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FWD.us To Laid-Off Southern California Edison Workers: Boo-Hoo
theodp writes: Speaking at a National Journal LIVE event that was sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us and Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, FWD.us "Major Contributor" Lars Dalgaard was asked about the fate of 500 laid-off Southern California Edison IT workers, whose forced training of their H-1B worker replacements from offshore outsourcing companies sparked a bipartisan Senate investigation. "If you want the job, make yourself able to get the job," quipped an unsympathetic Dalgaard (YouTube). "Nobody's going to hold you up and carry you around...If you're not going to work hard enough to be qualified to get the job...well then, you don't deserve the job." "That might be harsh," remarked interviewer Niharika Acharya. Turning to co-interviewee Pierre-Jean Cobut, FWD.us's poster child for increasing the H-1B visa cap, Acharya asked, "Do you agree with him?" "Actually, I do," replied PJ, drawing laughs from the crowd.
These guys are jerks. Obviously the Edison IT workers were qualified - they trained their replacements. Equally obvious they were available to do the job, so there was no reason to bring in H1Bs. Outright fraud by Edison, abetted by the government.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I'm not religious, but this kind of shit only makes me think of that famous line: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Circumcision is child abuse.
Corporations are not, and have never been, the job creators. Customers are the job creators.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Edison wanted cheaper workers, plain and simple. Dalgaard and Cobut should be ashamed of themselves, but slimeballs like that know no shame.
This is why it's morally OK to fuck over corporations.
No. Those "leftists" want to ensure that workers have more control over their own lives. This is inherently difficult to do when employers, both individually and collectively, have much more power than the employee.
An employee who is fired loses their livelihood.
An employer who has an employee that quits loses some of their capacity to do business. Depending upon the size of their business, that loss in capacity ranges from negligible to critical-but-not-fatal.
There are various ways to balance that power. Regulation is one means. Unionization is another approach. Of course, controlling supply (e.g. limiting H1B's) is also a valuable tool for changing the balance. Note that I say balancing power. Even many staunch union supporters would agree that giving workers more power than employers is a bad idea.
Corporations in the United States are a legal invention of the citizens of the United States. They were created because the citizens believed that corporations would provide more good to the country than bad.
If it seems to the citizens that corporations are providing more bad than good, we can dissolve corporations. Now of course this will be difficult to do in the current political and social landscape. In the extremity, though, we can always return to the ways of the Founding Fathers, meet the armed goons of the government on the battlefield, and blow their brains out.
I do not expect that that happen in my lifetime, frankly. However, what is much more likely to happen, and far sooner, is that one of these workers who are told to train their H1B replacements will arrange on their first day to usher them all into a large meeting room, lock the doors, and shoot every last one of them. Sending the message to the world: "Come to America on H1B, and die."
But please note, I am not advocating any of this. I'm merely predicting it. Because throughout history, when the powerful repeatedly failed to listen to the "lower classes" complaints of injustice, eventually the lower classes kill the powerful -- And it won't matter if the powerful were "right" according to this political theory, or they were "wrong" according to that economic theory, when they're rotting in the gutter as the proles piss on their corpse.
So, if my corporation doesn't create something the customer wants, they will magically create the jobs for me to hire new employees?
Seems a bit idiotic... Hope you don't try to start your own business with that line of thinking
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
You have zero understanding of the word libertarian.
Just another day in Paradise
H1Bs aren't immigrants. They are foreign workers here to take jobs that no one wants. That's the "theory", anyway. In practice, they are used to import indentured servants at the cost of US citizens.
Every time I read one of these statements from the entitles poodles that run corporate America, I hear guillotines being sharpened.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A buisness does not create, people do.
If you are on an island and demand things then you do it, because you want to survive. No business is there, but demand, and the job to create those things, exist. If someone who already knows how to do those things is on the island he will just do it more efficiently, and can make more money at it, but he did not create the job..
Lets do your same test. You are on an island full of nothing but farmers, and only need to grow one crop that only takes one person to create and everyone is equally good at making that crop. Is there anymore jobs for farmers? No, because demand=jobs. Add one non farmer to the mix, now there is demand for farmers, and he will pay the farmer who can best serve his needs the cheapest. He created the job.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You did read that they had to train their replacements right? So their resume was good, the offshore peoples was not.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Here's an easy solution to this problem. Make H1-B a path to citizenship (and really we want as much intelligent and highly-skilled labors as possible to stick around) so that eventually companies can't hold the H1-B over an employee's head to keep wages down. Next, keep track of former H1-B workers who are currently unemployed and do not allow for any addition applications until there there are fewer than say 10% who have been unemployed for more than a year. Additionally, count any citizens who were displaced by an H1-B worker (would need to follow companies using H1-B workers more closely, but that's part of the trade-off) as part of this pool as well.
If a company can't find enough skilled workers, they need to raise wages to attract better candidates and let the companies who aren't willing to pay as much draw from the pool of applicants who are less qualified. Otherwise they can pick from what's available and spend some time training their hires.
Require all employers who hire an H1-B to pay TOP MARKET RATE for their region for the position they hire that person for.Additionally, require the employer initiate and cover all costs of Naturalization of the H1-B employee after 1 year or rescind H1-B status and send them home. A per worker fee that is large enough to cover teh cost of oversight should be required for each H1-B worker hired. This could be handled through ICE -- the same as they handle Green Card Applicants -- just perform random interviews and checks on the H1-B workers to ensure they are indeed working in the job capacity they were documented as and are indeed receiving the appropriate level of pay. Deviation should result in hefty fines the first time ($100,000 or more per incident) with severe penalties after repeated incidents ($1,000,000+ fines and revocation of all H1-B permits and inability to obtain future permits)
This way, we can be sure H1-Bs will indeed be a highly skilled and specialized worker hired because there is no local equivalent and that the H1-B worker is not exploited as a cheap labor source and given all employee accommodations as required under law.
Germany has historically had extremely strong unions, and their economy is doing just fine. It isn't unionization that screws up economies, it's having overly-generous government pension programs (with people retiring in their 40s or whatever it was in Greece), too much business going on under-the-table and no taxes being paid on it (a huge problem in Greece), and people not doing much productive work in general (another big problem in Greece, where it seems most people work for the government, and the rest working in tourism, and no real industry to speak of; when was the last time you bought something that said "Made in Greece"? I think they make some cheese, and that's all I can think of.).
While there is a proper definition of the term "libertarian", most slashdotters who identify as such do not understand it. Indeed, the same can be said for most anyone who self-identifies as "libertarian". Most would seem to fall into the "I should be able to get rich at others expense and smoke weed" camp. Then there are the Rand fanboys who still believe that labor is a "free market". I don't know which group is more self-deluded but they are both out of touch with reality.
You seem to be confused. They're not incompatible ideas. We can protect our middle class work force without hating brown people. It's like that Bruce Springsteen song, "We take care of our own". You have to be OK yourself before you can help others. Now, this _does_ mean we curtail some of our excesses. But one thing at a time please. Let's stop the race to the bottom first
btw, The false dichotomy you're bringing up is another example of the sort of debate framing that's going on. Nice troll too, btw.
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The first thing they should do is to abolish the random lottery for H1B visas and grant the visas within the cap to the applicants with the highest salaries. That would help to stop companies that are abusing H1Bs for driving wages down and at the same time would make sure that if a company really really needs the skills of a specific foreigner, they could get a visa for him or her by paying a very high wage.
Jan