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Disney Making Laid-Off US Tech Workers Train Foreign H1-B Replacements
WheezyJoe writes: The NY Times brings us a story on the Disney Corporation laying off U.S. tech workers and replacing them with immigrants visiting the country under H1-B visas. The twist is that the immigrant workers are not your nice local visiting foreign guy from the university who wants to stick around 'cause he likes the people here... they are employees of foreign-based consulting companies in the business of collecting H1-B visas and "import[ing] workers for large contracts to take over entire in-house technology units." The other twist? The U.S. tech workers are required to train their replacements before vacating their jobs, or risk losing severance benefits (excerpts of the Disney's layoff notice are included in the article).
...just what you'd expct from Disney
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
You can toss in So Cal Edison in the same bin
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Now unless I misunderstand the law. H1-B is supposed to be for jobs Americans can't do. Tell me how a dept that is and has been doing the work is suddenly unskilled and unable to do the job but is able to train their replacements. Also if these people have the "Skills" why are they being trained by those they displace ?
You morons will still be taking your kids to the Disney movies with the Disney Happy Meals and all the Disney toys and bedspreads you can find.
So, we all have heard we have a lack of workers with necessary skills...
Given that US citizens are now training these H1B workers with their job skills, what sort of skills were they lacking in order to justify the "need" for the imported skilled workers?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
the gist is though that isn't this incredibly risky for Disney? the government could cut down on the numbers of h1b's any year and then they would be boned.
Therefore all but ensuring the government won't do it.
though I suspect the point is that now the entire department IS dependent on h1b visa workers, so they can say that if they don't get them then they're boned.
Precisely.
Its 'too big to fail all over again' -- if you change the h1b quota you'll hurt us a lot, and in turn hurt the economy. It doesn't even matter that they deliberately put themselves in this situation just to be able to leverage the harm they would endure as a bargaining chip.
Governement completely lacks the will to inflict any serious short term pain on large corporations right now.
“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.
By law the H1B should not be cheaper than hiring Americans. They need to demonstrate they are paying prevailing wages and that they have made good faith effort to recruit Americans. But the companies game the system thoroughly. They lobby the congress to create strict dead lines like, "if there is no reply from immigration side for 90 days the application is deemed to be approved" and they the congress cuts the budget and staff of the immig department. They pad up the qualification requirements on one hand, "degree in math/engineering, x years of experience in y technology blah blah blah", then on the payment side they name the positions that have low pay. Naturally they would not find qualified Americans willing to work at that pay.
The way around these issues should be to create some sort of bounty program. Let the government crowdsource it. Make these H1B applications and the documentation supplied by these companies public. Any one should be able to challenge and point out the "gaming". There should be some sort of reward for people who catch them cheating. There should be some safe guards against frivolous challenges, and this program could be revenue neutral by making the cheaters pay for this by fines.
In some fields in some ways H1-B applications are legitimate. People who come to USA, get a degree from accredited US university who work in the field they got their degrees in are not to be confused with these body shopping companies that import people with degrees from diploma mills in India. Indians who came in the early 1990s with degrees from top univs like IITs, IISc, TIFR, AIIMS, RECs and got further degrees in US universities earned the good will and the reputation for Indian engineers. Now all that is being squandered by these cheap body shoppers gaming the system bringing ill-repute to all Indian Americans.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The 57-year-old project manager and software developer. His boss said he was doing a great job. Now, he's replaced by an H1-B with limited English. Yeah. I can't blame Disney for doing what they need to do to make their bottom line look good, but if this wasn't illegal, I don't know what is. I guess I'm just glad Disney doesn't make software for aircraft or medical equipment, because the quality they're going to get from these H1-B workers is going to be proportional to what they're paying them.
Hey! Buying cheap in foreign land is ok if you're a corporation buying workers, not if you're a peon buying goods!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem is that the government is influencing the market by allowing companies to pay these people less by virtue of their immigration status. A H1-B is sponsored by a particular company. They can't just quit and go find a better paying position when they are abused/under paid/etc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If you are going to get your head cut off regardless, you might as well make it as sharp as possible...
Failing to document the detailed manual steps you never automated is, unfortunately, commonplace.
don't forget option three.. Eliminate the H1B program and make companies actually pay the prevailing wage for workers. If you want to go to the USA apply like everyone else, and get in on your own merits and not the fact that you will work for 25% less than others.
As a US tech worker, I am glad to see this getting some attention. But, I am also a little puzzled as to why this is getting so much attention.
This sort of thing has been going on in IT for decades. In recent years, the trend has accelerated significantly. In 2009 Bill Gates sat before the US congress, and explained that the tech industry was suffering from huge shortages, and desperately needed more foreign guest workers. At the same time, Microsoft was laying off thousands of US workers.
BTW: US workers are naive to think they can solve this problem by raising public awareness, or by voting. The only way to solve the problem is to organize and fight back. But, I doubt that will happen, especially tech workers.
> Oh, don't think "union" like other professional groups. IT skills are not anything that can be unionized
Why not?
Other professions, like medical doctors, are organized, and it works for them. It works like all hell.
Ask yourself why the US has not flooded the market with foreign physicians? Ask yourself why the wages for physicians have not been crushed?
The reason is: doctors have organized, raised money, and lobbied congress. They have become a protected group.
Tech workers could do the same. But they won't. US tech workers would rather, pointlessly, send links to articles to one another; and then gripe that nothing ever changes.
It should be illegal because the point of H1-B is 'we can't find local skill to fill the position, we had to go overseas to get it'. The fact that you already *have* the skills and are laying them off to *replace* with H1-B workers means you are violating the intent of the H1-B program.
With respect to protectionism, having a coporate 'sponsor' for your VISA means handing a corporation unreasonable power over that guest worker. This weakens their negotiating power if the general market conditions suggest they are not as well compensated as other companies do. It's one thing if they would be as empowered to quit their job without fear of deportation as the person they are replacing. This is a factor that makes H1-B holders stay cheaper than their non-H1-B counterparts, even when they should be on a level playing field when working in the same geographic location.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Forget about "raising public awareness" public only cares about issues that affect them directly.
Forget about voting the problem away: about 99% of politicians favor more guest workers.
We need to organize.
Consider the following situations:
1)
Management: train your h1b replacement before we fire you, or you do not get a severance, or a good reference.
Worker: I guess resistance is futile.
2)
Management: train your h1b replacement before we fire you, or you do not get a severance, or a good reference.
Everybody at the company: you try to pull that bullshit and we all walk out right now.
Management: okay, never mind.
Sorry, but there is no way you can "apply like everyone else". If they scrap the H1B -> GC path, what's left either marry a US citizen, the GC lottery, invest $1M and create 10 jobs, or be a Noble prize laureate. US does not have a points based immigration system like Canada or Australia.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
You leave out the other obvious alternative. Accept that your long-time developers are adding something irreplaceable to your company - and instead of thinking of them as an ever-growing drain, consider them your partners and accept that they deserve to be well compensated for the depth of company-specific knowledge they've acquired over the years. More, probably, than you - who were probably brought in to manage the company well after many of them.
H1-B workers are good only to the extent that they are treated the same way your existing long-term workers are. And that they themselves become long term - and gradually more expensive. Training these cheap workers entails a productivity hit. And if you don't keep them and grow them, you will never have a next generation of senior developers to carry your company forward. This system of 'managed, intentional turnover' may keep development costs down, but it is suicidal for the company. And it only works for managers that themselves plan to move on before the whole house of cards collapses. But if you must, blame 'the turbulence of the world' if you think that justifies your sociopathic view of it...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
If you can't keep up to your labor costs as a company, capitalism indicates you should dissolve and that other companies fill your place. If this happens with regularity and the economy is properly healthy, the people who used to work with you will not have trouble finding other jobs because many other companies will fill your place. These new companies may even form in other locations and distribute themselves where the workers are. Instead, the government insists on creating loopholes to keep you going which benefits less and less people over time. I don't really blame you for taking the handouts you are getting, but let's just call a spade a spade.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
At one IT company I worked for, labor costs grew anywhere between 6 and 10% per year, and that was with relatively high turnover in entry-level jobs. The drivers of these costs were the experienced senior personnel who are with the company for years, who negotiate for and get the bonuses and raises they arguably deserve.
This appears to be a very short-sighted way of looking at the cost drivers of this company. The real cost driver is that your labor requirements have been increasing each year, and instead of hiring more entry level workers you have invested in experienced staff that can improve company efficiency. If done well, these experienced workers can reduce your hiring needs by far more than the meager 6-10% raises they have been given. If done poorly, you are wasting those raises on ineffective senior level employees.
Wage creep means that because salaries must always go up for retained employees, labor costs must always go up.
Wage creep is similar to scope creep; a small amount is inevitable but proper management can keep it mostly at bay. If someone's wages are going up faster than inflation, they better be bringing more value than they did last year. Paying people more just because of seniority is idiotic. But seniority usually comes with increased knowledge of a company's business processes which does make them more valuable, so increased seniority usually comes with deserved raises above inflation. But your total wages should only go up if your total labor requirements go up. If labor requirements don't go up, and your senior employees are getting better at their jobs, it means there should be corresponding terminations to lower wages because you don't need as many employees anymore.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
There's a poster downthread who talks about how legal laws will bow to economic forces and that this cannot be stopped. That poster is right--this process CANNOT be stopped.
I can't disagree with this statement more. Business is about competition. Companies play these games because if they don't, their competitors will. If you make it illegal, and enforce it, the competitive landscape remains level. Everyone's costs go up. Sure, the costs will get passed on to the consumer. However, the company won't lose business, or market share won't be impacted.
The only downside is the risk of imported "goods" (I use this term loosely as it could be a service as well) from a competitor based overseas. We saw this in the manufacturing sector in the past. However, I'm not sure that would apply to other fields.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".