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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.
Fair is fair, so let's make sure it cuts both ways, all the way up the management chain. Let anyone who can and is willing to do the CEO job for less $ take the position, and have to have the current CEO train his replacement.
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.
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.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frédéric Bastiat, 1848
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.
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.
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.
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.
They cost less money.
That's it. There is nothing else.
They're not better because they're foreign. They're "better" because they're cheaper.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.).
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?
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.
Nope. The unions in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and, to a lesser extent, Norway, for example, are much stronger than the unions in the countries you mentioned. As far as Europe is concerned the countries you mention are on the lower half when it comes to union strength. (Which is clear if you notice the antics they get up to. A strong union wouldn't have to behave like that.)
So, no cigarr. Try again.
Stefan Axelsson
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