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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.
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.
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.
Are you talking about the repeal of Glass-Steagall? That was under Clinton Administration, not Reagan.
Ken
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.