company, don't have any leverage for increased pay or benefits. It's everything Steve Jobs wanted when he colluded with other Silicon Valley CEOs to suppress worker pay.
Seriously, this H-1B shit needs to stop now. Until we're at 99% employment rate for whatever field we're importing workers for, they need to be shipped back to whatever country they came from. This is worse than the illegal imigrant, because these guys are diaplacing current American workers and taking jobs we have people dyeing to fill.
Every single one of those fired need to get together and file a class action against Disney, and this needs to be posted all over the social sites. Disney is no more a family company than Jack the Ripper was an exceptional lover. This needs to backlash on them, and hard.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
I can't go on the "small small world" ride now without thinking of it as their sourcing plan.
Table-ized A.I.
Posting AC because, you know... This is going to be unpopular, but It's the trajectory that I see in Tech management in large enterprises.
This isn't shocking. I built my career during the IT and dot-com boom, moved into management, and then into executive positions. I fear this path is no longer available.
Why? Young companies need competent tech workers who can perform, and they need them fast. Once the company scales and competition eats into margins and profitability, they cut cost, that means firing expensive domestic workers and using overseas/contract headcount. Disney is doing the mechanically rational thing for a mature public company.
"Fucking evil management", you say? Well, grow up kiddies. This is what the board, shareholders, and investors demand - increased YoY profitability, which can be achieved, partly, by cutting costs.
This will continue. It will get worse. It's a race to the bottom, so get used to it. The barriers to becoming an IT worker have vanished, and people can work globally. You don't like it? Unionize or advocate trade barriers (which IT will not do), but business will seek the lowest cost option to achieve their business objectives.
Oh, and just wait until AI/automation scales up... My prediction: IT as a profession won't be around in 5 years.
"For any wage"? That means if there is a single person in the US who is capable, and you're willing to do 10x there salary it is likely you can get them... I mean imagine if you could find a job had 100 qualified people, but the US needed ~200 of them. You could easily state they were breaking the law, because there was likely a wage that would get the 100 to move. I mean for $100M per year, I'd do nearly any job I'm capable of, because at the end of 2-3 weeks, I could retire and life my current lifestyle. If I could do it for a year or two, I'd have the happiest nephews on earth (no kids, they'd eventually inherit it).
This logical conclusion implicitly means there should be a price cap, and the question is if the cap is lower than what qualified Americans will accept.
It seems fairly icky that Disney is doing this (based upon the story as presented), but I'm also a realist and know that nobody is entitled to the specific job they have now.
Corporate IT workers are mowed down. CIO and CFO make a bundle of cash by saving short term labor costs.
It is simple greed at the C level. They do not care about the quality of the final product nor do they care about the hundreds of families impacted.
This article also fails to mention the rate of depression and suicide in this newly renovated organization. Nor the recent gender crimes or outstanding employee relation issues that ensue from a massive cultural replacement.
I assume this is the norm, since I have seen it replay at many other locations.
How can any company have a position which "can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position"?
With a high enough salary, any position can be filled, so unless companies are expected to get into bidding wars and offer multi million dollar salaries to compete for one of the american workers that could fill the position, how can such a policy be enforced? My company hires a lot of H1-B's (typically PhD's from various European countries), and while we pay a good salary, we can't find enough american workers to fill our open positions. If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us, but our salary costs are already high, and paying several times market rate would probably drive the company into the ground.
Seriously, this H-1B shit needs to stop now. Until we're at 99% employment rate for whatever field we're importing workers for, they need to be shipped back to whatever country they came from. This is worse than the illegal imigrant, because these guys are diaplacing current American workers and taking jobs we have people dyeing to fill.
Every single one of those fired need to get together and file a class action against Disney, and this needs to be posted all over the social sites. Disney is no more a family company than Jack the Ripper was an exceptional lover. This needs to backlash on them, and hard.
Yep, and I have $1000 for a Congress-critter that says it's perfectly legal and you that should be declared an enemy combatant for resisting the will of our corporate masters. Let's see whose opinion prevails...
1. Don't volunteer (make them pay for every bit of effort)
2. Don't apologise (never admit mistakes in writing)
3. Don't resign (they have to fire you)
4. Always maximise outside options and minimise local effort
You know.....I really like what Ken has to say. I wish our congress critters would listen to him. After all, they are supposed to be there to help US citizens' needs above all others. *sigh*
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If foreign workers are really in demand, then employers must be willing to pay for their expertise right? So why not auction off the 80,000 H1B slots to the highest bidder instead of giving them away? Surely each slot is worth $20-50k or more for these expert workers.
But refusing to backfill their positions and bringing in contractors is A-OK, plus it eliminates long term retirement benefit costs
All the cool executives are doing it
In a way, I hope you're right. Because the companies that buck the trend will be around in 10 years, and every other one will be on its way to bankruptcy. I take great satisfaction in seeing heartless, stupid, mindless dipshits fail and take large companies with them.
The c level team will take home a fat bonus. Hundreds of local Orlando families are affected. The software products will fall over due to lack of care more so than anything else.
The real magic of Disney it was that the cast members loved their work. They were proud of the product. iger hired a new cfo who found someone recently ousted from American Express who could do it better. The oops moment will not be as bad as when Eisner fired all the imagineers. Who by the way went on to build islands of adventure.
However it will be very difficult to find and build a new culture of it people who care at all. The new leadership has caused massive depression and at least one suicide in the team Disney parking lot. This is layered on top of the employee relation issues with the rampant sexism and cultural favoritism.
What's next for cfo and Cio? A great new job and a pay raise doing the same thing at the next place. Never mind that they were ousted from Amex and Disney.
Wow. You must really like Mike Tyson. He does have a great tattoo on his face.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I eventually see this entire system collapsing within the next ten years and not just IT (Information Technology) but the whole economy. How can the economy continue if you have nobody working and earning anything? That's right, it can't. And when that happens the entire system is going to simply collapse. Like I said before, I give the system another ten years (if we're lucky) or five years (if we're not lucky) and then... poof, gone. Total and complete world wide economic collapse that will make the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s look like a historical footnote in comparison. Anyone with half a brain can see the writing on the wall.
quoting this wonderful gem:
Several of these workers, in interviews, said they didn't want to appear as xenophobic, but couldn't help but to observe, as one did, that "there were times when I didn't hear English spoken" in the hallways. As the layoff date neared, "I really felt like a foreigner in that building," the worker said.
I'll go ahead and name names: I used to work at cisco. I have said many times that I could walk down the hallway at any random cisco san jose building and for most of the day, not hear a single word spoken in english (in hallways or breakrooms).
is this what we want to see IN AN AMERICAN COMPANY??
I don't dislike indians. I like the culture, love the food, think people from india are fine and decent, overall. but why should it be 'normal' to walk down the hallway of a san jose, california company and not hear english for hours and hours at a time?
I should have had a gopro cam or something on me and taped what a typical day was like, there (when I still worked there; they canned my ass not too long ago). I would then send a copy to the congresscritters who think that there are not ENOUGH foreign workers in the US. maybe they want me to go a full week between hearing english in an american company?
if I go thru an interview and hear 'not a cultural match' one more time, I swear to zeus I'm going to go postal. I'm nearly at the end of my rope, here....
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I pity the fool who doesn't drink his Gatorade.
Disney decided to outsource their IT. This has been going on in industry for what, a couple decades? That the IT company didn't take on the Disney employees and used a lot of H1-Bs from India is bad enough w/o the sensational Disney's-directly-hiring-H1-B-replacements-for-their-staff implication of the crappy cut and paste summary.
I wonder how many months until they have a massive data loss ?
Can anyone say stock option meltdown ?
Sony Sony Sony !
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
The seaweed is always greener
in somebody else's lake
You dream about going up there
But that is a big mistake
Just look at the world around you
Right here on the IT floor
Such wonderful things surround you
What more is you lookin' for?
An H1B!
An H1B!
Darling it's better
Job under the weather
Taken by an H1B!
Up on the shore they work all day
Out in the sun they slave away
While we devotin'
Full time to floatin'
Your job to an H1B!
Companies have been working for years to eliminate essential personnel. You find complex tasks and break them down into simpler and simpler tasks. If they were paying middle class wages this wouldn't be feasible. But at slave wages it works perfectly. If you're not doing incredible complex math that requires near genius level intellect that only a few genetic freaks have then your job can be broken down into processes and then your livelihood replaced.
And after 30 years of declining wages who the hell can save anything? 60% of Americans are paycheck to paycheck. And before you trot out that nonsense about buying iPhones every 2 years my generation doesn't smoke. That more than makes up for the cost of a phone every few years. So shove off.
Maybe companies _shouldn't_ be able to drop me anytime. You know, there's a downside to my desperation for you too. That's what unemployment is for. It's not to protect me if I'm unemployed. It's to protect _you_ from competing with me when I'm desperate and I'll take _anything_. See, when that happens they'll fire you with your benefits and your high salary and hire me for minimum wage. The unemployed are coming for you. Welcome to the race to the bottom. It's a long way down.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
H1B visas rules should first apply to CEOs then downward to that organization. No company really needs an expensive CEO, they cost a lot and no large company has ever closed when their CEO died in a car crash, so they are expendable. Get a new CEO at a fraction of the cost and benefits, that's even better shareholder value.
What's good for Disney is good for America. Or at any rate, good for the Americans who matter.
I recently read that Southern California Edison replaced its whole 500-strong IT staff with H1Bs. However, details are scarce. Several US senators have called for an investigation, but the feds are refusing on the grounds that no one hurt by it filed a complaint.
The US economy is screwed anyway. The H1B saga is just one more issue in the decades-long trend of converting the economy into shareholders and people who flip burgers for shareholders. Once the rich have skimmed all the cream, they'll go find another country to screw - or at least one that actually makes stuff they can buy with their winnings.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's already several programs for the genius of the world to immigrate if they want to so H1-B was never necessary. But how will you get popular support? There's just too many issues that divide the American Workforce. No one votes with their wallets. Whether it's Guns, Gay Marriage, Abortion, Drug Legalization, whatever. There's always something to split the electorate. And with our winner take all 2 party system that means all anyone has to do is get a majority of the vote. Add in Gerrymandering and it's basically a done deal.
To get rid of this crap Americans would have to give up on every other issue they think matters and vote on money and only money. I just don't see that happening. If we could switch to a parliamentary system, but that pretty much means scraping our Constitution; and to hear Americans talk about that damnable piece of scrap paper you'd think it was their bible. To be fair I remember as a kid having it droned into me that it was a sacred document. Every teacher I've ever had sung it's praise. When I was older I found out why we have a Senate (hint: it our version of the House of Lords) and why we had so much States rights. It wasn't for Freedom's sake, that's for sure...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Don't forget to staple the non-compete agreement to the NDA during the exit interroga-I mean interview.
Every American job they fire - is one less American's family income for Disney.
(that includes DVD's and theater and toys and well pretty much anything, but I'm sure the lower payed H1B's will pick up the slack and make more profit!!!)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
http://readwrite.com/2015/04/29/apple-watch-tattoos-ink-skin-color
Ha ha Timmy Cook is such a snook.
Ha ha
Right now it's next to impossible for an immigrant to obtain citizenship in a reasonable time frame. If we start giving citizenship to immigrants (at least high-skilled immigrants) after a few years on the job instead of after an eternity, employers' leverage disappears entirely. Poof, problem gone.
The whole system won't collapse unless it's replaced politically (unlikely, so buckle up). Capital will dominate, as people will continue buying cheaper and cheaper shit from Walmart at lower and lower prices (thanks to zero marginal costs). And the markets will reward these companies with higher valuations. Fact is, labor is diminishing in power as it becomes globally fluid and increasingly displaced by automation - US workers are not immune.
As for those evil executives - they're doing their jobs, and collecting performance bonuses (often >10x+ the average IT income) as a reward. If that CxO decides to become a martyr, there are 100 others waiting for that fat payday - this will not impact the macroeconomic trend.
Public companies, investors, and capital are doing what they do in the most efficient way. Expect more of these stories. One day it will be yours.
Disneyland was a great place years ago, my family visited there many times. Now it seems more like Wally World. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The H1B program is making the problem worse. The corporations have the choice of training an American or hiring a fully trained foreigner. Once they hire the H1B worker they won't also do the training, and no American is going to spend lots of money in self training for a job that's filled: so no American will ever arrise to take that job. Hiring an H1B worker makes that temporary skill shortage permanent.
The CEO in question is using a government program, so he isn't the only player here.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Lesson 1 - try not to work in a place where they use fucking stupid euphemisms for employees such as "cast members".
It's a bit of a clue that either employees are not valued as long term staff or that somewhere there is a total idiot drafting policies insisting on what employees with be called.
"But it's showbusiness!" someone may exclaim - but no that does not fit because camera operators etc are not "cast members" - which means this is some weird shit for appearance sake and other arbitrary shit is bound to happen.
You think you'd be able to keep your job long enough to retire? Wow what entitlement you have my dear. Now go re-train or get another degree in something else and get a new job and never stop trying.. your brass ring is out there somewhere. Now just remember to not draw a picture of Mickey Mouse while you are job-hunting because some things do last forever, when you have enough money to buy laws. WE are entitled to make money forever. YOU are not.
Who happen to be H1B visas working for temp agencies.
at least with the ACA you can get a non group Health Care plan with pre existing conditions.
I eventually see this entire system collapsing within the next ten years and not just IT (Information Technology) but the whole economy.
Entire economic collapse is always ten years away. See you next decade when you'll be repeating the same bullshit again.
Aren't they supposed to pretend that they couldn't find a qualified American? Or has the program been changed, so that no pretending that you searched long and hard for someone with 75 years of C++14 experience?
Dear friends
I'm posting as an anonymous for obvious reasons, but wanted to share some inside view on this subject. To qualify my comments, I lived in South America working for North American and European based companies as a consultant, being paid USD 90.00/hour (so 14.4K/month == 172K/year). I credit my involvement with Opensource as the main reason to be well paid even though not leaving in USA at time.
I always admired USA and still believe this is a good country, even though is no longer the best country to live when compared to some countries in Europe (e.g. Germany, France, Finland).
About 2 years ago I decided to migrate to USA, mostly to provide my child the opportunity to learn how to speak good and proper English (with American accent). My starting pay was 200K/year, so, not within the stereotype of cheap labor and local job stealer that is so common here in Slashdot.
The H1B visa was the only way to move to USA. Calling to kill the program will just push away talented people that might otherwise being working and paying taxes in USA. That being said, I feel disgusted to know that several companies exploit the program to get cheap labor and I believe this must be stopped.
One common misconception is to believe that you can always find local people to do the job. Well, boys... that might be true for trivial jobs (like IT support), but is exactly the opposite for elite jobs (e.g. linux kernel, WebKit/Blink, Gstreamer, etc).
For those elite jobs, most of the people is already taken (e.g. Apple, Google). And the remaining people is scattered around the world, being just a few who are willing to move to USA.
Another common misconception is to think you can 'just train' the locals to do it. Nopes... it takes several years to make an elite programmer that is a maintainer in one of those aforementioned Opensource projects.
Maybe you are considering that instead of going through the H1B, I should have applied for a GreenCard (GC)? Well, I have a close friend, PhD and one of the top 20 experts in his domain area that was living in Australia and applied for a GC... that was 3 years ago and only now he will be able to move to USA.
To close my message, I would like to tell that it may be the minority, but there are indeed some really good engineers/programmers that depend on the H1B program to move to USA and later apply for a GC if planning to stay longer, which, to be quite honest, I'm a bit unsure if it is worthwhile considering that:
a) Your wife won't be able to work;
b) You pay taxes and social security in a European level and get South American level services in return;
c) Life in USA is quite expensive;
d) This country is becoming less and less democratic by the day.
Cheers
AnonymousCoward
Reddit is even one step further down the path, with their new "no negotiation" policy for hires. All their offers are take-it-or-leave-it, supposedly because allowing negotiation is sexist. However, what this also means is that they are going to get a lot more "leave it" responses, if the initial offer is not good enough - because it really means the new way to negotiate is to say "no, that's too low, but I might reapply if I thought there was a better offer available". Then they can turn around and say "look, we tried to hire domestic workers, but they turned us down - we need more H1Bs"
Evil Mad Scientist, "That Sony hack was kinda exciting, but how am I ever going to get my minions into a position of trust at the Disney offices?"
Minion: "Hey boss, there's a job opening in IT"
EMS: "PROFIT!"
Aren't you supposed to build a pyramid?
Companies should be forced to pay a hefty fee, like $50,000 per H1B employee hired, or perhaps 50% of the annual salary. If it is really about these companies not being able to find qualified candidates, then they should be willing to pay this fee.
Doesnt the public have the right to demand the business owner hire only countrymen? That door swings both ways.
Good-bye
Why should this nation ask our loyalty when it shows our citizens none?
American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position.
I don't think that a job exists that some American would not be willing to take for $1 billion dollars.
The following jobs where it would be easy to find *some* American willing to do for $1 billion:
1. Be raped to death (with he proceeds going to their family).
2. Kill their whole family (with the proceeds going to themselves).
3. Being the 2nd or 3rd person in a human centipede.
4. Being eaten to death by Hannibal Lecter.
5. Being fed to themselves to death by Hannibal Lecter.
Dear human race, please stop wasting your money on Disney and their parks, movies, etc, etc, etc. Poor Walt, must be turning in his grave over what his namesake company has become...
For point (A), they story made it sound like they were replaced overnight. I'm just wondering how that happens for any IT job... there's always some knowledge transfer that needs to be done.
For point (B), I'm saying that you cannot trust the company period. Some are saying what Disney did may well be illegal - doesn't matter to the people who were fired, because they need something to live on now. Never assume a company will follow the law, or cares about you whatsoever. In some cases they might, mind you, it's just that you should never assume that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How will you be able to buy anything at Walmart if you don't have any cash to buy said products? That's the situation that we are very much looking at coming within the next 5 to 10 years.
It really annoys me that you can get an H-1B for a job that requires you to be able to write a "Hello World" program or to be a junior sysadmin. However, the US needs some "quick" visa for highly skilled people instead of just offering green cards. The green card application process takes more than a year and no one with actual skills will sit on their ass waiting for a year, especially when you can't apply for a green card from a US student visa without first leaving the country and doing the waiting abroad. They will go somewhere else instead. My proposal would be the following:
1. Reduce the quota to maybe 10000 visas instead of 85000
2. Instead of a lottery for visas in early April rank applicants based on their salaries and pick the top 10k. Maybe do it at the beginning of each month with a montly quota of 1000 visas with any leftovers transferred to the next month.
3. Drop the lottery system completely for funded PhDs (restricted to universities belonging to some of the university groups with very strict standards)
(1) would make it impossible to use the visa for pulling down salaries and none of the consultancies could get cheap workers. (2) would guarantee, together with a fast processing time, that the visa would be very fast to get. Highly skilled people don't want to wait and the salary requirements to fit the quota is already a very good filter, so the USCIS don't need to do filtering themselves. The market is much better at evaluating who has skills through what they're willing to pay.
I'm a PhD graduate from one of the top 5 schools in the world in my field. I know there are less than 10 people in the world that know anything about my area, since my team essentially started it. Top tech companies where interested in it and wanted to hire me. I would like to stay in the US, but I will just return to Europe if I need to fight this visa mess.
I'm starting to think the only way to stop these companies from wholesale firing so they can replace everyone with cheap H1-B workers is to make them targets for massive cyber attacks. Not that I can do that. It's not my skillset. But if it ever does happen, I'm going to sit back with a big bag of popcorn and laugh my ass off.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The IT folks were sleeeeeeeping when .. when Blue-color got Bejinged - to enrich YOUR share-values . Now the IT-color is going to the world .. to enrich your CEOs pay....
Moral: If you remain silent or uncaring when genocide happens to your neighbor blue-species, the next is you white-color species.
Make amends, end WTO :). US should stop demanding world to openup-its-market, and choose to shut importing H1B, and cheap Chinese goods that break often and creates lot of garbage/pollution both in China , the world over, the oceans and deep-sea.
> >why do we owe anyone else a job? its often asked 'why do US companies owe US workers jobs?' but I turn it around, why should US companies NOT support their own people, FIRST ??
Oh puleeez, US does not bestow others job because US loves them. US as it calls itself proudly "Captalistic economy" .. where the rich ought to become richer. For that YOUR US govt worked tirelssly for the past 3-4 decades ...
1. US created WTO so it can export with less restrictions .. more forex, more local jobs.
- The US people were happy
- The developing world lost lot of its small industry, farmers lost, farmer suicides, subsistance lost, pollution, more disease
- IT nerd (You) kept quiet because either you chose not to educate yourself, also your greed stopped you from seeing others pain.
2. US capitalists (heros) CEO's Beijinged production to China /. ./ because you were not affected.
- The US middle class only saw "wow cheap Plasma TV at my home", the middle class ignored the innovation/jobloss.
- The blucolor guys lost jobs, many small towns vanished, more pollution in China. The blue color did not know how to rant in
- The IT nerd(you) did not rant about "blue loosing job" in
3. US capitalists (heros) CEO's Bangalored IT jobs to India and elsewhere. ... my fingure is burnt. waaaaaa ....
- Oh ouch
Do some justice for other countries (by not twisting other countries through WTO and other tricks - make trade "equitable" rather than MY COUNTRY should gain all wealth)... and the karma will turn around for you too.
Do companys like Disney think that their customers all work at McDonalds? Keep laying off highly-paid employees and you can kiss your customer base goodbye.
I agree.
If you follow the second order links down to what Disney actually did, they outsourced their IT to a contracting agency.
When they did this, they laid off 125 full time employees in the process, and between three of the contracting agencies providing the services to replace them, there were apparent;y 65 H1-B applications in the last 3 years. Presumably, not all 65 went to Disney, because the contracting agencies contract services out to companies other than Disney. In fact, a vast number of dark data center porn and shopping sites are located in that area of the country, down by Los Angeles, where the majority of that kind of content is produced.
What this story is actually about, is complaining that the full time workers were replaced with contractors, some of whom were probably in the U.S. working for the contracting agencies on either H1 or L1 visas.
The summary is a gross misrepresentation of the facts here, and going with a contracting agency is a valid mechanism for ensuring "Just In Time" capability, without over-employing in order to handle upsurges in workloads. It's how janitorial and security services are handled (when you have a large company event, you have the contracted agencies put on more security people for the event itself, and added janitorial people post-event to clean up afterward.
That said, the usual route a decent company will follow when out-sourcing to a local agency, as opposed to off-shoring the work entirely, is to require that the contracting agency hire a certain percentage of the workers that are being laid off to replace them with contractors. This has the effect of ensuring continuity of service, providing a built-in mentoring capability to the contracting agency for the processes and procedures being contracted out, and in general providing continuity of employment for at least some of their existing staff.
It falls under the category of "Not Being Dickish About Switching Over To Contractors".
But the idea that they should not be switching over to contractors at all, for something like IT services, which are generally modular, replicable, and have uniformly applicable skill sets, if what you are spending your time doing is pulling wires, spinning up VMs, installing system software on replacement desktop/laptop machines, and so on, is patently absurd. These are "cog jobs", where any sufficiently skilled cog can replace any other sufficiently skilled cog in the machine, and you probably won't lose a marching step over the replacement.
That, and surge scalability, make them rather ideal for out-sourcing.
Frankly, I'm surprised companies like RackSpace are renting out their IT people, rather than forcing everyone to live on RackSpace racks; it's a pretty ideal scenario for them, in terms of profit per employee, and gives them buffer for their own internal surge scalability issues. They get borrowable capacity, and other people pay to maintain that capacity at a certain level.
Add the fact that a lot of deployment is on OpenStack with standard deployment tools, no matter if you're working on your cloud or working on someone else's cloud: all the tools are the same, so all the skills are pretty much transferrable.
This is kind of what happens when you sufficiently commoditize an industry through standardization.
Naw man, fuck your ACA. The Obamacare Tax is great, bro! You pay $95 in tax and you don't get shit for it! It's fucking awesome!!!
A lot of folks are advocating for the gov't to step in and save the American IT force. Don't hold your breath. If US companies were unable to import cheap labor, they would have to save that money some other way. It's not like they're just going to reach into their pockets and give out more money. They will appeal to the government to lower their tax or regulation burdens. The gov't won't budge here. The gov't burdens are forcing companies to cut costs in ways which the gov't allows, and H1-B is that vector. It's a deliberate loophole to keep private companies content with the existing burdens, and will not be closed, because it would rock the boat in these other regards.
The H1B visa can lead to the individual being stateless from an income tax perspective and therefore no tax needs to be paid.
Berkeley Breathed had a quite few comic-stips commenting on profit-centric company managers, I quite like this one about how the "wildly overpaid, criminally incompetent, board-coddled, company-wrecking American CEO" will be "punished by the system", "disciplined without mercy" and "spanked"...
And since the topic is Disney..
disclaimer: I'm European so I might be missing the ball completely
But for every H1B visa a company has it has to make a yearly donation of X (let's say X >= 10.000$ as a minimum) to a state funded school/university.
Companies complain about finding skilled labor: well they can get cheap labor from abroad but at the same time also fund an education program to solve this.
So a decade or less later they should be able to find skilled workers.
This is how my college IT department was partly funded.
A bank chain with a nearby operational office needed a regular fresh supply of COBOL programmers, so they sponsored my college in exchange for COBOL being in the curriculum. Every year about 150 students graduated so they always had a fresh pool to hire from.
Madame Clinton proactively sought donations from Tata and Infosys eventually garnering $3Million from them. If you want your last 2 weeks to be spent training your replacement then be sure to vote for the Pantsuit Puppet.
That and the access to affordable contraception.
If you can be replaced overnight, I wonder how much work you were doing...
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Companies that replace American workers with H1-B Visa workers should be taxed at a MUCH higher rate and have any and all tax abatements eliminated.
I've had it. My employer is outsourcing too. It no longer pays to be the best at what you do ! If you want to get even more angry search for the stock of whatever company to see what the top shareholders earn. If your take 3% of the earnings across the board it's more than enough to cover the salaries of the IT staff getting displaced. These are not desktop support jobs either. These are senior system engineer and infrastructure engineer jobs... not desktop support. Jobs that pay 75k/year - 150k /year. What these companies are doing are polarizing the United States even further. It's not only about Black vs. White.. I believe if this action continues there will be a revolution. I am tired of the response I get from politicians. Our government is either misinformed or they are in on destroying the middle class too.
What can you do to stop it ? Stop outsourcing. Payroll is the cost of doing business. Employ the best and brightest you can find and your company will do well. Outsource just to stretch the truth to your investors by outsourcing and now your payroll is an expenditure that you can amortize over seven years ? Just to make investors think your payroll is less ? That's not right. If you have been affected by outsourcing doing your career it's time to speak up. It's time for us to get organized. It's time for us to do something about it. First we need to educate America so citizens can boycott companies like Hasbro and Disney. There's many more and when my days are over at my place of employment I will release my company name. Outsourcing is about green so we need to hit them in the pocketbooks. I am all for making a buck but if it comes to selling your fellow citizen out to make a buck it is wrong. My parents didn't raise me like that.
It's a shame that people have to be so greedy. Sure make a profit but there's a cost to earning that profit. Employ the best people and share the wealth with your staff. The wealth will trickle down through the economy and the economy will do well. No wonder the economy hasn't fully bounced back.
P.S. The outsourced staff.. they usually earn a small percentage of what an American Technologist earns. The difference goes to the outsource firm and the cost is actually more than to hire a direct hire employee. The savings is the payroll now becoming an expenditure.
We need to make this a felony.
So don't take your kid to a Disney Movie.. wait until it's on Netflix or Amazon so you can watch it for almost free.
If your tired of earning an extremely low interest rate on your savings account, invest in a safe at your home and store your money there. At least you won't owe taxes on it anymore. While you are at it get your license to carry because it think it's really going to hit the fan pretty soon.
The company I work for has only ever hired one H-1B worker, because he was literally the only qualified candidate. That's one worker over a ten year period.
The H-1B program is useful, but I don't see why it needs to be expanded.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Same here. Corporate greed is going to bring the entire system down. Where I work outsourcing is rearing it's ugly head. When I look up the stock and see the top shareholder earnings it makes me angry. What the earning tell me is the executives have no clue at the cost of doing business. By outsourcing they are actually lying to shareholders. When a company outsources, payroll becomes an expenditure. An expenditure can be written off over seven years. Payroll appears to be 1/7th of what it truly is. This should not be legal. When outsourcing where I work is complete I plan on making a lot of noise about this. I've contacted the SEC and voiced my opinion. Right now we need to use the internet to organize. Start a campaign against outsourcing. Maybe we need to form a political party because Democrats suck, Republicans suck, The tea party has ruined their reputation and are viewed as zealot quacks, the green party just appears they want to get high and have same sex with each other. I was looking at the Constitution party but they are wacked too. With everything that is going on in the World we need a strong military. You need to be strong to keep the peace. It's Human nature. If you let your gaurd down you are in trouble. I think we need to look at risk. Strong military and if you have a business and outsource your staff, you are taking a risk and putting the country at risk.. pure and simple. Maybe we need a military figure as President that's not going to take any more shit. No more bailing out other countries period. Worldwide we are not liked because we stick our nose in everyone's business. It's time for us to fortify our borders, kick the illegals out, kick the h1b visas out. make it a crime if an executive earns more than 4x the top salary in the comapany. Greed will break Capitalism. It will ultimately end up with a Civil War. I don't like it when I wish the executives driving the outsource move where I work to just drop dead of a incurable disease. Then all the money in the world couldn't help them. I don't like it. I worry about my kids' future.
I just suggest everyone does the same and tells them what theyI am writing to you as a potential visitor to your resorts and occasional consumer of your media to complain in the most intense terms possible about your companies attitude towards its IT staff in general, and specifically those employed within these resorts.
If recent reports are to be believed (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2915904/it-outsourcing/fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers.html) , you have just replaced one hundred and fifty hardworking staff with offshore labour that is cheaper.
The reasons given, unfortunartly don't jel with any reasonable person who believes in a healthy economy. Workers should be paid their proper worth and be allowed to bring up their families without the threat of an offshore person taking that job.
It is not even as though Disney is doing badly in terms of income and needs to cut costs. The only people that benefit from this action is mostly corporate share holders and the one percent of the population, including board members such as yourself. If you truly believe in a strong proud America, you should be looking to keep those good workers and give them something to be proud of.
I fully expect that such a plea falls on deaf ears, but I will be doing what I can to ensure that Disney recieves no income from me. My wife and I were planning to go to Disneyland this year. However in light of your shortsighted attitude to US workers I will take my dollars elsewhere. I will also try my hardest to make sure people know how Disney treats their employees.
Yours sincerely think of Disney.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
I was going to take my three sons to see the new Marvel Comics Move "Avengers: Age of Ultron".. forget about it now. I urge you all to do the same. use the internet , get the word out. There is only one way to deal with greedy bastards.. make them go broke. After they go broke they will take care of the rest.
That is the most effective way to deal with this. To heck with Disney; I will spend my money elsewhere
My thought as to why they are changing from outsourcing to bringing them here is that now the wealthy assholes don't have to go to third world countries!
I can't wait until Disney has a Sony like insider breach and Star Wars is leaked before it is released.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Our lawyer told us we needed to show that there were no qualified US Citizens available to do the job. ;). To provide formal documentation, we took out a 30-day ad in a trade journal cited that, and stated that there were no responses (there weren't; I think trade journal job ads are pro forma for this purpose anyhow). Also the lawyer told us we had to state the wages were consistent with what we were paying similarly qualified US Citizens doing the same job.
We were doing our hiring via usenet (this was a while ago
In our case it didn't matter; these requirements were just facts. But I'm curious why Disney doesn't seem bound by those same rules.
Have the rules changed?
Was our lawyer incorrect--Is H1-B meant to displace qualified US workers with cheaper foreign workers?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Most companies I know that have done this, do not understand they are taking a 5 year road trip to mediocrity and fail. It takes about 5 years of breaking the cycle to fully understand what they just did to themselves. I'm sure some "MBA know it all", just got a huge bonus check and doesn't care because he is either retiring or moving on. Or possibly he is retiring and moving on in 5 years and just doesn't know it yet. Most companies bring in a consulting firm to help explain how best to accomplish this who also make a huge amount of money.
No. That would be "vote with your wallet".
But, in the case of public companies, the shareholders could do this. But it would hurt the share prices.
And for private companies "vote with your wallet" is the only viable approach (and by viable I mean there is no approach actually).
BlameBillCosby.com
As if I needed one more reason not to go to their hell-hole parks.
I got dragged to their parks a few years back to make the wife and kids happy. It was a miserable time, but my kids loved it.
No more. I won't give Disney another dime of my money. I'm going to vote with my wallet on this one. No more Disney toys, lunchboxes, clothing, movies...etc.
F these guys. Let them build parks in India for all I care.
Time to replace Disney movies with Bollywood counterparts.
The problem is that H1-B's aren't really hired. They are temporary workers to whom the company need feel no long-term obligation. They are temporary residents to whom the government need feel no long-term obligation. Bring a few of them in, let them work for a bit, then send them off when the project is done: perfect workforce flexibility.
The H1b program, like unemployment insurance, is a good idea but is subject to abuse. Fraud in unemployment benefits individuals, and we have all manner of documentation, regulation, and verification to minimize that abuse. Fraud in H1b benefits corporations, and we basically trust them to do the right thing.
Is anyone surprised by this? It isn't like this is the first, or last, time this has happened. I will never understand how anyone can claim that H1B is good for US workers. I certainly don't understand how our government can claim there is a need for more foreign tech workers. I am one of many many thousands of unemployed tech workers. I have a nice little programming degree that is worthless. My degree and $7.50 will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
..and the Libertarian position is that the problem is that the company just can't pay you pennies on the dollar and are forced to import labour because of it.
I'm pretty sure he meant Micheal Jordan
Disney is just one more idiot company that thinks that experience is worthless. I'm pretty sure that these new IT dudes are in over their heads in shit at this time since they need to understand the infrastructure, the cost of this must be astronomical and i doubt that they are doing any real economy.
I'm boycotting Star Wars VII ... well, no. But, I'm very upset!
Management: "train your replacement, or you do not get any severance."
IT worker: "guess I have no choice"
vs:
Management: "train your replacement, or you do not get any severance."
Entire IT staff: "you try to pull that bullshit, and we all walk out"
Management: "okay IT workers, you win"
Microsoft hires far more H1Bs. As does IBM, Apple, etc.
The entire situation needs to be fixed. Singling out one company is pointless.
Start by donating to NumbersUSA. I do.
Thank god the group is called "Partnership for a New American Economy". I'd hate to think they were sponsoring anything un-American, which obviously they could only do if they were being duplicitous about the name of the group. Politically-minded folk wouldn't do that, would they?
Shoot, I'm already boycotting Avengers and the new Star War movies. Not much left to boycott.
Back on topic, there will no longer be any long time IT workers at Disney to speak of. Good IT management will leave, incompetent IT management is what will be left.
And they will get hacked in and their movies, intellectual property stolen, computer system destroyed. Maybe cruise ship computers hijacked.
Just give it time, it will be spectacular. Definitely worth the wait.
But here's the problem. Unlike in the past we really do have the technology to put everyone out of work. Everyone including...
* The factory worker. Once thought as a safe job, now being replaced by robots.
* The warehouse worker. Again, once thought as a safe job, now being replaced by robots. We had an article about this on this very site. http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
* Retail employee working the cash register, replaced by self-scan registers.
* Fast food worker, replaced by self-order kiosks and machines that can even make a burger.
* Customer and technical support agents on the phone, replaced by the likes of IBM Watson.
* Janitor, replaced by a robot that can clean toilets, mop floors, etc.
And that's just the start of the jobs that everyday people rely on for their very survival that simply won't exist anymore. Not everyone can have a college degree. Hell, we have too many of them as it is in the USA. Tons of people with college degrees, even technical degrees, and they can't find work. Why? Because either the job has been completely automated by a computer or a robot.
So when all of that happens, what do you think is going to happen? The very people who were once the life-blood of the economy will quite simply have no way to earn money. The system will collapse.
The article is misiinforming.
H1 visas are temporary work permits that bind a person to a company. There cannot be contrcators with H1 visas. The owner of a H1 visa is an employee of a given company and that person cannot leave the company that issued the visa or the visa will become null and the person will have to leave the contry in two weeks.
Capital is so overwhelmingly victorious that they aren't bothering to pretend it's about worker shortages anymore. They don't give a flying fuck about their country; they believe their only responsibility is to make money. They are wrong; corporations are government creatures, not private entities. They've no existence other than governmental laws that grant them their superpowers. That existence comes with requirements, and one of those requirements is that they exist for the good of the country that was gracious enough to let them enjoy their legal immunity and ability to print money. The idea they have no other god but money is their own notion, brought into law by their own lobbying efforts, and it is wrong. They have obligations to their community to provide jobs, to obey laws about the effects of their pollution, and in other respects act like the human beings they bought laws to say that they are. You want power? You also get responsibility. Right now they get the former and dismiss the latter.
Idiotic statement. Read up before posting. This means reviewing ALL of RON PAULS videos. But that takes work. Can't interrupt your XBOX and CNN time now.
Birth control and more options for recreation.
Poor people can't afford jet skis, game systems, ski trips, etc., so when they have kids to raise they aren't giving much up.
People who can afford these things, want them, and recognize that raising kids means giving a lot of that up for a very long time.
Kids cost a rich person a lot more than they cost a poor person....and contraception is very cheap for a rich person.
I don't buy the argument that being too busy working is the primary factor that stops rich people from having kids.
This is nothing new. Having worked in IT for over 50 years I have seen this many times. Bottom line, its a cost issue. Contractors can be let go faster then employees, there are no legacy or current benefits to pay. You can "ramp up" and down your staff. The contractor usually cost a little more per hour, but easily replaced or removed. The "lie" that there are no qualified US based candidates, at any price is false and always has been. What companies get with H1B staff is "cheap" labor that is well educated and motivated. I can tell you that I have always seen adds for 5 years experience in new tech at lousy salaries for "young" staff. Their is feeling in the industry that your stale if you are over 40, you want too much money and you will not work for a younger boss. The truth, and I have seen this, is that you can contract young H1Bs, pay less, dispose of them when done and keep the cream till later. Life's bitch, but that's reality. I lived with it and so must the current generation. It's not going to change. Costs must be low to complete. At least the H1B's pay us tax's, that better the offshoring the job.
Funny. My interest in going to Disney just suddenly disappeared.
Sucks that you lost your job, but the problem isn't the Indians or the H-1B visas - the problem is that you have priced yourself higher than you're worth in the global economy. Evil Megacorp X could of course keep employing overpriced employees, but eventually they would lose market share or even go under because someone else produces the same service more efficiently.
I eventually see this entire system collapsing within the next ten years and not just IT (Information Technology) but the whole economy.
It'll likely be a slow hollowing out rather than an overnight crash. It'll be a like a giant game of musical chairs with everyone scrambling for fewer and fewer seats. I could easily see us reaching 50% unemployment even without the development of strong AI, just the extension of current trends in robotics and expert systems.
Or maybe I'll pirate views of them. Give Disney money for screwing the US?
mark
If Disney only understands economic messages, then pass on their dopey entertainment...
> when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position.
Sounds like this would just completely kill the H-1B visa. "At any wage" is impossible to satisfy because obviously you could find someone to do peon work for a wage that is double the CEO's pay. "At a competitive wage" or "At a reasonable wage" would be more appropriate but would require some definition.
I see comments about singleing out, everyone's doing it, and or it may be a fact of life as things evolve and progress.. ......." But does that make it right?
lets break it down.
1. the single out is to surface how deep the issues/situation has or have become.. Disney is Akin to "apple Pie" "americana at its best" and now look @ what it's reduced to. I have no issues with foreigners, if its the right fit for the position it should not matter!. But when people are used as tools to offset others in the community, there is a problem.. Does the saying hold true then, you get what you pay for? Example, if employe "j" is making 85k a yr doing a task, then they pull in employee "k" to do the same task at 65k yr. Can the employer have a resonable expectation that things will will getdone along with more responsibilities dumped, in a timely manner with the same quality at the reduced rate??
2. everyones doing it "Apple, HP, IBM, MS,
As your parents said, "if every one was jumping off a bridge, would you do it?"
I feel that argument further perpetuates the false justification of these horrible acts. Its like de-forrestation, cut down/remove the major sources and replace them with less experienced individuals willing to grow and learn "like a Sapling thats planted in place of a cut down tree." I can hear the conversation now "What, we can mold them to what every want (as our wills desire) and pay them 25% less. Wow where do i sign up?"
3. Lets examine the quality of work rendered,
a. communication is lack lustre, to many gaps in getting things across and whats worse there is little incentive to change that. Which results in poor returns..
b. some of the Individuals in these roles are also taking advantage of the situation knowing "my employer has heged a huge bet on my performance and being here to displace my predecessor inorder to get their project done under cost "up front" what happens after the project/applicaiton/ or object is complete and flaws then surface, all of which are beyond the scope of the individuals skillsets to resolve at that "pay grade." so what happens is another senior guy is brought in to finish up the project, at which poiint that individual is paid out of a different budget, so the "black eye" wont surface any time soon, and the project is still complete..
So to this I ask, whom are the winners and the loosers in this situation?
"the people at the top whom are in a position to cover it up will allways be ahead, since they have the money/power to displace their eventuality to a later time frame"
Yet I had to struggle to get 4 weeks of vacation time.
The obvious medium term band-aid to is start restricting working hours to 45 absolute max a week, and restrict the number of work days per year to make people take time off and regain some mental health. Get rid of the salary sham for all those working for under $100k (indexed to inflation). If your company relies on 60 hour work weeks, then hire more people.
We could soak up huge swaths of idle labor if we prioritized quality of life more.
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit. If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
I can tell you have thought long and hard on this topic.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit. If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
The CEO is probably one of the highest paid people in the company. Surely, they could find someone to do that job for less. And yet, that calculation never seems to come up. Funny, eh?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
> Did you drink Coffee today?
No.
> Who mows your lawn?
I do.
> Do you eat out at expensive restaurants every lunch? No?
Most of the time it comes from the grocery store.
Right, because I'm not supposed to be allowed to petition my government to change abusive practices. Im supposed to stand aside as I see wrong and say nothing about it to my governing body. Is that what you are REALLY saying?
Good-bye
whoosh.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I thought you were referring to the companies themselves, and not public action persuading the government to create/enforce certain labor laws.
Sorry for any confusion.
BlameBillCosby.com
Yeah, so these probably did some quasi-legal manoeuvring to get around this
a) Created a new position with a different skillset for the H1-B, whose duties happen to overlap (oh, but the old guy/gal wasn't qualified to do X,Y,Z he/she only knew X)
b) Created/hired a third-party/shell company, filled with H1B, and subcontracted the work to it
The latter seems to be popular, these days, then they can say "well, we didn't hire foreign workers, we're just contracting the work to EvilCorp which happens to have mostly H1-B's as employees"
Seriously, we should all start boycotting companies which do this. There are enough of us now to make an impact. If we can convince our friends and families to boycott, too, it will make it more expensive to hire H1Bs than it is to hire Americans. We need to stop idly watching from the sidelines and do something about this. If we don't, they're free to use, abuse, and discard us with impunity.
Although I'm not a fan of unions, it seems IT folks must unionize in order to protect their jobs. In particular, they need to get affiliated with the Teamsters. Then, if the employers try to fire their American workers and hire foreigners, the fired IT workers can picket the workplace. And good luck to the company in getting any union truckers to deliver anything to the company, because they won't cross a Teamsters picket line.
It's stuff like this why unions were originally organized, it's just too bad the modern day unions have gotten too involved in other non-relevant political issues.
Rusty
If you don't like the move by Disney to replace local IT staff with H1B workers, but are still going to go see Star Wars VII, then there is a word for you.
Hypocrit.
Don't for get to sign the MoveOn.org petition instruction the prez to veto S.169, the senate bill proposing an expansion of the H1B program.
http://www.petitions.moveon.or...
...but it sure does rhyme
Historically there was the Aristocracy, and everyone else barely scraped by. Any concept of a middle class was quite small (maybe the town blacksmith?)
Sadly, it seems things are headed back to the historical norm: The One Percent doing just fine, with everyone else just surviving day-to-day, (or even more sadly, perhaps not even surviving the day).
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
*I WORK IN DISNEY I.T*
Well, I don't even know where to begin, besides I can tell you, Disney is a disgusting company to work for that DO NOT care about their employees, Disney only cares about squeezing every last cent out of America. Disney takes hard earned American money and ships it overseas. Disney employs several companies, Xerox, HCL..etc to be "staffing agencies." For now most people who support Disney's users are contractors. (US contractors because Disney fired most of their in house people already) Whenever we need get with a programmer, database administrator, someone with a long title, the actual high paying I.T jobs that need advanced education and training, we have to message someone else in India!!! It's only the low paying I.T jobs Disney has kept here in the US. You know the jobs they keep talking about for our future?... Only corporate propaganda and lies made up by Disney! They already outsourced those jobs! People here are talking about how they trained someone who got off a plane to replace them, you better believe its true!! There goes our economy, the money these people make goes back overseas. Disney for years has had this nasty habit of hiring workers as contractors for 6 months at a time, then letting them go for no reason. After another 6 months they will hire the same contractors back because they were sued in the past for denying workers benefits for long time employees, some how this method is a loophole for Disney. All this from a company that is one of the richest companies in the world! This is not about dislike for foreigners, this about American companies abusing American people!
Is this the country we want to leave to our children? Why do we want to keep hurting ourselves? Or letting companies like these do it!
Fuck Disney and their Fucking retarded media, overpriced theme parks and targeted marketing to kids. It's time that this company be dismantled and sent to the bottom of the submarine ride.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You know what Disney? Fuck Star Wars: Episode VII.
I'll vote with my wallet, assholes.
Yyou don't get it. The brotherhood of multinational corporate executives are the ones running this show. They aren't going to outsource themselves - they're at the top of this ponzi scheme.
You have to understand one thing.
In order for Disney to sell products in India, they have to provide India with business.
Disney is NOT going to give up that business to protect your job.
Let them go, let them go
Can't hold them back anymore
Let them go, let them go
Turn away and slam the door!
Ain't no job like an outsourced job under the TPP trade and IT job export deal!
Tell me why you want American's dollars but no American employees?
Horseshit! Bob!
Disney is a for profit company. Employees are dispensible, as are everything else. I read many years ago, that for a Western movie,
Disney had a horse jump off a cliff into water, with the next scene, the horse swimming. What the public did not know was that horses were killed until a successful shot was obained. The horses were just collateral damage. The end justified the deaths.
That mentality pervades the entire thinking or corporate America, and in particular Disney. They don't give a s??t what happens to long term employees, employees who put out for them, and f??k their families too. Disney is unique, in that competition does not really exist. Is what exists "cold hard malice"? Should not directors and senior management also be replaced by H1Bs?
all day erry'day
were given to keep a strong central gov't from redistributing wealth. The wealthy landowners wanted a weak central gov't that couldn't challenge their power and authority. Say what you will about strong central gov'ts, but there isn't really an alternative that can stand up to an aristocracy. The trick is keeping it from becoming crony style fascism. But it's worth the risk. The only difference between corporate fueled aristocracy and fascism is the color of the jack boot at your neck. Might as well roll the dice with a strong central gov't and try to hang on to it. The only thing you really have to do is not let the bastards divide and conquer. All you need is worker solidarity.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why USA is issuing H1B visas to most racist people on earth?
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
https://www.change.org/p/presi...
Casteism
Every Corporation is a giant Ponzi/Pyramid scam in Globalization;
http://www.businessinsider.in/...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Casteism
They destroy your job at home and then call you a loser for not having a job.
They won't get away with that for long.......
I would have NEVER scheduled my trip to DW. I'm outraged because of all the dislaced U.S. employees. Are the H1-B workers going to run the park too? This will definitely be my last trip to the parks. DW was created in the U.S. Why ruin it by pulling this stunt. Only because they are the lowest bidders. If they had done their research, they'll notice that their quality of work sucks. Projects given to the lowest bidders. Well, we all know what's going to happen now--all going downhill. Sorry, Disney, but you totally f-ed up this time.
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit.
Absolutely not. Even as far back as Adam Smith (several centuries ago), it was clear that business leaders can not be allowed to run their business the way they see fit, because some large percentage of these people will inevitably do things harmful to society. Go read Smith's Wealth of Nations: the book discusses these issues in an 18th century context. You can find a more modern discussion of the issues in many current books, but the historical background will be helpful to show the long term trends.
Often the misbehavior of business leaders takes the form of avoiding having to deal with prices set by a market, by manipulating either supply or demand, much like is happening with the H1B issue. This is not a new problem, but rather a very old problem taking on a new face.
Some regulation of business is necessary for capitalist systems to function to the long term benefit of society. Free markets can only exist within the context of appropriate regulation: this is one of the most difficult concepts of basic economics to grasp for those that haven't studied economics with a good instructor, you should get some further education in this area. The trick for a society is to decide what to regulate and how.
If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
There are large numbers of people who can compete with the majority of folks with H1Bs. In practice, few if any H1Bs are issued to folks with unique skills, since there are other types of visa available in such cases.
The sociopaths that run many businesses do not want to treat their employees well, since the employees aren't real people to them (that's essentially the definition of what a sociopath is). The H1B system allows these executives to import people that are essentially indentured servants. These people can be treated badly by the employer and have little or no recourse. The sociopaths are incapable of understanding that they can get better work from people by treating them well.
Go read about the history of indentured servitude, and you'll find many parallels to what is happening today. What is amazing is that people think they can still get away with this stuff, and it is somewhat embarrassing to be a citizen of a nation that is still permitting this to occur. Indentured servitude, like slavery, has been illegal in civilized nations for over a century, but in practice it still happens because the sociopaths don't think they are subject to the laws and values of civilized society. They find ways to get around the law, or to buy the law.
There's an interesting parallel to the current situation in the history of the Soviet Union. Stalin was able to get work from his scientists and engineers by threatening to send their families to the gold mines. Since almost nobody returned from the mines, this was an effective threat, and the scientists and engineers produced some remarkable stuff. This shows that coerced labor can still be effective, even if un-coerced labor is vastly more effective over the long term.
The H1B system is an attempt by sociopaths to achieve something along the same lines as what Stalin did -- using the threat of deportation to a bad place (of an individual and their family) to coerce people to work to the advantage of the masters -- hidden within the legal system of a supposedly modern and civilized nation like a scorpion under a rock.
Over the long term, of course, the sociopath will fail, since coerced labor is never as good as free labor over the long term, but these people are incapable of understanding that. They do not think in the long term, but rather look to short term temporary advantage (or, in this case, the illusion of advantage).
Fixing the H1B issue only fixes the symptoms of a mo
Well, for coding jobs, it often does involve stepping through how the code/systems work. Unless in a "nice" scenario where you're teaching a new guy the ropes (while not facing the sword of damacles yourself), it's basically "here's all the shit you need to do to keep the lights on."