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Disney IT Workers Allege Conspiracy In Layoffs, File Lawsuits (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes with the latest in the laid off Disney IT worker saga. According to ComputerWorld: "Disney IT workers laid off a year ago this month are now accusing the company and the outsourcing firms it hired of engaging in a 'conspiracy to displace U.S. workers.' The allegations are part of two lawsuits filed in federal court in Florida on Monday. Between 200 and 300 Disney IT workers were laid off in January 2015. Some of the workers had to train their foreign replacements — workers on H-1B visas — as a condition of severance. The lawsuits represent what may be a new approach in the attack on the use of H-1B workers to replace U.S. workers. They allege violations of the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), claiming that the nature of the employment of the H-1B workers was misrepresented, and that Disney and the contractors knew the ultimate intent was to replace U.S. workers with lower paid H-1B workers."
. . . they call it a "business plan" .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Seriously. This sort of bean counter bullshit is going to continue until people no longer hesitate to drag it into the light.
Yes, sure, it's up to every company to maximize its own profits.
And sure, it's possible that wages for certain classes of skilled workers is out of whack.
But abusing the work visa system to pay pennies on the dollar for labor is just flat-out wrong.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The plain simple fact, you cannot displace American workers with an H1B Visa hire. That's against the law and this is what these companies are doing. Couple that with how contracting companies game the H1B Visa program by flooding it with applications, and you have a broken system that's displacing American workers. H1B Visa program is meant to supplement the American workforce NOT replace it. There are companies with legitimate uses for H1B Visas which cannot get a visa because of these contracting companies. Time to reform the program.
The whole thing is a joke...are you really telling me that out of 300 million Americans, you can't find ANYONE in this country who is qualified to do this work? Bullshit. Utter bullshit.
Unless by "qualified" you mean "willing to work at 1/2 scale wages".
The whole thing is a joke, a complete fucking joke.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"I want to think I really like the Disney company"
Why?
They have done absolutely nothing to endear them to anyone. They are a massive corporation that has "purchased" our cultural heritage by taking our tales of folklore and locking them away in perpetual copyright.
Disney can go and get fucked, and I for one (despite have a young family) intend to never give them a cent of my income for the rest of my life.
There are many ways to save money. Some of them are illegal. The lawsuit claims that this was one of the illegal ways to save money. (Disney could also have saved the money if they just didn't pay the workers at all, let the debt pile up and shot everyone trying to go to the courts to demand the money. Also this is deemed illegal for some reason.)
The sad state of things is such that even though they are using H-1B improperly, those affected are mostly college-educated white males.
This is not a great target market for widespread outrage and demands for reform on the 24 hour news stations.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's not really about racism, it's about basic economics. You flood the supply of labor with cheap imports and you reduce demand for more expensive domestic product.
It's beyond time to eradicate the program entirely.
Something like this case - where disney literally laid off staff in order to directly replace them with H1B workers - should be immediately illegal and stopped before they even brought them in + fines and penalties and so on.
The fact that we're here on the internet complaining about this and the workers are only filing lawsuits after the fact shows just how broken the program is.
The problem is big business buys politicians and votes and then write the laws that best suit their shareholders (i.e. profit). Disney is great at getting away with this - look at the copyright extension that directly follows when Mickey Mouse would otherwise enter the public domain.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Attracting foreign workers shouldn't be blocked completely, but there should be a good reason for it. Someone who has skills you cannot get anywhere else. This should be reflected in the wage -- a H1B job should pay say, at least 200K/year or so. :)
When they own nearly all of pop culture. Unless your going to go live under a rock you're gonna be giving then some money. They own ESPN for Christ sakes. I know your already rattling of in your head all the non Disney stuff you watch and read but try keeping your kids away from it without them seeming weird. Media consumption is a social thing for most people. If you keep your kids away from all the stuff everybody else likes they'll lose a huge amount of common ground that helps then relate. That goes for you too. A lack of common interests is one of the things that isolates nerds...
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How Many? Count the H1B visas! Here's an example, 30,000 HP employees; thanks to Carly Fiorina, and she's damn proud of it. How about Apple, Microsoft, Google, FaceBook, Ericsson International, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon. SeeBeyond. Just to name a few. My finger count is north of 3,000,000. Now, does one wonder why, in the U.S., wages have not gone up?
The visa system for workers is completely "save cash for companies", nothing more. If you believe it's a good system in any way, you have either been duped by propaganda or not stopped to consider life without a work visa. So ask yourself, what happened _before_ we had worker Visas? Simple, people immigrated to the US. If someone had a special set of skills and knowledge, companies could pay the costs and do the work to get the immigration complete quickly. The US Government has embassies and a Military for exactly the purpose of accomplishing safety.
Congress needs to do it's job, but so you we. Repeating bullshit does not fix things, understanding problems is the start. Many of our problems were caused by people trying to game the system under the guise of altruism.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
H1-B visa were thought to be available only for companies that couldn't fill the open positions with domestic workers.
This is the part I found especially strange. I have no idea how Disney expects to argue that they couldn't find the needed skill set domestically then turn around and have the current staff train the H1-Bs. Clearly the skill sets were already available. Hell they didn't even have to open a position, it was already filled.
The optimist in me wants to say this is an open and shut case for the IT workers but the pessimist in me fully expects Mickey Mouse and and his congress critter friends crash them under pallets of cash.
Reading the Department of labor website " The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce" If the Disney workers had to train the H-1B it does not seem like they (the H1-B workers) had the skill set to do the job in the first place and it would seem to me Disney did not follow the rules properly.
With us drawing close to a Presidential election in the US, perhaps it's time for IT Professionals to re-think who should represent us both in our home states, and in our national Congressional seats.
Defense based companies have a tiny protection against offshoring, in that they can't get the security clearances in foreign countries. That doesn't mean they won't continue to move anything they possibly can, and it is not as if we don't already outsource many parts.
At any rate, I think it goes something like this.
1) H1Bs are far too easy. I'm not convinced we need them at all. Why can't we just invest in American workers? I know the companies what programs that fit specifications, since they don't like to train people, but the current status is kind of sad.
2) Companies regularly phase out high grade workers, who have earned that grade and keep hiring level 1s, because they are cheaper, and on paper an engineer is an engineer. A team lead talked about promotion lately. To be honest, I'm not sure that staying at level 3 isn't better than getting promoted. Of course you can replace level 1 with H1B fairly easily.
3) Linked to one and two you have rampant short term planning. Seriously, I'm supposed to have a research job, but our research is putting together various other pieces of crap in the hopes of fielding something that can make a quick buck. The kind of detailed and rigorous work true engineering would require is not something companies appear interested in, save as a last resort, and it is exactly what is needed long term.
Attracting foreign workers shouldn't be blocked completely, but there should be a good reason for it. Someone who has skills you cannot get anywhere else. This should be reflected in the wage -- a H1B job should pay say, at least 200K/year or so. :)
+1 Insightful, folks.
Exceptional work should get exceptional pay, and if it isn't exceptional, there should be no problem finding resident workers.
Seriously. This sort of bean counter bullshit is going to continue until people no longer hesitate to drag it into the light.
Yes, sure, it's up to every company to maximize its own profits.
And its up to every company to not eat it's seed corn as well.
Let us imagine the supply sider's dream of every American worker (except them) to be paid less than the wages in the lowest paid countries. Then there is no reason to outsource labor. Isn't this what we are told every waking moment?
Okay, mission accomplished.
Now let us imagine these people who are making that - oh, I don't know what you would call it - say "minimum liveable wage" Any less, and they'd starve to death.
Now imagine all these Americans buying homes and cable tv and a new smartphone every year and taking trips to Disney World every year. and having retirement plans and going to eat in nice places and taking vacations to the shore.
And just imagine the folks who would not have jobs where folks sped their money I don't mean to sound like a crazy man, but wouldn't it be a good thing to have more Americans make more money so they could buy more stuff so that your company sells more?
The times I made more money in life I tended to spend more money. Go figure.
Austerity only works for a very short time. Then it becomes a war of attrition like race to the bottom.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Next time forum a union!
In an ideal market, people would be free to move around and seek work where ever the wages and opportunity are right. In our real world, moving from country to country to work is limited by governments that want to protect their borders and labor pool.
Try getting a visa to work in China or Brazil. Those countries do not readily allow foreigners to work "their" jobs.
A government visa program designed to artificially increase a pool of workers is the exact opposite of a free market.
Bernie Sanders and Trump are, by contrast, very good on this issue.
Bernie Sanders is very good on most issues! It's refreshing to have a candidate who seems to actually give a fuck.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Company wants to save money by replacing overpaid workers with cheaper ones? Story at 11. Really, I fail to see what the issue is here. This is a corporation doing what corporations do - try to minimize expenditures. These people were likely at will employees as as such have no guarantee of job security. If you are making a lot of money, expect to be under the microscope when the cost cutters come around. If you are truly worth it, you have nothing to worry about. This is just crybaby bullshit.
For someone coming off as smug and superior, you are shockingly naive.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
That's pure Socialism. In the USA have a MINIMUM wage - except for those exempted, such as agricultural workers, some food service workers, and congressional flunkies.
By most computations, the minimum wage in effect for a given US locale is LESS than a liveable wage. Which means that something has to fill the gap: food stamps, welfare, charity, working 2 jobs, and so forth.
Thus, what you are proposing is UN-AMERICAN and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I'm assuming you are being facetious,
But really, the achille's heel of supply side-ism is that eventually people cannot afford what you are supplying.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Bernie's Tax Plan Sucks. Here is how the leading candidates compare on income taxes: Bernie Sanders Establishes four new brackets of 37%, 43%, 48%, and 52%. The top rate applies to taxable income over $10 million. Raises the rate of all other brackets by 2.2%. Hillary Clinton Adds a 4% surtax on income over $5 million. Donald Trump Establishes four tax brackets, with rates of 0%, 10%, 20% and 25%. The top rate applies to to income over $150,000 for single filers and $300,000 for joint filers. Ben Carson Establishes a flat rate of 14.9% on all ordinary income. Alters the standard deduction and personal exemption to exempt wage income under 150% of the federal poverty level of a filer. So Bernie is raising taxes by 2.2% on everyone, Hillary is changing nothing except adding 4% to income over $5 million, Trump is giving the biggest break to the poor where people who earn $25,000 or less a year pay no income tax at all, and Ben Carson establishes a flat tax with exemptions for the truly poor. Oh and here is the source: http://taxfoundation.org/compa...
Wages have gone up for the CEOs. They need to make their 45 to 50 million a year otherwise they would not be able to afford a new yacht and that would be an absolute tragedy. Come on, think of the poor CEO and their need for the twenty million dollar mansion and the new yacht.
Of course you didn't mention the spending plans that go with those tax programs, which have a profound impact on whether the tax plan is reasonable.