Slashdot Mirror
Tesla's New Factory Project Imported Foreign Laborers (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "Overseas contractors are shipping workers from impoverished countries to American factories, where they work long hours for low wages, in apparent violation of visa and labor laws," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup. For example, "About 140 workers from Eastern Europe, mostly from Croatia and Slovenia, built a new paint shop at Tesla's Fremont plant, a project vital to the flagship Silicon Valley automaker's plans to ramp up production of its highly anticipated Model 3 sedan..."
This "hidden workforce" arrives on B1/B2 visas, which federal authorities acknowledge are subject to "widespread abuse" in Silicon Valley. The newspaper reviewed visa, court, and payroll documents, and conducted dozens of interviews, identifying Tesla's small third-party Slovenian subcontractor ISM Vuzem as the company who ultimately recruited many of the workers.
While most of the imported workers were happy with their wages, one worker was earning the equivalent of $5 an hour while his American counterpart was earning as much as $52, and they worked 10-hour days -- without overtime -- up to seven days a week.
This "hidden workforce" arrives on B1/B2 visas, which federal authorities acknowledge are subject to "widespread abuse" in Silicon Valley. The newspaper reviewed visa, court, and payroll documents, and conducted dozens of interviews, identifying Tesla's small third-party Slovenian subcontractor ISM Vuzem as the company who ultimately recruited many of the workers.
While most of the imported workers were happy with their wages, one worker was earning the equivalent of $5 an hour while his American counterpart was earning as much as $52, and they worked 10-hour days -- without overtime -- up to seven days a week.
It's more of a shock that anyone is still paid well considering hype literal billions of cheap labor outside America.
Sure, we could fix the visa problem, but if companies are forced to use expensive (globally speaking) labor, they'll just leave the country.
I suggest everyone start saving their money, because the gravy train is ending.
Ever eat at a grocery store? Guess what? You are eating products that were worked on by imported labor and I bet you aren't complaining about the lower prices. This is nothing unusual and I don't think less of Tesla for trying to get a better deal. As long as Tesla followed whatever regulations are in place for bringing in their workforce and paying them, I don't really see a problem here. If they broke some laws then appropriate and proportional punishment should follow. If the laws are allowing something they shouldn't then the answer is to change the laws. See some of the H1B abuse if you need an example of laws that are being abused.
While most of the imported workers were happy with their wages, one worker was earning the equivalent of $5 an hour while his American counterpart was earning as much as $52, and they worked 10-hour days -- without overtime -- up to seven days a week.
If someone is willing to pay the American worker $52/hour (roughly $100K/year with 8 hour work day) and gets good value for their money then where is the problem? On the other hand I cannot imagine paying $52/hour for that sort of work unless I had no alternative. Heck, my little company doesn't pay skilled trades $52/hour and we're a pimple on a gnat's ass in size compared with Tesla. I respect skilled trades immensely but Tesla would be nuts to pay that sort of labor rate if they could get the same work done for less. Just because this hypothetical American skilled trade worker is asking $52/hour doesn't mean Tesla or anybody else should be prohibited from looking for a better deal. Would you pay 10X the cost for work on your house solely because the worker is a US citizen and not because they do any better work? If you say yes I'm going to call you a liar.
"Here's a bunch of work you need to get done Bob, way more than anyone could do on the clock, see that it all gets done or you're going back to your country permanently"
To get the work done, Bob will have to put in a lot of extra hours off the clock. It's not illegal, it's Bob's "choice", but we can all see it's morally wrong.
That's the rub, the visa workers are slaves. Overwork happens to US workers too, but the punishment is only a lost job, not a lost job and deportation to a third world country. So they put in a ton of hours at less pay, and we can all see how that affects wages/expectations for American workers in the eyes of upper management.
So, cheap labor was supplied by a subcontractor who worked for the company that Tesla hired to build an add-on to its existing facility?
How is this news worthy?
If Tesla were deliberately skirting US labor laws, that would be news worthy. If they chose to contract with well-known abusive employers overseas, that might be important to potential buyers.
But outside of defense and aerospace, how many industries routinely vet every subcontractor they hire? No one. At best, they might check the primary contractor to make sure they don't have a sketchy history. But not everyone he might hire.
Because that is a ton of work. It takes lots of time and money to investigate, especially since you'll need to check every bidder before you award the contract.
If you personally don't like it, support laws that prohibit foreign workers or make disclosure of foreign labor required for all primary contractors.
A company cannot be expected to investigate the labor practices of every company it might contract. That is just insane, and that is why this article is worthless trash.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Because if they stopped those visas entirely it would harm the few companies who are using them legitimately. Well, that's the official explanation, I imagine the real reason is "lobbying and backhanders".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If I need a job done, I look for whomever can do it on time, correctly, and inexpensively; the latter generally being the least important. Upon settling upon a particular vendor, I may do some vetting, but exactly how much am I supposed to do? Particularly knowing there are already laws and enforcement bureaus in place to handle transgressions, I'm not likely to conduct my own deep investigation.
So Tesla hires Eisenmann to do a job, build a paint shop. That company, and at least one (ISM Vuzem), possibly more, position themselves to maximize the profit from the money Tesla is paying by hiring skilled workers made cheap through exploiting the visa system, and run afoul of the law. How much of that blame are we supposed to lay at Tesla's feet?
The the article mentions Tesla's name 39 times, including the title, 14 times in the first 16 paragraphs. Eisenmann is mentioned twice in the same space, and only in paragraphs 14 and 15 (13 overall). Vuzem is only mentioned once in that opening space (22 overall).
It looks like the Mercury News is intentionally bashing Tesla to grab headlines, particularly by front-loading the name. They could have just as easily reported that there is a huge problem in the United States with contractors hiring overseas workers under false pretenses, and Tesla was the latest victim.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
It's more of a shock that anyone is still paid well considering hype literal billions of cheap labor outside America.
Try trillions of cheap labor. We have this deluded notion that we can have both the highest labor costs in the world AND keep labor intensive work. That does not and cannot work over the long term. China has 4 people for every 1 in the US. That means all other things being equal, labor costs in China will be 1/4 that in the US on average. There is no reason China cannot have productivity equal to that of the US. Therefore it is illogical to continue to believe that the US can continue to have exceptionally high wages in the face of competition with a clear labor cost advantage.
Sure, we could fix the visa problem, but if companies are forced to use expensive (globally speaking) labor, they'll just leave the country.
Some will, some won't. If they get good value for money they'll stay. If the work can be done comparably well for less elsewhere then they'll leave. Honestly we should expect US wages to experience some form of reversion to the mean. If you want to have the highest wages in the world you should expect labor intensive work to go elsewhere. That's just Economics 101.
I suggest everyone start saving their money, because the gravy train is ending.
If the US wants to stay ahead then we will need to stop spending money on stupid things (wars, oversized military, interest on national debt) and start spending money on R&D, education, infrastructure and an efficient health care system. You know, things that will actually improve quality of life and incomes and productivity. Failure to do this will eventually result in the US experiencing a reversion to the mean in GDP per capita.
If you replace "Tesla" with the actual company's name that hired these workers, and no one would care. Everyone is up in arms because of the name "Tesla", and no one would care if the article didn't mention them.
As much as I'm not a Trump fan, one of the things he's right about is that visa abuse is rampant. The original intent of the H-1B program is good; our company is a multinational and we bring lots of very smart, talented employees to the US to work with us. The huge loophole is the body shops and IT service providers who just use it as a relief valve to earn more margin on IT outsourcing deals. The thing I don't like seeing is companies who just decide they don't want a 25-year veteran employee anymore, call up Tata or Infosys, and have a less-skilled replacement shipped in next week (that the veteran has to train to get his severance package.) I don't know how many more stories like that will have to be written before people realize this is not a good way to conduct business.
The problem with the visa abuse, the trade deals, etc. is that to make a dent, every company across the board needs to be affected equally and immediately. The only way to do that is to take away the visa programs for everybody, or unilaterally cancel a trade deal overnight. This would be the only way to ensure no company still had an advantage. One of the reasons companies offshore IT or import cheap H-1B workers from a body shop is because their competitors are doing it. If they don't, their IT costs are higher even if the quality is better. If, all at once, every company suddenly lost access to the loopholes they were exploiting, or that their "IT service partner" were exploiting, the incentive to offshore because everyone else is doing it would disappear.
Because not all of us are busy sucking off the kock Bros like you do. Seriously, dicks like you need to go spend your time on a trump site rather than a mostly tech site.
I agree with you about the US being most productive.
However, the inequality issue is not a separate discussion. It is the core issue.
The problem is that all of the benefits of productivity go to the owners, not the workers and the owners continually try to drive down worker wages with scams such as the H1 visas. The US should not be in a "race to the bottom" with the rest of the world.
Here's an interesting take on the issue (and the source of my numbers):
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Didn't Willy Wonka employ low-wage immigrant labor from Balkan countries? It seems the Chocolate Factory tried to organize and Mr. Wonka fired them all and brought in replacement workers?