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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 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.
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.
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 issue really isn't the fact that the H1Bs are taking over 'native' STEM positions, it is that Disney et. al. is flat out lying about it.
Remember, the H1B program is an immigration loophole set up by the government for certain purposes (allowing non citizens to work in the US when there are no qualified citizens). It was not designed to be a welfare program for big companies. Even for 'easily replaced' employees.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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."
With out them we can be replaced by contractors and it's the contract firm that is the one useing the H1B's
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..
sure, blame the employees for this.
to even suggest that the employees had ANY part in this other than having western style expenses like american healthcare, rent, food, gas - you know, luxuries - is dishonest or outright fraudulent.
shill much for The Man?
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A) What were you doing you could be replaced that easily?!
Everyone is expendable, from the CEO to the janitor. That's not evil that's just running a good business. Anyone who tries to make himself indispensable is the first person you try to replace, it's not a good behavior and it's not good for anyone.
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.
Yes, that's always good advice. However in this case it should not have happened but for screwed up laws and indentured servitude. If these people were replaced with other citizens or residents who were believably competing on wages, then generally I agree.
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.
Load of gabage,
A decade ago I believe the scary posts like yours and wife demanded I quit programming as Indians would have these jobs by now. Worse mistake EVER! I would have been rich if I did not major in business. Going back into IT now but man 10 years of experience gone and starting over the past few years sucked.
It is 2015 and we were told by 2010 no IT would exist. Well much of it is coming back as demand is rising due to failed outsourcing attemps and management realizing with IE 6 and XP last year they fucked up by being shoe strung budgets that hampered their basic infrastructures for too long. Programmers today are pulling in $65,000 a year WITH 0 EXPERIENCE!
http://saveie6.com/
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
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....
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A) What were you doing you could be replaced that easily?!
In my experience, upper management's views on who is easily replaceable don't usually conform very well to reality.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
the last 2 contract jobs I had, the employer insisted that I bring 'my' work laptop home with me each nite. when I explained that I'm not paid beyond 8 hours a day (hey, it was YOU, mr employer, who forced contract on me; I would have gone f/t if offered the chance but nooooo! you didn't want that, did you?) - they simply said that everyone takes their laptop home. its expected.
they want it both ways. no benes for you, ability to can your ass on a moment's notice and yet they expect you to work for them before the workday begins and after it ends; all for fixed income and, again, NO benes. when the US monday holidays come around, guess who can only bill 32 hours that week while everyone else gets their 40?
I'm seriously sick of this shit!!
all I can say is: its a good goddamned thing that I am not a violent person and don't have any tendancy to want to buy a gun. but I am just waiting for the first 'nothing left to lose' IT guy to go truly postal and make the news. maybe that's what's needed, afterall (?)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The only US citizens that congress helps are the ones whose last names are "Inc."
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
It was not designed to be a welfare program for big companies.
You haven't been paying attention.
you bring up a good point.
what IS the role of a government? isn't it to promote the well-being or safety of its people?
are h1b's citizens where they get the same level of protection as those who were born here or got citizenship the long/slow/hard way?
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 ??
find me another country that offers anything close to this h1b bullshit to foreigners coming to their shores to work. name one country - just one - that thinks its own citizens should be 2nd to 'guest workers'. ONLY the US fits that description.
we start wars with the presumption of keeping americans safe. we collect taxes to pay for infrastructure to benefit those who live here. there are many examples of what countries do for their own people. that's kind of the whole point of 'membership'; by being an american, I should have priority in employment over those who have paid NO dues here and have no vested interest - whatsoever - in the long-term success and stability of our country.
but my country sold me out. I can go months (or much longer) without getting a job offer and I have decades of useful IT experience. is that right? does that sound like my country is taking care of me? sure doesn't sound like that to me, from where I sit.
republicans - democrats - none of them lift a finger to help the struggling middle class. as far as I'm concerned, we have nothing but traitors in congress, these days.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
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.
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?
That's operating a printer with 16 years J2EE development experience.
Australia has decided to copy the stupid idea.
That doesn't make it any less stupid though, it just means making influential people happy is seen by those in power as more important than local jobs. For example, we've got a large number of skilled unemployed meat workers that were replaced by unskilled workers from China almost overnight (there was a bait and switch where the meatworks "closed down", everyone was sacked, and then it started with imported staff a couple of weeks later). There's proposals to import the entire workforce for some large mining projects from overseas at the same time that a lot of layoffs have resulted in a lot of unemployed miners. There's plenty of IT examples as well.
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.
Everyone is expendable, from the CEO to the janitor.
I suggest that you leave your parent's basement and visit the real world some time. in the real world everyone is expendable except for the CEO and their cronies.
Look at all the big US companies after the 2008 crash. No CEOs, C-anything-O or boards of director were out and out fired. A very few CEOs (for example the head of Bank of America) were "retired", but given their fat golden parachutes they still ended up outrageously wealthy. There is no negative penalty, even for complete failure, for anyone at the top.
Corporations only have one goal: making the upper management as rich as possible. They will throw anyone under the bus to achieve that end: employees, stockholders, customers. If it's ever a choice between stockholders and management, stockholders get screwed.
For example: Deep Misalignment Between Corporate Economic Performance, Shareholder Return and Executive Compensation
What universe are you from? How can you make a statement that is so clearly false? Did someone pay to say that, or are you a free lance idiot?
Why is Snark Required?
So capitalism involves cheating and gaming the H1b system to the point of criminality so corporate profits can be maximized at the expense of everything and everyone else? Sign me up for a different system.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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.
This. It's not about whether you're replaceable. It's about whether some PHB who did Strategic Management at A&M Galveston thinks you are.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I agree, your country should be left to real (i.e. Native) Americans
That and the access to affordable contraception.
Hey wait a minute, if this is capitalism, where by Corporations can source labour from anywhere is the world
Why does this same capitalism prevent me from sourcing my Music, Movies, TV programs, Books, etc etc etc etc from anywhere is the world too ?
Well, after all, if "Nobody owes you a job", why should you "owe them your business"?
Well having a relative who's father worked for good old uncle Walt as an animator, I think Walt would have approved of this move.
Time to offend someone
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.