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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.
There are plenty of good European CEOs who are used to much lower compensation that I'm sure could do the job. Perhaps it's time to onshore the CEO position and save a few million in one shot.
Why in the hell would anyone train their replacement though?
Because usually all you know is that /somebody/ is going to be replaced: it might be you, it might be any one of the twenty other people who do a nearly identical job to you. You hang around because you hope that - when the cut comes - you are one of the few spared and you don't want to work with idiots (thus having to do not only your own job but covering for all the replacements). Or working for a large corporation hasn't stripped you entirely of your conscience, you won't want to leave the same burden on any of your current co-workers if you yourself are laid-off and they aren't (you may even care about the customers too, who shouldn't have to deal with poorly trained replacements).
Even the more pre-emptive and forward-thinking employees who have sent out resumes would still stay at the job as long as they can until they actually get an offer for a new job.
Having said all that, I once was fired "immediately" but was then "allowed" to stay an extra two weeks to train my replacement. I graciously turned them down and left right after the meeting.
In a previous job I had the choice between leaving and leaving with a bonus if I would train my replacements. I took the bonus, which was the rational choice.
A friend's company outsourced the IT department and Call Centers.h
He agreed to train the replacements.
What he got out of the deal...that is, what his company did for him.
3 more months of employment than those who refused
3 trips to Europe where the outsourced call centers were. (His wife joined him for a European vacation.)
New contacts
Great recommendations
Several thousand dollars of IT equipment
Retraining -- at least $10K in training and salary while being retrained
With the retraining, he was able to land a new job as a "Limited Time Employee" for a major integrator and works a project in the city he lived in. His LTE work has gone on for over 3 years (kind of like a real job and it expected to last for another 3 years. (The "contract" is rebid periodically and he may be picked up by the contract-winner so there is the possibility of employment beyond the 3 year contract he knows about.)
Given current business practices in the US, the rational thing to do is train your replacements incorrectly, but in such a way as their lack of training is only noticeable after you are fired, or long enough after the training has taken place that it can't be tracked down to your specific instruction. This way, you either harm the company who fucked you or you give them an employee who can't do the job, showing that H1Bs aren't worth the effort.
Customers are still the job creators. Companies that lose customers shrink, and that involves lay-offs. Ask GM and Chrysler. Companies that gain customers hire. Ask Facebook and Google.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Simple solution is to change the rules of the H1B visa..... not by stopping the "skilled" immigrants but by having every visa come with residency - which would free a skilled worker to work anywhere and not just for the sponsoring company. I have personally seen the impact on wages for H1Bs because of the need to stay with the company while the company works through the process for residency (which can take the full 6 years). If they change jobs the residency process has to start again, which makes the company not having to compete in regards to wages for H1B visa holders. Competition is good, H1B to residency process depresses it and distorts the market.
I doubt it. I tried to unionize our shop (all I needed was 50%), and while the other coders agreed that it was a good idea in principle, less than half would sign up when the crunch came, even though the law prohibits firing for unionizing. Chicken is as chicken does. Heck, even WalMart workers here unionized.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Trust me, I understand that. I'm married to a double MBA, and am a manager at a large corporation myself.
Morality at the business level typically depends on several things.
Is the company publicly owned?...If so, their morality is only dictated by laws and regulations, other than that, they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible. Obviously, market forces (news, and consumers) can drive them toward doing more morally acceptable things, but they're typically only doing so because it's driving profits...they don't want bad PR.
Privately owned businesses can be driven in any direction their owners please, within legal bounds. My dad owned a small business...morality at that level is more of a personal style issue. Can I run my business, make a reasonable profit, and still not be an asshole to my employees...."reasonable" being in the eye of the beholder/owner.
Just another day in Paradise
I've seen this done twice. The company reorganizes the departments such that it isn't so much a "skill" issue, it's a "skill mix" issue. The help desk people don't know how to also be Linux Admins, the Linux Admins don't know how to also be COBOL programmers, the COBOL programmers can't also be web developers. Then they post the new job classifications at cheap rates so that few permanent US residents want to take the jobs. Once they got the new people in, the org changed again so that a year later is was back to being pretty close to the way it started.
So how is it that we allow foreigners to come in and work jobs with this kind of access? You want a few hundred ISIS operatives to cross the border? No problem arranging the border sensor grid outage.
Have gnu, will travel.
If a single commenter mentioned this, I didn't see it. The entity employing H1B workers is required by law to file a Labor Condition Application to ensure that they meet or exceed the prevailing wage, and an attestation designed to ensure that they are not used to break a strike nor to replace citizen workers - i.e., that the H1Bs are really needed because citizens cannot be found to do the jobs.
Obviously this does not work, or there would be little to no motivation to gratuitously replace citizens with H1B workers. What no one has satisfactorily explained to me (beyond waving the hands and mumbling "corruption") is, how is the law being flouted?