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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."
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?
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.
If I also said he needed to be fluent in Mandarin and Farsi, I've just written an H1-B for my candidate.
In my entire life I've never met anyone who filled that requirement.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My Immigration Law professor taught me that's how you write an H1-B job description. That's why I can't buy the "we can't find any American workers" defense, because the law skirting is so common it's now standard curriculum for lawyers.
The best way to deal with this nonsense would be to sell the H1-B visas at auction, like taxi cab medallions, with the number adjusted each year so that the average price of each auctioned H1-B visa exceeds 400% of the federal poverty line for a family of 4 with that reserve price set as the starting bid for each H1-B visa. It's hard to say how much an H1-B is worth to a company that says that it needs them, so lets find out in a public auction. Force companies put their money where their mouths are.
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.
It really isn't about money.
It's about control. H1B workers can be abused in ways other workers can't, regardless of pay.
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...
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I talked to a woman from Kuwait who is going to school here in the US. She said the average family there has at 8 kids because the government pays for everything, so why not. She has 3 kids, and while she is in the US her government pays not only for her school but for her medical, the apartment and her kids private school. That is a wealthy country with large families. I was also surprised by her perfect English and complete lack of accent.
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.
I've never met a native in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait that actually worked. They're generally so wealthy they just purchase workers and treat them like chattel. I find it funny that you use countries that generally treat their guest workers like slaves to recommend we give the world citizenship. What does citizenship mean if you continue to be forced out of work by imported workers being treated like slaves?
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
Yep, that, and Disney is... special. I left Disney IT just before last October; it had already become a pretty stressful place to work. Morale was already super-low, because they had just launched the new version of their website that they'd been working on for 5 years and everyone was burned out from working *crunch* shifts through nights and weekends trying to finish developing the thing and then helping it limp along during its initial years. Coming out of development mode and going into sustainment mode, and then they burned through lots of operations budget dealing with all of the tech debt from the rush job, and then made up for it by laying off a bunch of good managers (like mine) and trying to put the squeeze on the remaining staff.
Since Disney is one of the top brands in the US, they actually take pride in how little they can pay their employees (er, "cast members") below market rates, in exchange for being associated with The Mouse. Burnout and turnover was pretty high, few people lasted more than three years (incidentally the amount of time until their pension vests). I got tired of the squeeze and took a job elsewhere for much higher pay. Also managed to snag a guy interviewing for my old job at Disney because his recruiter told him to ask me about his concerns over work/life balance.
To be fair, I did get a lot of experience working at Disney... since they don't believe in "reduce variation" they had one of almost everything in production somewhere since old sites never died but were always maintained for use by some niche customer (er, "guest" / "partner"). I'm sure my Disney friends and co-workers will turn out all right or better than they were at that puppy mill, I actually kinda feel more concerned for the H1Bs that will be tending to their fires and burning through their lives at both ends.
The fertility rate in Bangladesh has fallen to nearly 2, from a high of around 9 in the 1960s. There are still a lot of people in Bangladesh who don't have careers, they are just farmers or labourers with no real prospects. What has changed is that there was a sustained, long term effort to educate people about contraception and women's rights. Women are now more involved in family planning and both genders have a better understanding of it.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No--look at population statistics from many European countries. Nordic countries in particular have a very high standard of living (including a legislated capped work week) and they still are having fewer children than average. I suspect you live in America, which is why you have an inaccurate perception that everyone with a high standard of living is too busy working.
Being busy doesn't stop people from having kids. It keeps people from taking care of them properly, and that's not typically a deterrent for those on the lower end of the wage spectrum.