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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.
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.
You presume that any of the firms involved give two shits about ethics. Legality is the _only_ way to make any of them care.
"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.
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.
That's really only true if buying products produced by a subsect of humans which are less expensive due to structural pay differences in their native countries is also unethical.
Enough knowledge has been transferred to other countries that if local companies do not hire remotely, then they will be driven out of business or forced to relocate overseas by cheaper competition.
There is no good solution except allowing wages to equalize and removing some of the barriers to capitalism which prevent us from buying products which are sold overseas much less expensively than locally. For example movies are about 1/10th the price, blood pressure medicine is about 1% the price, etc. Some can't be fixed-- housekeeping and lawn staff is about 3% of the price.
Unfortunately, under good growth projections (which don't look to hold for the coming 12-18 months) it will be 2045 before china approaches wage parity and 2065 before india approaches wage parity.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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"
Hiring a specific sub-sect of human because they can be paid less is more than discriminatory. It's unethical.
Multi-national companies are *not* American companies and they have no allegiance to America or its citizens. Their ethics are not your ethics. They see "shareholder value" as the highest ethic. To them, national boundaries are a hindrance to maximizing shareholder value.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
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.
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).
That is entirely untrue. If your age, race, or gender negatively affect your ability to get employment that is illegal. You don't have to be a minority group to be subject to discrimination.
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
Amazingly simple solution: the H1b they bring in has to meet the same qualifications they listed. If they are willing to accept a lesser candidate, they have to re-list and go through their US applicants first with the lowered requirements before they can hire the H1b.
Basically it's not possible to audit to verify that they actually hired the person with the qualifications that they demanded of American workers when there no mandates for professional association to work in the field. Even vendor-accredited certifications (Microsoft, Cisco, etc) don't mean much if the published qualifications do not call for them, nor is there a requirement to have a post-secondary degree as there is no licensing model requiring it.
Right now, IT is a black-hole in that sense. Anyone can claim to work IT, there are no rules regarding who qualifies to work IT, and formal education and certification are not only not always necessary, sometimes they are not valued. Because of this it is very easy to skirt having any sort of outside hard qualifications in a job posting while putting inane crap in to disqualify people solely to remove them from contention regardless of the ability to actually do the job.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They never put the pay in the listings. It is always "Pay: N/A" or "Pay: DOE"
I was called by a recruiter recently on one. I had all the experience they wanted, all the Must Haves, and all the Would like to haves.
Me: So what is the pay range that they are offering?
Recruiter: That is Dependent on experience.
Me: You know as well as I do that they will not list a position with out budget approval. As such they must know what they are willing to pay and have a pay range they are looking in. Just ball park it for me.
Recruiter: Well, for the right person it is wide open. What are you currently making?
Me: (Adding %50 to my pay to make sure it is worth my time to discuss) $250,000 a year. As you can see from my qualifications I am an exact match so if it is wide open they should not have a problem discussing what I can bring to the company.
Recruiter: Oh, they are no where near that number. Sorry.
Me: Well let me know how much they are looking to pay and I may be able to direct you to a candidate that is in that range. He will not have all the stuff they want.
Recruiter: They are only looking for someone in the $50,000 to $60,000 a year range.
Me: You are not going to find anyone with 20 years experience and expert level skills in the things listed at that rate. I know someone who has 2 years experience as an L1 and is looking in that range.
Recruiter: Never mind....CLICK.
Im sure they found an H1B or used it to justify an H1B.
...in theory.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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 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.
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?
However, when the ad is for 5 years experience in 3 year old technology, it shouldn't be that hard to nail them to the wall if they hire an H1-B for the position since he provably doesn't meet that requirement.
> Amazingly simple solution: the H1b they bring in has to meet the same qualifications they listed. If they are willing to accept a lesser candidate, they have to re-list and go through their US applicants first with the lowered requirements before they can hire the H1b.
You've apparently not been paying attention to just how the H1B's are hired. The wonderful presention in 2007 about how to hire a cheap H1B instead of an expensive American revealed a number of fascinating tricks, all still in use, used to avoid hiring expensive Americans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...