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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
So how many "nerds" and information technology workers are going to reward Disney by buying tickets to see the new Star Wars movie this December? Wouldn't it be funny if their target audience boycotted the movie out of solidarity and it flopped?
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 ?
Wow. Train your replacements. Bit like making the condemned sharpen the guillotine before they step up.
Can't say I've heard of a dick move like that since FuckedCompany.com was tracking this sort of thing.
And to think I was considering visiting many of your parks this year. With friends and family. I'll be certain to inform them all what a magical place you've become.
Fuck you Very Much Disney. I hope your bottom line feels this shit. Have a Nice Day.
“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 U.S. tech workers are required to train their replacements before vacating their jobs, or risk losing severance benefits
I'll start by saying, I have no shortage of cynicism and this doesn't surprise me in the least. So I know, "legally" doing this and "no one cares" don't mean the same thing.
But in order to hire H1Bs, I thought a company needs to demonstrate that they have advertised locally for the positions and can't find any sufficiently qualified people to take them. The fact that they have laid off their existing staff (a pool of local people willing to do the work), and the existing staff has sufficient skills to actually train their replacements, seems 100% antithetical to the conditions required for a company to hire H1Bs.
Any IAL's want to comment on how Mickey can get away with this?
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.
I think the problem isn't so much a lack of skills, but instead grossly overcharging for those 'skills' when there are obviously plenty of other people willing to do the work for cheaper.
It's funny how that logic never seems to work for CEOs.
If Disney wants to boost profitablity, they should bring in an H1-B replacement for Robert Iger. I'm sure they could find lots of qualified candidates from India or China who have experience managing an organization the size of Disney and who would be willing to do the job for less than 46.5 million dollars per year. Replacing this one employee would have a larger savings effect than replacing the entire IT staff, while allowing the IT staff to continue innovating and making Disney run smoothly. As a gesture of corporate good will, Disney could allow Mr. Iger to continue working at a theme park as a cast member, preferrably wearing the Goofy costume.
The author of the article is guessing (*) (and presenting it as a fact) that they are on H1-B visas, since they happen to be unpopular... Most likely, though, these are L1 visas, used by foreign companies with offices in US to do intra-company transfers.
The L1 visa has no caps and no requirements for prevailing wages, and makes it much easier to bring in foreign workers into US.
(*) - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2915904/it-outsourcing/fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers.html
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
BULLSHIT!!!
This is about people who worship "the free market" saying "fuck it, if we pay these politicians we can introduce externalities to change the market in our favor we can do this cheaper".
This whole globalization crap is a race to the bottom where corporations exert political influence to basically decide they don't like the costs the market has decided on, and instead we'll get someone from a third world to do it for a fraction of the cost.
This doesn't benefit anybody but the fucking corporations, and it's a terrible idea.
That companies are so blatantly ignoring that H1Bs are intended to be used to cover skill shortages, not to drive down wages is appalling.
This has nothing to do with people grossly overcharging for skills, or competition, or even the fucking free market.
This is corporate interests manipulating the "free" market on their own terms to change the playing field in their favor. And it's about corrupt asshole politicians who are letting them do it.
This is the exact fucking opposite of a free market. This is corporate welfare at the expense of societies, bought and paid for through lobbying creating global oligarchies to make sure everybody is in a race for the bottom.
Save the world, shoot an MBA.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
> 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.
You can pretend to know something about me if you want, but actually I'm only part of the problem for people who are afraid of competition. And no, I don't get paid less than the employees - I get paid more. Always. Because I'm good.
How nice for you. I guess we should all just become superstar consultants and we wouldn't have a problem. Can everyone be in the top 5%? I'm thinking that's not possible.
You come off as pretty arrogant; basically telling people that if they didn't suck so much and were more awesome like yourself, they wouldn't care if people were trying to undercut their wages by making them compete with desperate people willing to settle for much less, because companies would just throw money at their awesomeness. I'm glad companies throw money at your awesomeness, but you seem to have an advanced or rare skill set making your example inapplicable to many other situations.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)