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American IT Workers Increasingly Alleging Discrimination
An anonymous reader writes: Some U.S. IT workers who have been replaced with H-1B contractors are alleging discrimination and are going to court. They are doing so in increasing numbers. There are at least seven IT workers at Disney who are pursuing, or plan to pursue, federal and state discrimination administrative complaints over their layoffs. Separately, there are ongoing court cases alleging discrimination against two of the largest India-based IT services firms, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services. There may also be federal interest in examining the issue.
Fighting this battle piecemeal is a losing proposition.
Hiring a specific sub-sect of human because they can be paid less is more than discriminatory. It's unethical.
Normally, I poke fun at the "dey tuk ar jerbs" anti-H1-B crowd but if the feds want to beat up the body shops like Infosys, Tata, Wipro, and the rest that's just fine by me. The people they bring in are really barely one step above warm bodies.
Alegedly they are. Prove it!
"But Your Honor, we didn't get any applicants to our job posting for a minimum-wage principal engineer... We had no choice but to use H1Bs to fill this critical position!"
Here's my experience with Infosys: Their tactic is to always be the lowest bidder. When they get the contract, the staff they send generally is untrained with many of them learning the skills they need on the job on the client's dime. We had a contract with a client and were replaced by Infosys. So we had to hand over all of our functions to them; it was apparent that only one person in a team of 12 had the skills to do the job. After a year, the client fired them and came to us. But they wanted Infosys rates; we declined.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I interviewed with 2 companies last year that were very up front about my being mid-40's was a problem. In one company, 5 of the 7 people I talked to brought it up and a couple clearly had problems with it. The recruiter that flew me out congratulated me on putting up with it - what an asshat.
Over 40 in IT, hold on to the job you got because the next one won't hire anyone over 40.
American workers deserve to be treated as a protected class lest they end up as an endangered species.
If I ever meet you in real life, I'm going to punch you in the face. This shit is starting to get really old.
Sheeps say Mehhhhh!!!Mehhhhhhhhh!!!Mehhhhhhhhhh!! says the sheeps.You punching sheeps.
There is a problem here. You can't be discriminated when you are white, average aged and male. That's the world up side down! Only when you are part of a group of people that have problems with being discriminated you can use the "But that's discrimination!" argument to get what you want.
"Sheeps say Mehhhhh!!!Mehhhhhhhhh!!!Mehhhhhhhhhh!!"
At which time I hit them in the head with a large pipe. Gut them, string them up and peel off their skin, and place them on a spit over a nice fire. A little mint and some garlic as they slow roast.
Mmmm, Lamb does taste good.
When you are done posting Please stop by my place. I have a pipe I would like to introduce you to.
I've worked with at least two employers where an indian (sorry, not intended to be racist but they were both indian), person from an agency who was converted to perm was put in place in a hiring position and then every single hire afterwards was indian, and exclusively from the contract agency that placed the individual.
I am aware that there are also incentives for these individuals, and that their relationships with the contracting firms are ongoing.
It's so obvious that I can't imagine it's not a known quantity.
It's not really racial discrimination, it's just a moderately biased business practice.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
Everyone must learn to code so that your job can be outsourced to India!
useing contractors get's them around a lot of the wage laws. The contractors say we have us works at the same wage or lower working for us. That pay rate is much lower then what Disney pays and they don't give out free park passing and can say there workers are lucky to get free parking as they can change them $15-$20 a day.
I really like working in IT - it's good to have a job where you're using your brain every day instead of just churning out reports or something similar. The major complaints I have are:
- Age discrimination -- I haven't been looking for work lately, but I'm sure getting more paranoid about keeping a job when I see stories of people who are basically unhireable after 40. I just crossed that magic threshhold and although I have tons of experience and a solid reputation behind me, I do worry about companies just not even bothering to interview me because of a stupid set of unfounded beliefs.
- Work visa program abuses -- I have absolutely no problem with companies using H-1B, L-1 or other visas to bring in super-intelligent people who are providing a key service to the company. I have a big problem with Tata, Infosys, Accenture, IBM, HP, etc. using them to bring in a cheap run-of-the-mill developer, DBA or sysadmin who could easily have been sourced locally if the company would pay reasonable rates.
- Clueless employers -- This isn't something easy to solve, but outside of Silicon Valley and extremely high-tech or enlightened companies, IT is considered a janitorial-level service. This is why the Tatas and Infosys's of the world are called in. Everywhere I've worked that has done this has had IT productivity slow to a crawl because of change management paperwork, dealing with absolutely clueless remote employees and other factors.
The only long term solution I see is a guild system...heaven forbid you call it a union in front of Libertarian IT workers. If we want a career that continues to pay off and be enjoyable to work in, education has to be standardized in at least the fundamental level, and a career progression needs to be put in place. We need to fund some lobbyists to give Congress the brown paper bags full of money they need to pass limits on work visa programs, and most importantly it needs to be done as a group. Doctors have the AMA, and it keeps their salaries high by limiting the number of medical school graduates and lobbying for favorable insurance rules. Musicians, actors and writers have their guilds that ensure they don't get screwed by studios and keep getting royalties for their work. I just don't see why it's taking so long for people to realize they have no power against any of these forces we're seeing. No one is going to win an age discrimination suit against a corporation and their well-funded legal team. It's nice that people are trying, but it will never happen. At most they'll get a small payout and be blackballed from working in the industry ever again.
H1b employees also get displaced by TCS/Infosys. Their official policy is 85% offshore and 15% on shore employees. The onshore 15% exists mostly for co-ordination. An H1b employee's CTC is always higher by at least by 1.5x times to locals. Recently my friend who is on h1b was forced to look for another h1b sponsor because the company A signed a partnership agreement with TCS. TCS provided 3 sysadmins for his replacement but they were not upto the mark as expected by A because TCS's sysadmin's won't know scripting. This H1b guy was forced to train the TCS guys(10 of them) in perl scripting. He did that too but then they quit TCS for better salary and work hours. A new PM from TCS would come onshore every 1.5 to 2 years and he would question why they are employing a h1b guy for 2x the cost of an L1B. In the mean time the h1b guy's extension process etc. would be delayed. He used to be in lot of stress, they would still be search for an replacement and apply for the extension on the last week/day of original h1b expiry and then too they will provide 1 yr extension. Frustrated he quit for another company B. The same story has started to repeat at company B now. There is another category of visas called L1A and L1B(intra company transfer visa) where prevailing wages doesn't have to be shown and qualifications are not a factor. Almost 95% of the TCS onsite guys had either L1A or L1B and they were getting 60k for a 110k job position and their taxes found some loop hole and they were hardly paying any taxes, that is around 4k. The h1b guy was getting 85k and his vendor the rest. CTC was around 140k to the company. L1A visa is also eligible for immediate green card processing under "multinational manager"(eb1) category. The master degree H1b guys on an average wait for 10 years(talking Indian), the bachelor degree holders wait for 20 or more years. L1A guys just 3 to 6 months. For a foreign student he has to become a scientist(Phd + papers etc) to qualify for the equivalent category as "multinational manager". Some "multinational managers" are just 10+3(diploma) qualified. Last year there were around 500 eb1 gc applications(search 485 inventory on google). This year already 13000 eb1 applications have been received. H1b guys are under the Eb2 and Eb3 green card quotas. So companies have figured out the L1 loop hole and bringing in the 15% onsite workers as managers. That explains the huge jump in eb1 category. So the foreign scientists/Phds are unhappy too. The L1As get green cards in 6 months and then are not counted as foreign workers, qualifying the company as less than 30% dependent on foreign workers. Thus they import for L1As. So I would say, the anger is misdirected towards H1b instead of L1x visas.
high HB1 minwage as well maybe even forced OT pay
have a minwage of say 80-100K + COL for HB1's to stop them saying we can't find some for $35K in the bay area to work and 40+ hour week.
When a company outsources operations to contractors, who happen to be Indian, how do you prove discriminatory intent? The outsourcing part is so common everyone does it. How would you prove intent on the part of the contractor who gets the contract?
The concept behind the H1-B program sounds reasonable. Bring in highly skilled experts from overseas that we can't find here. However, since it's now been thoroughly demostrated that:
1) Employers can't be trusted to act ethically and honor both the letter and spirit of the law, and
2) The government has been steadfastly failing to monitor the program and enforce the rules
The entire program needs to be scrapped. No H1-Bs, period. We apparently can't handle it, so employers need to find the talent here, or do without (or, you know, invest in employee development/training again).
Ten years later and still fighting in court...
I have worked for a consulting company as a full time employee in the past, and that relationship was very similar to a union. Our business development department set the rates we charged clients, and the partners determined my pay purely based on my own performance.
IT Unions could work if they functioned essentially as a consulting company. Sometimes they may place a "contractor" with an employer for a decade or more, but the contracting company would handle all negotiations with the employer. These "unions" wouldn't ever strike, but they could easily just pull their workers out and place them at a different employer if negotiations don't pan out.
The IT industry may already be moving in this direction anyway.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"prove you have done a qualified job search" just how do you think this will work?
You've seen the ads "Seeking experienced Scala developer with 15 years experience, Must know CICS, JCL, DOS/360, C, Java, Python, Perl, FORTRAN, PL/I, SNOBOL, LISP. PhD preferred. Starting pay depending on qualifications, 50-60k/annually"
Funny thing, nobody responds, and they file the certification "Unable to locate qualified person".
And you can't go "person actually hired must match requisition", because that really doesn't happen for anyone, imported or not. Realistically, employers publish an ad that is a "wish list", not a "must have", and then they look for the maximal fit between "wish list" and "resume" to call for an interview, where they refine the "what I really need" vs "what you have to offer".
oops, I'm probably giving away my age. its a movie, probably based on a book, Logan's Run (1976)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/
And the battle has to start somewhere. If it is a handful of lawsuits, let it be. I am sure more will come, once people start to hear these and by a miracle they get some foothold and succeed. And you spoke just like a union shill... Unionizing, creates union fat-cats in the long run, as if it looks like they are doing some good at the beginning. Once things improve a little, they start lining their pockets, doing nothing, off the backs of the union members, cripple economies, keep incompetent workers in place. Just look at California State Teachers union and CA state employees union. abysmal performance for abysmal pay in both, yet the union bosses drive Mercedes cars and fly first class, get free seats to any major sporting or performance event. I don't want to see it in the IT environment.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
reflect the number of programmers that are unemployed. If only a very small numbers of programmers are unemployed then go for it. If a large number of programmers are unemployed then kill it.
e.g. California
First off, it's not consent that's required, it's notice. Consent is implied if the conversation continues after notice has been given (as in "this call may be monitored")
so, have the recorder in your pocket.
You obviously can't go "do you mind if I tape this?"
No, you have to be much more subtle, like the police do when getting consent for a search during a traffic stop...
How about "joking around"
You: "I'm nervous, and I always forget the answers to some questions I ask, so I record all this so I can remember later"...
Recruiter: "ha..ha.. that would be great"
- consent granted
You: "you don't mind if I record some notes {holding your pad in your hand}?"
Recruiter: "no, go right ahead"
- consent granted
You: Joking tone. "This interview may be recorded for quality control purposes"
Notice given
And while I wouldn't want to advocate illegal things, once you've got a recording, and a decent sound editing program, I'm sure you could create something very convincing that showed clear consent, or at least notice. When you play it for the EEOC staffer, informally, of course, that might be pretty useful.
After all, it's unlikely they're recording without telling you, because then they'd have to admit breaking the law, and their downside risk is MUCH bigger than yours.
And if they do have one of those nice "persons on this property are subject to monitoring" signs, that's the same as saying "consent granted", just like "this call may be monitored".
I work at a small US-based startup. 8 of our engineering team of 13 are foreign-born. I like my coworkers fine, but this shit ain't right.
if you make H1B visas too hard, what the company will do, most of the time, is give up and go offshore.
Either they care about the local workers and their existing employess, in which case, they aren't likely to be gaming the system with H1B's. Or they don't care if they get a zillion untrained drones, if they can get them all for less money. In which case, making the rules on H1Bs really hard, will just mean they take the next step, and move offshore completely.
and no, I don't have an answer.
but it is the true. Hiring programmers now a days is full of fraud. People tailor their resumes to the job requirements. They don't posses the skills they say they do. They have other people who do their phone interviews for them. And many of them when they are on the job have to depend on others to help them.
Don't depend on the resumes they are fraud especially the ones that meet your requirements exactly. Face to face interview everyone. Technical interview those you are interested in. Know that the second interviewee from the same company will already know the questions because that's how they roll.
Left-wing populists want to raise wages via increasing the minimum wage. Right-wing populists want to get more Americans employed by preventing amnesty and cutting the H1-B visa program. I think these two groups should team up to fight stuff like this.
Maybe the right-wing populists can support a hike in the minimum wage and maybe the left-wing populists can agree that mass importation of labor is hurting Americans.
I don't know. It's pretty harmless. It's about as funny as Dane Cook, and probably twice as original.
It's sad, really. This cow shit is the most clever thing he can come up with. Then he chuckles to himself because all he has to do to upset people is to say "moooooo".
What a meaningful existance! He's like a novelty character from a sitcom, who says little more than his catch phrases.
What do you think of the idea of mandating that workers on H1B must be paid at least 3% higher salary than domestic workers - just to offset things affiliated with relocation costs. This would get rid of the motivation to import foreigners for no other reason than finding someone that will work for less, and could motivate the companies to invest in training the employees they have in the skills they need.
I have been discriminated against over
age 45+
single parenting single fathers get no respect
criminal record I was once charged with a felony (over charged to make me plead to a lesser charge without trial)
( not going to share the details, but minor shit and NOT work related)
haircut wasn't fashionable, too long
beard had short hair & beard was nicely trimmed
operating system windows shop wouldn't hire someone that thought windows was a poor data center choice. ( job was a SAN manager)
vehicle I ride motorcycle to work (clean bike, non-harley, no leathers, no tattoos) & my other vehicle is a pickup (clean, stock equipment)
salary I have always been reasonable, but local wage averages are not realistic if you have to hunt regional & national for personnel
Shit happens, of all the above. My criminal record causes me the most grief, because of it's just a check box to HR. check the box no job.
And I don't lie about anything important.
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
It seems ALL workers are alleging discrimination of some sort.
Aren't we all victims somehow, if only we look hard enough?
-Styopa
I'm sure there is more than that to your story, but I wish you luck (or justice).
I currently work at a company where about 30% of our IT staff is contractors, and it works out great
Unless you're a contractor, where you're considered a second-tier person that has to please two masters.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
They did replace low skill positions (like computer operators) because they gained economies of scale (one operator could work on 12 companies). But they did not replace programmers or analysts.
Except that such individuals are usually treated with disrespect for being a contractor.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Well, you can monetize a broken nose.
And from a business perspective, it's great to be able to "turn on" and "turn off" resources without paying unemployment and without spending 17 hours interviewing candidates over three months. Instead the new person is there-- next week.
Unless you're the resource, which experiences the worst of the benefit-dodging and the least stability of work with the expectations of a regular FTE.
It only shows the need for agency labor, much less Infosys types, to DIAF and to be nuked from orbit.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Before I join... I need to know what the suggest will be the official text editor of the IT Union.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Not a flat minimum wage, a relative one. AN H1B worker must have a salary equal inside the total compensation range of the top 10% of domestic workers- not just in category, but in the company. So you can get one, but you're going to pay for them. This will allow companies to hire high talent individuals from overseas while not creating an advantage for them doing so.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You don't have to have most of the employees leave. You publicly fire the organizers and 20% of all those you can identify as being involved in the union. The rest will fall in line.
That in turn shows the weakness of the "secret" ballot for such elections - it's effectively "secret only if no".
In addition, that would trigger an exodus of the remaining good help. The best conclusion would result in the company gaining a "employer of last resort" reputation amongst the IT community while the worst conclusion would end the company by sheer incompetence.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
$100K/year for an H-1B visa worker is too low since these are supposed to be the people of exceptional skill that cannot be found in the U.S. I would say that such a person should command at least $150K in regular cities and $250K in high cost-of-living places like Silicon Valley, New York City, and Washington D.C.
If companies can pay tens of millions of dollars for executives who are of "rare and exceptional skill", $150K - $250K is an absolute pittance.
Eliminate the H1 B program, and round up all the current H1 B's and send them back, problem solved !
Seriously, kill ALL guest worker programs. Foreign companies representing foreign gov, and nations, will ALLWAYS cheat on these. Instead, we need change green card programs in which we cut the number of ppl from each nation in half, and then apply that total count to bringing in ppl on needed skills as green card. By bringing them here, most will stay and keep the skills going. In addition, for anybody brought on needed skills, they need to be paid at least average for that position and location.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I work for a company that outsourced to Infosys several years ago. There aren't that many H1-B visa holders that I have seen. Most that I work with are here on L1 visas. They make just above minimum wage. We also have multiple offices in the city the company is based out of. L1's aren't allowed to even travel to the other offices because their visas stipulate they can only travel between their "home" and a particular office. They aren't even allowed to travel to other nearby cities for the weekend/vacations. This means their entertainment becomes working just to pass the time at night/on weekends.
As for the discrimination aspect of it, I have seen it on so many levels. Often times the companies they do outsourcing for require that they hire on a certain number of displaced employees for a certain period of time. The outsourcing companies have tactics that make the displaced employees want to leave (often based around discrimination). So many people I know talk about the harassment/discrimination they face for being US citizens, but they don't have the resources to prove/fight it given their financial situation. The funny thing is I've seen Infosys on a mad scramble recently to hire US based employees since the allegations about discrimination came out about 3-4 months ago. I guarantee they will come to court saying "we have X number of US based employees" as their answer to the allegations.
Otherwise you'll have no voting block, and without a voting block you have no power. Like it or not we're a two party system. You need something to overcome social issue voters if you're going to put the economy back on the table.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These visas are for experts of extraordinary skill, training, and achievement, people who are expensive even when you can find them and recruit them.
The one way that to prove no United States citizens were available for the job: pay twice the prevailing wage. If businesses are willing to do that, then they are bringing in someone they need.
There shoud be a $250,000 salary minimum against a 200%-of-prevailing-wage minimum.
Otherwise, they are separating Americans into spoiled consumers and unemployed workers. It doesn't work, because workers and consumers operate out of the same economic households.
Tax Corporate Revenues, Not Profits;
Casteism
What is wrong with finding workers willing to work for less?
Taiwan (Listeni/tawn/; Chinese: or ; pinyin: Táiwn; see below), officially the Republic of China
I don't know. It's pretty harmless. It's about as funny as Dane Cook, and probably twice as original.
You are seriously overestimating Dane Cook's originality.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I applied at a company advertising for programmers at the State Unemployment Office--at a rate of $10/hr. I thought it was ridiculously low, but I was jobless at the time, and the place was less than a mile from my house in a small (grungy) industrial park, so I said, WTH.
I applied. Heard nothing. Did some digging to find a phone number a few days latter to "Follow up" and was summarily dismissed with "We're not hiring any Americans".
I relayed my "interview" outcome to the Unemployment office and was told They already KNEW! They just weren't allowed to use resources to deal with the problem. Said to wait to complain until we had a Democrat in the Governor's and State Attorney General's office.