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After Uproar, Disney Cancels Tech Worker Layoffs
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times previously reported that Disney made laid-off workers train their foreign replacements. The Times now reports that Disney has reversed its decision to lay off the workers and canceled training of the replacements. This follows public uproar, two investigations by the Department of Labor into outsourcing firms, complaints to the Justice Department, and calls for an investigation into the H-1B Visa program by Senator Bill Nelson. One of the workers said, "We were told our jobs were continuing and we should consider it as if nothing had happened until further notice." A former Disney employee who was forced to take an early retirement shared his personal thoughts on the matter in a Google+ post.
One of the workers said, "We were told our jobs were continuing and we should consider it as if nothing had happened until further notice."
Yeah, that notice will be updated employment terms to try to aggressive prevent people from leaking out the details when they attempt to do the H1-B swap the next time.
Because in a few months they're going to pull the same stunt and if the flood gates open you might as well find a job before the flood of applications hit all at once
Which ironically will give them the exact justification to bring in the contractors -
Which is no reason to stick around working for a company that clearly wants to fire you.
What does quitting do other than fulfilling what management wanted all along??
It gives you a chance to get a job at a company that might actually value you? It's not like staying around is somehow sticking it to Disney or any of the boneheads pushing the H1-B plans. So why stick around at a place that doesn't even pretend to have loyalty to you?
Ok, so you thoroughly demotivate your workers. You insult them. You treat them like idiots. Yeah, we think so little of your jobs that we're going to import untrained minimum wage foreigners to replace you, and oh, by the way, before you leave, you have to train them which button to push when the light comes on.
You even complete the layoffs of one division. (Florida.)
And then, responding to Bad Press, as part of damage control, you tell the remaining employees that they get to keep their jobs. At least, for now, until the news cycle passes.
What employee in their right mind would *not* spend every moment looking for a new job at that point? What responsible individual (financially responsible to self and family) would *not* use this opportunity as paid job search?
So, Disney may have quieted down some small portion of the uproar. But they're still going to lose all of that tribal knowledge, guaranteed. And they're going to have the most disgruntled, (old workers) and nonfunctional (imported workers with no training or support) IT department of any company still in business.
I foresee a time when the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is populated with live H1-B actors, because nobody can figure out how to make the animatronics work anymore. Might be an improvement, except the guests will have to swim through the moat.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Important enough that they couldn't "just" be replaced by H-1B workers that were supposed to have skills that were unavailable in the US, the current employees were being required to train the H-1B workers in order to give them the skills and knowledge they needed to perform the job.
BTW, importance of the job has fuck-all to do with the boss getting their quarterly bonus for cutting payroll.
Worse than that, if everybody sends a big "fuck you" and leaves all at once, they don't have people to keep doing the job.
And then they'll pretend like their employees owe them something and act like victims.
These people have already lost their jobs. The only difference is how much longer they collect the checks, and how much Disney forces them to shut up next time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Because they offer you severance pay and other benefits which you forfeit if you don't.
Disney is also a special case in Florida because it's THE major employer in the Orlando area. If you burn your bridges there, it's unlikely you'll work in that town again. (Not that it mattered because they were blocking people from coming back as contractors anyway but I think that's a legal issue issue, not a personal one - EG Contractors who worked at a company long term were found to be defacto employees by a court ruling against Microsoft several years ago - To get around that ruling contractors have to have a "rest" period of more than a year or else they might get to sue the company. I suspect Disney's actions for not hiring back the employees as contractors right away is probably to get around that.)
It gives you a chance to get a job at a company that might actually value you?
There is no such company. We are all "resources" to be used up and cast away. They will use you for 60+ hours a week "to get the project done!" - total horseshit. It's done because they're getting 50%+ of free overtime out of your stupid ass. They get younger people who haven't been around long enough to notice that pay hasn't gone anywhere in over 15 years.
In public, companies bitch and moan how they can't get "qualified" people, but behind closed doors, all of you are considered easily replaced commodities.
Quitting allows you to leave on your own terms rather than being humiliated into training your low-pay replacements and then being fired. Are you really saying that workers should stick around at a company that was just days before trying to lay them off?
I don't think you understand something at play here. In my career of 28 years in IT, I have noticed that some people will just not leave - ever - under any circumstances until you turn out the lights and close the doors. What I mean is, no matter how bad the job is, some people will not ever leave it until they get thrown out the door or the company goes out of business. Not always, but usually it's the people who are just barely getting by. Some years ago we hired a guy who used to work for a local bank and his local bank got bought out by a much bigger bank out of state. They planned to shut down all their IT work in our city for this bank they bought, but they needed this guy and his co-workers to stay to help out with the transition. At first they were told 6 months and they'd be done. 6 months came and they got offered another 6 month extension. Then came another 6 month extension. The guy looked for another job and we hired him, but he left a co-worker behind who just didn't want to leave. Eventually after maybe 3 years, they finally closed down the IT work in our city and co-worker guy now for real has to find a job. The guy we hired asked us to hire his co-worker and we couldn't. No more openings. Even though this guy knew his job was going to end sooner rather than later, and the bank did not want to keep him on after it closed down all the local IT work they had, he refused to leave or even start looking for a job until they told him "Your job is over. Thanks. We'll send your final paycheck to you. Today is your last day." My previous employer, a European company, did some really reprehensible things to us before I left. They changed our terms of employment to favor them and enable them to cheat us out of severance pay they promised us and told us we had to either accept the new terms that let them do it or quit. Then they gave my small department 6 months notice that they were moving our jobs to another lower cost country (not India though). I was the only person in my office to find another job before the deadline. Nobody else would leave. One of the things you see at Disney is a lot of employees are big Disney fans, so they want to work there and they will put up with a lot of bs to do so. Even with these workers temporarily getting their jobs back, and yes we here all know this likely won't have a happy ending for them, more like a temporary reprieve, I guarantee you that many will still happily go back and refuse to look elsewhere for a job until they get this job taken away from them.
I feel conflicted...On one hand, Disney is yet again, being a shitty company and I feel bad that all these employees are being put through the wringer. On the other hand, if you are gullible enough to take a job at a company like Disney, you kind of deserve what you get.
I have a suspicion that a lot of Disney employees are like people that get jobs in the AAA game industry: They think that because they love the product that is produced, the job and working conditions will somehow be good.
Open message to anyone working for or thinking about it Disney: Research the companies history before you take a job These are shitty, shitty people that are in charge of making all these lovable characters.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!