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IT Employees At EmblemHealth Fight To Save Jobs (computerworld.com)
Reader dcblogs writes: IT employees at EmblemHealth have united to stop the New York-based employer from outsourcing their jobs to offshore provider Cognizant. Employees say the insurer is on the verge of signing a contract with Cognizant, an IT services firm and one of the largest users of H-1B workers. They say the contract may be signed as early as this week. They fear what a contract with an IT services offshore firm may mean: Humiliation as part of the "knowledge transfer" process, loss of their jobs or a "rebadging" to Cognizant, which they see as little more than temporary employment. Many of the workers, about 200 they estimate, are older, with 15-plus-year tenures. This means a hard job search for them. The IT employees have decided not go quietly. "We're organizing," said one IT employee, who requested anonymity. "We're communicating with one another. They need the knowledge that we have. They can't transition [to Cognizant] without the information that we have. That puts us in a position of strength — they can't fire us for organizing; we're protected by the law," she said.
Other companies have made the severance package dependent on helping with the transition. They probably only need a few key people to break ranks and it all falls apart.
First, H1-B reform isn't going to happen under Cruz (or Clinton). Last I heard, Trump was actually in favor of doing something about the H1-B problem, though he changes his mind so much it's hard to know what he'd really do.
Anyway, these IT employees might finally have gotten the right idea: unionizing. Yeah, right now, if you refuse to train your replacement, then you can just be terminated and not get that juicy severance package. That works just fine when you're eliminating only part of the workforce. When you're replacing them all, and then they decide to unionize and none of them will train their replacements, that strategy doesn't work: those IT employees have all the institutional knowledge, and the company is just going to fail without it being passed on. The company can certainly just terminate them all and have the replacements try to figure it out on their own, but good luck with that. It'd be funny as hell to see a big news report about a company like this doing just that, and then having to declare bankruptcy shortly after when the whole thing collapses.
>> "they can't fire us for organizing; we're protected by the law," she said. ...but if its a "right to work" state they can legally fire you for any bullshit reason or even not give a reason.
A long time? No banned from federal service for life.
And yeah no consequences from that at all:
"the FAA was faced with the task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired, a hard problem to fix as, at the time, it took three years in normal conditions to train a new controller.They were replaced initially with nonparticipating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some nonrated personnel, and in some cases by controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. Some military controllers were also used until replacements could be trained. The FAA had initially claimed that staffing levels would be restored within two years; however, it would take closer to ten years before the overall staffing levels returned to normal."
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Reagan also deregulated the banking system
No, Congress did that. All Reagan did was ask them to. Congress could have told him to go pound sand.
Put the blame where it belongs.
Reagan also deregulated the banking system which essentially has caused all the financial calamities that have followed, including the 2009 meltdown. What's your point?
BULLSHIT
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
And
Barney Frank: What Housing Bubble?
Are you talking about the repeal of Glass-Steagall? That was under Clinton Administration, not Reagan.
Ken
Do you really think that will matter?
Let's say you train them perfectly.
They're still only the top quarter of the bottom quarter of the barrel, in terms of ability or skill. The company may luck out and get a couple who are competent, but in all likelihood these people will be "experts" in a dozen technologies which typically take years to gain familiarity with. This goes doubly so if they're Indian, due to the Indian culture of hopping jobs after 3 months for a managerial position at twice the pay.
It's like trying to pour a bucket of water into a cup. Only so much is going to go in the cup, and the rest is going to go on the floor. You're still going to have a mess.
At the end of the day, you're not really changing anything. That person is going to likely move onto another job sooner than later, if they can - it's a job with shit pay, with no advancement possibilities, and they are way under qualified for it to boot. They're going to want to get to a position where they can baffle with bullshit as quickly as possible. The company is obviously navel gazing and cost-focused: quality is not a part of the picture. They'll go through several iterations of cuts and even mergers until the "company" ceases to exist, unless they realize the folly of their ways and reverse course.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Quality contribution there. Did you know that "subprime mortgage" is specifically defined as "mortgage not backed by Fannie or Freddie"? Fannie and Freddie insured ZERO subprime mortgages and had absolutely no financial problems at all until after the credit freeze when companies started shutting down and laying off hundreds of thousands of employees who had prime mortgages (and could afford them, until they lost their job?)
Even more BULLSHIT
Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Reached Tipping Point
Whenever competitors asked Congress to rein in the company, lawmakers were besieged with letters and phone calls from angry constituents, some orchestrated by Fannie itself. One automated phone call warned voters: “Your congressman is trying to make mortgages more expensive. Ask him why he opposes the American dream of home ownership.”
The ripple effect of Fannie’s plunge into riskier lending was profound. Fannie’s stamp of approval made shunned borrowers and complex loans more acceptable to other lenders, particularly small and less sophisticated banks.
Not only that, they lied about it:
SEC CHARGES FORMER FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC EXECUTIVES WITH SECURITIES FRAUD
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged six former top executives of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) with securities fraud, alleging they knew and approved of misleading statements claiming the companies had minimal holdings of higher-risk mortgage loans, including subprime loans.
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions' exposure to subprime loans, and misled the market about the amount of risk on the company's books. All individuals, regardless of their rank or position, will be held accountable for perpetuating half-truths or misrepresentations about matters materially important to the interest of our country's investors."
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions' exposure to subprime loans, and misled the market about the amount of risk on the company's books. All individuals, regardless of their rank or position, will be held accountable for perpetuating half-truths or misrepresentations about matters materially important to the interest of our country's investors."
Fannie Mae's executives also knew and approved of the decision to underreport Fannie Mae's Alt-A loan exposure, the SEC alleged. Fannie Mae disclosed that its March 31, 2007 exposure to Alt-A loans was 11 percent of its portfolio of Single Family loans. In reality, Fannie Mae's Alt-A exposure at that time was approximately 18 percent of its Single Family loan holdings.
One in five of Fannie Mae's loans were sub-prime.
Who's the derp now, derp?
Back in the 1980's the US Air Traffic Controllers went on strike, and Reagan fired them all with a prevision that they could not be rehired for many, many years. Jets still flew.
Of course, none of the air traffic controllers walked off the job until all of the jets under their coverage were safely on the ground or transferred to other air traffic control zones. The public was never in danger from that strike any more than if pilots go on strike, the passengers in flight are in danger. Sure, something can go wrong, but the pilots still fulfill their obligation to the public until the plane is safely at the gate and the passengers disembark.
As for the jets still flying, the FAA grounded over 50% of all scheduled flights and 60% of smaller airports because of safety reasons. So, it would be more accurate to say that "some" jets still flew. Ironically, the price tag of what the air traffic controllers were asking for was around $770M. The government paid about 50% more than that, by the time everything was said and done and back to normal. So, while Reagan put the air traffic controllers in their place, it cost the taxpayer almost $400M more than if he had not done so.
Then you work in a rare company where staff is doubled or tripled up. Many places hire exactly 2 fewer people than they should, and spread all of their jobs out pretty wide.
Almost every place that I've worked has been set up this way to save on costs. Generally people leaving under good terms will continue to get phone calls and emails for assistance for at least 2-3 months.
Conversely, if someone off the street can read some documents and perform your job with no specialized training, then your job must pay very close to minimum wage, and you're going to be replaced by a robot soon enough anyways...
Usually it isn't the case that nobody can figure out how to maintain the systems (eventually). But often the cost of getting replacement workers up to speed, and suffering potential downtime while doing so, is more expensive than keeping the existing workers.