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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!
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.)
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.
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.