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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.
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.)