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Immigration Attorneys: Industry Pushes Foreign Labor, Claiming 'US Students Can't Hack It In Tech' (breitbart.com)
geek writes: According to Caroline May from Breitbart News, "The tech industry is seeking to bolster its argument for more white-collar foreign tech workers with the insulting claim that the education system is insufficiently preparing Americans for tech fields, according to pro-American worker attorneys with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). [In an op-ed published at The Daily Caller, IRLI attorneys John Miano and Ian Smith take the tech industry to task for its strategy to promote the H-1B visa program -- alleging a labor shortage of apt American tech workers while importing thousands of foreign workers on H1-B visas from countries with lower educational results than the U.S.]" John Miano and Ian Smith write via The Daily Caller: "But if the H-1B program really is meant to correct the failings of our education system, as BigTech's new messaging-push implies, why is it importing so many people from India? According to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global standardized math and science assessment sponsored by the OECD, India scored almost dead last among the 74 countries tested. The results were apparently so embarrassing, the country pulled out of the program all together. Not surprisingly then, there isn't a single Indian university that appears within the top 250 spots of the World University Rankings Survey. And unlike American bachelor's degrees, obtaining a bachelor's in India takes only three years of study."
With a mark up to 20 bucks an hour to their American customers. Or work for 60,000 as a Software Dev filling a Principle Dev role with commensurate experience.
i am so very tired....
If I would have known that I could obtain a bachelors degree in only 3 years... oh wait, I already did that by doing 18-21 credit hours a semester instead of the usual 12, otherwise known as benefitting from the fact that credits per dollar in that range reduced the cost of my education. Silly me for caring about my education's cost instead of viewing it as a time to goof off.
Thirty four characters live here.
The H-1B idea is basically we don't have the American's we need, so we will take foreign workers using some exception to the normal process, which just so happens to make it harder for that help to leave the company that is sponsoring them.
In short it is another, "The normal process doesn't work so let's create a special case to fix our alleged problem."
No. Fix the normal immigration process. By all means favor those with skills, but just fix the normal process.
I happen to know that even getting accepted for a BA at the IIT requires passing one of the hardest university entry exam on the planet. Sure, for MA and PhD, the IIT is crap, but the BA graduates are among the best available, simply because they are the best from a large pool of applicants (and the rest be damned...). That said, while there are a few US universities that can compete on BA level, they do not produce enough graduates, and hence the importing.
Side note: A few years ago when I was doing my PhD, we did a nice little experiment when we found a floor-plan of an CS institute at Berkeley: We tried to identify which PhD students were American and which were not. We ended up with something like 1 in 10 US and 1 in 10 unsure. The rest were from abroad. So my take is the insult here is not by the people saying the truth about the US education system, the insult is to those going through that defective system.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
and 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay
$150,000 minimum wage for H1(b) people and the issue will take care of itself overnight.
WE need unions also why train your h1-b replacement if we can't hack it.
"Why is it importing so many people from India?"
Because for the same skills, they're cheaper. That's all.
"unlike American bachelor's degrees, obtaining a bachelor's in India takes only three years of study."
That's because they follow the English model - school till 18 then a three year degree course.
American universities do a poor job of educating, errr training, students?
I'm hiring an Indian student, but she was educated here. I work at a national laboratory, so I would really love to hire Americans (security clearance issue). There don't seem to be that many Americans who are getting PhDs, which is pretty much a requirement in my line of work...
I suspect every slash dotter worth their salt has a few canned responses here they can pull out to stories like this.
The main point of the H1B visa waiver program is to enable US employers to hire skilled foreign workers. Period. The reason for hiring them, at least in Silicon Valley, is not to pay a bargain basement wage, but to enable US companies to hire the best and brightest in the world. It's got nothing to do with a shortage of US workers. Indeed, most hiring managers have no idea if the applicant has a visa, a green card, or is a citizen. They just want the best person for the job. Does that mean that us US folks are at a disadvantage when hiring? You betcha! You are going up against every super-smart wannabe Steve Jobs from India, China, Israel, Russia and the rest of the world. If the hiring manager finds her man, HR will work out how to get the visa. If it isn't an H1B, it'll be an EB-2 or 1099 contracting and business trips until all that stuff is sorted out. Now, if US employers were forced to hire based on immigration status - citizens first, then green card holders, then it would be a distinct advantage to be a citizen. It'd also probably result in US employers not having the smartest people in the world working for them.
No, only Americans have the right to live the American dream. I'm living the Canadian dream myself, which is only for Canadians.
Based on my experience hiring and managing developers, both students and contractors (mostly from India), in the Canadian government over the last few years...
The students indeed are nowhere near ready. That's true for undergraduate and graduate students. In fact, I have to get them to unlearn most of what little they learned in school before they can produce anything usable. I also have to teach them how to think. But, after some time, they will produce and I even have some leading critical activities within a couple of years.
The consultants (from India) are even worse. They have so much more to unlearn from years of producing crap and not getting told it's crap. They couldn't produce good code if their life depended on it. The difference is that I can't teach them how to produce good code; they absolutely refuse to accept any feedback. That and they cost ten times more than a student.
Give me the student any day. At least, eventually, I can make them into a good developer. And they cost a lot less.
I know right?
After busting there ass for 4 or 5 years and spending 100 grand on tuition, graduating Americans were totally unprepared for the insultingly low salary they were offered.
People act like having an Android instead of an iPhone makes them some tech god, or even someone installing a mainstream Linux OS that realistically runs about the same as any modern GUI OS. People nowadays use toys, and because they're electronic and modern and have quad processors, they seem to think that translates to a computer science literate generation of society, and that just isn't the case.
With a mark up to 20 bucks an hour to their American customers. Or work for 60,000 as a Software Dev filling a Principle Dev role with commensurate experience.
And put up with the down playing of all their experience, badmouthing them when they leave the job and moving the goalposts on all of their stated job responsibilities after the fact. Don't believe me? I have lived it and I have 3 stem degrees in which I had a high GPA. The system as it stands in the US is broken. I have often thought of moving to Germany, where not only would I make way more money doing the same work, but my money once made is worth about 3 times as much due to the state of the German economy. America has shot themselves in the foot.
Simply, about age 35 I was "too old" and was pretty well done in the tech industry. I wasn't even able to get back into the interviews. This was right after Y2K (see, I am old) and there really was a glut of IT workers looking for jobs.
I saw the writing on the wall when I looked around for old men and didn't see many. I went back to school and now I teach at a middle school. If I really believed the jobs were there, I honestly believe that I could go back to school and be up to speed an a semester or two. However, I know that the jobs are not there. I know plenty of 50 year old ex-IT workers.
The reality is that the lack of willingness to hire is the problem. The workers have been pushed out; but can quickly "retool" of the demand existed. However, stop and think, if we weren't so fixated on pushing people out of the tech industry, about how much expertise we would have grown. That is potential, and, frankly, education investment that this country has wasted.
Those of you thinking, "I am so awesome that it can't happen to me," consider the number of older IT guys that are driving cabs and delivering pizzas.
The reason for hiring them, at least in Silicon Valley, is not to pay a bargain basement wage, but to enable US companies to hire the best and brightest in the world. It's got nothing to do with a shortage of US workers. [...] Now, if US employers were forced to hire based on immigration status - citizens first, then green card holders, then it would be a distinct advantage to be a citizen. It'd also probably result in US employers not having the smartest people in the world working for them.
So let me see if I get your point.
The important issue in your mind is that US employers get the smartest people in the world.
And this is a more important issue than US citizens having a job.
Additionally, why shouldn't there be an advantage to being a citizen?
(I'm all for helping people in other nations, and note that we've brought a lot of people out of poverty... but do we have to bring our own population into poverty to promote that goal?)
WE need unions
No. The last thing we need is unions. The last thing I want is some group of people stealing my wages to promote their own agenda, sanctioned by the government.
source.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
The American war on unions has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns that most of alive at this time have ever seen. It amazes me that people have been convinced to act against both their own, and the nation's, best interest in order to increase profits for so few.
We are only now seeing the results of continual decreases in aggregate spending power that is the result of the failure of the workers to organize both for themselves, and for the greater good. Instead organizing has become a historical footnote as we descend into a vicious circle brought about by lower aggregate spending as a direct result of decreased worker power.
I'm not a fan of the current H-1B system by a long shot but the question of "why India?" seems foolish to me. When there is a billion people in a country it doesnt matter how bad the education system is, there are going to be a good number of people worth recruiting, especially since they can make a lot more here. Plus, while their national average on math science test scores are quite low the parts of their education system that work are quite good at turning out degrees in the sciences. Their education system just doesnt work for well over half their population (which still leaves a recruiting pool maybe around the same size as the US in population size).
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Claiming US managers can't hack it in tech.
Better headline, I think.
Have gnu, will travel.
How many hours a week did you work at a job?
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This is really a "film at eleven .." article. Lawyers say whatever benefits their employers. That's the beginning and the end.
The truth? Most of these corporate lawyers simply don't care if what they say is true or not.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns
The unions do most of the advertising all by themselves. At some point in history, they went from being the victims to the bullies, and they lost popular support. Even without the violence, anyone who has had to work with a union finds the process maddening. When you read about the sickening attitude of both management and labor in the 80s within the auto industry, it makes you wonder how we stayed on top as long as we did. Unions have become just another bureaucracy that people have to deal with. We really need to reduce the influence of both corporations and unions on government (a la Citizen's United).
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When somebody is having a heart attack, you do not call the fry cook from the local greasy diner.
Unions were the lubricant that helped accellerate all the outsourcing. Unions convince the best employees (whose performance is good enough to justify their employment) to band togethter with bad employees (who outnumber them and who lack the performance to negotiate good deals for themselves) to threaten employers with mob actions (strikes only have power because of implied threats of violence against the employer, customers, and replacement workers) in order to protect the laziest and most incompetent workers. The result is horrible inefficiencies, the inability to reward the best workers, the inability to get rid of the worst workers, and the resulting willingness of management to dealwith all the headaches of outsourcing just to be rid of the union bosses.
Detroit is the poster boy for Unions. Great job there, union bosses!
There may well be some very good reasons to try to form some sort of professional organization, but the union model is horrendous and guarantees that any related work will go to places like India. In the digital world, unionized workers can be replaced far more easily than the auto workers and shipyard workers and steel workers ever were. Digital work can be done ANYWHERE.
If you care about the H1-B issue, STOP VOTING FOR THE PEOPLE WHO PROMOTE H1-B ABUSE! You just have to decide what's more important to you: givernment approval for homoerotic activity, or H1-Bs and your job. Hell, this year it's not even that harsh: Trump's not even a social conservative who might threaten to disapprove of rectal play. The only reason the cultural issues are ever an impediment to such votes is that BOTH parties use these issues to get their base voters to vote the way their Wall Street bosses want. Democrats tell their base: "vote for me, even though I'll screw you on H1-B visas, otherwise the Republican will mess with your sexlife". Republicans tell their base: "vote for me, even though I'll screw you on H1-B visas, otherwise the Democrat will push their sex junk on your kids in school". Wall Street wins both ways. By design.
Unions raise wages, period (and also working conditions, benefits, etc.)
"Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%."
If you don't want that, okay, but you're being flat-out irrational.
http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The American war on unions has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns that most of alive at this time have ever seen.
Sure, if you consider pointing out and fighting against deeply rooted corruption to be "propaganda." You're practicing propaganda right now, by your own vague standards.
We are only now seeing the results of continual decreases in aggregate spending power that is the result of the failure of the workers to organize both for themselves, and for the greater good.
No, we're seeing the rest of the world finally catch up in their ability to provide the same goods and services that - for several post-war decades - used to be the sole province of US-based businesses.
Instead organizing has become a historical footnote as we descend into a vicious circle brought about by lower aggregate spending as a direct result of decreased worker power.
No, you're seeing the direct result of decreased worker value. A given worker isn't nearly as valuable as they used to be, because we no longer need as many file clerks, receptionists, people pushing carts full of parts around a factory, riveters, welders, flour millers, ditch diggers, movable typesetters, bench solderers, fork lift operators, textile workers, and the like. And if you want to make it even more expensive to employ people to fit the jobs along those lines that remain, you're just going to chase that work over the borders even faster. "Worker power," in the way you fantasize about it, is a part of the problem, not a solution. You're trying to wish away a few billion people living in places where the cost of living, regulatory environment, and tax landscape are far more competitive than in the US.
You want more jobs, and more companies fighting over hiring people at higher wages? Get behind fewer regulations and lower taxes. Stop chasing the people you consider your enemies (employers) out of the country.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Makes perfect sense to me. How's that working out for you in the long run?
Why is Snark Required?
I employ a lot of IT talent in Canada and the US. Here's what see in the marketplace:
* North American talent is the best, bar none but ... ...
* North American talent is produced in small quantities.
* Indian talent is (among the?) worst, but
* Indian talent is produced by the thousands.
I also work with many business partners, some of whom are Indian outsourcers and some of whom are large US corporations that have outsourced a large part of their IT work to India.
The work that gets done in India is usually shoddy. It takes 3 Indians to attempt the same job that one American will do.
So what's wrong? Are Indians dumb or something?
Turns out, they are exactly as smart (or dumb, take your pick) as anyone else. But they operate in a toxic work culture:
* Their organizations encourage cheating, which begins with those very difficult University entrance exams.
* Corruption permeates the workplace. You do favours for managers, so they will later help you advance your career.
* If you are really smart, you get poached from one outsourcing firm to another every 6-18 months. You never settle into a job long enough to get productive. Indian outsourcers literally have talent scouts on their payroll that have full time jobs at competitor firms.
* If you are not very smart, you stay in the same job for much longer, but you will never be very productive for the same reason that a not very smart American will never be very productive.
As a result, Indian outsourcers tend to have incredibly poor productivity and work quality. Firms that hire them are fools, because they look only at the low (and rising) hourly rates, but not at what an hour of labour will buy you.
I also see Indian workers (H1B or just normal immigrants) working in North America. First, I assume these are among the best and brightest, as they obviously had the motivation to relocate and had to get through whatever filters immigration authorities apply. These people fit in quite well and after a few years are (aside from accent) indistinguishable from their native-born cousins.
So the problems are basically this:
* North American education is good, but should scoop up a bigger segment of the population to compete.
* Indian education mostly sucks, with a few exceptions like IIT.
* Indian workplace culture is dysfunctional, and it's better to hire immigrants from there than to either send work over or give work to temporary workers. Don't outsource to Indian firms - that's a disaster.
* Employers frequently mistake hourly rates for total cost of ownership. They harm themselves and their former local workers through this mistake.
That's the world we live in.
I always like it when liberals who want to defend their corrupt union bosses use reasoned, articulate arguments like yours to refute, step by step, each issue raised.
Oh, wait, you didn't do that. You can't bring yourself to try to explain away reality, so you're just using lazy ad hominem in order to deflect. The left: always home to shrill whiners who are scared of forming and expressing their own thoughts. Nope! "What you said makes me feel uncomfortable with the premises on which I've based my entire world view, so I will call you a fucking brainwashed retard to show you how much more intelligent I am and to avoid having to confront the contradictions in my own thinking." Thanks for being such a typical example, and putting it on display.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Pretty much this.
You need to invest in yourself in the form of continuing education. That involves your personal time and may as well coincide with what's needed at work.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Democracy sucks. Join the campaign to bring feudalism to the workplace.
DOL already knows what the median salary is for a given position, require that the H1B hired be paid 150% of the median for that position. How bad do they want them, better be pretty bad.
Unions raise wages at first. The dark side that they don't tell you about is that this causes the companies to try to find other ways to cut costs, and eventually leads to the jobs moving overseas.
Unions are not the answer. Unions are a hack workaround for a failed government that isn't raising the minimum wage fast enough to keep up with inflation, that isn't protecting workers from what should be illegal cuts to employee pensions, that isn't protecting worker safety enough, that isn't doing enough to protect workers from wrongful termination, and so on. Everything a union does is something that our government is supposed to be doing, but has failed to do.
And because they aren't the government, unions don't have the power to punish companies that decide to move the entire labor force overseas. A union's power exists only up to the point at which the company decides that they no longer need U.S. labor. After that, the union has no power whatsoever. Thus, unions will always be poor substitutes for proper government oversight and regulation of businesses, at least as long as we live in a global economy.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Why is it the unions' fault when the government sanctions them? Why isn't it your fault for electing that government?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Unions work to counter-balance the power wielded by bosses and capitalists. Unions counter-balance the corporate greed of capitalists, who DGAF if they drive the company intro the ground, at the expense of employees and customers, as long as they get rich in the process. Has either the power imbalance or corporate greed disappeared?
No. Which makes you as much of a tool as someone who claims the little people don't need to vote in elections anymore, because politicians are no longer corrupt.
uh, what personal time do you have if you're putting in 60-80 hours a week? idiot
Americans are so ridiculous when it comes to work culture. they have no joy, no pride, no self esteem, no passion. It's just work work work for them.
Germans are very hard working people too, but they get lots of benefits such as a good health care system, subsidized education so they are not drowning in debt, mandatory vacation, overtime pay, and so on. Americans on the other hand are so stupid, they think giving companies FREE LABOR is an honor. What a bunch of fucking morons.
What temporarily embarrassed millionaires never bother to think about: companies always set prices to maximize revenue, and they always look to cut costs. It doesn't matter if you pay your workers 25 cents or $250 per hour, those two market forces will remain unchanged.
That's as brilliant as saying the little people no longer need the right to vote, because politicians are no longer corrupt. Or as asinine, I don't remember which. Because unions act as a counter-balance to corporate greed, when the board DGAF if the company goes under, as long as they make 7 figure salaries while the ship is going down. Because unions act as a counter-balance to the bosses power, which makes you as expendable as toilet paper, no matter how big your ego.
So, are there no longer any greedy corporate executives looking to abuse their employees, or is your anti-union line as tired as you accuse unions of being?
When they let the H1B people come in and stay for 5-10 with no restrictions. (IE no kicking them out of the country if they lose their jobs. I want companies to have to actually work to keep these people if they were actually that good.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Or maybe he just made a typo.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
When I came to Sweden as the equivalent of an H1B, the union made sure I wasn't paid only half what a Swede would have got for the same job (could they have found one who was capable of doing it, which they couldn't).
*This* is how unions (and H1B) are supposed to work.
And I don't know about the "retard" part, but the "brainwashed" part seems appropriate.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
They have too much done FOR them, instead of having to do it THEMSELVES. Too many gadgets, too much automation, too many 'conveniences'. Why should they bother learning knowledge or skills?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I have to laugh myself silly when people object to unions.
Have you ever been in an effective union? Most haven't been in a union at all, but spout nonsense "everybody knows". Or they pick outstanding bad actors and paint all unions the same.
Some very few have been in bad unions. Those do stink.
No, the gripe people have with unions is propaganda generally spewed by those that would least benefit from good unions; bad employers that don't want to pay a fair wage. Before you fire off that hot reply full of indignation, ask yourself if you'd like it if you couldn't be fired because a H1B visa worker costs less, or because your boss is a clueless skylark, or because your employer can cut costs and increase profits by working you like a dog by cutting your team by 1/3 and doubling your workload.
Is fifty buck a month is starting to sound like a better deal now?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
What is really needed to bid for the widest amount of private sector and federal contracts?
A legal team, people with the correct security paper work to fill out standards forms? People who can help with the local community of political leaders and their election funding needs..
That is the new limit of the really well paying jobs. Everything else can be legally and fully outsourced, covered by a few local security clearances and full party political protection.
The need for a vast pool of skilled local workers, each with their own security clearances is over. As along as the correct forms are lodged by the right US teams its all legal.
Bid on a few 100k, a million or billions worth of contracts over decades, its all going to be pure profit due to much lower wage costs.
Academic social advancement vs any real ability to rank merit is a huge risk too.
Offering a job locally might expose a company to obligations to hire based on considerations other than skill. Presenting the legal need to always hire globally reduces the risk of been required to hire locally.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Where is Donald going to get his fresh supply of wives if we cut back H-1B?
I was waiting for this one. Too bad I've already posted.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Ok, then where does the money go? If there was a time when this was sustainable, it means that there was a time when we could actually pay someone a wage he could live off. What changed?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is what billionaires want you to believe.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
What do you mean by "bring"? You're working a job where you aren't essentially already the property of your company?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Simple: American companies don't employ the average Indian, they employ the best from among 1 billion Indians. Furthermore, the smartest Indians actually go into the tech field, whereas the smartest Americans generally do not. That's why the PISA scores are pretty much irrelevant.
The real question is why Ian Smith himself is here; after all, he seems to be an Australian immigrant. We sure as hell have enough lawyers to begin with, and anybody who asks stupid questions like he does clearly isn't even much of a lawyer. So, why don't we start by kicking him out?
I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to quit my job and take a job elsewhere. When did this happen?
-- Will program for bandwidth
In the US, it is illegal to pay an H1B worker less than the market rate, so the union backing isn't necessary. I'd say Sweden needs to update their labor laws.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Please stop shilling for billionaires.
The United States has a higher GDP per-capita than it did during the time the boomers came up. There is *plenty* of wealth to go around. What has changed is the distribution of that wealth.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
No, only Americans have the right to live the American dream. I'm living the Canadian dream myself, which is only for Canadians.
Yeah, your national anthem even starts with 'My home and NATIVE land' so clearly its only intended for people actually born in Canada eh.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You are of course allowed to quit, but who would hire a quitter?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One big sign is that individuals no longer own things that they pay for. This is blatantly true for anything that hooks to the internet or has a computer in it. You have a Windows machine that doesn't have Windows 10? Microsoft will hijack it and make you run Windows 10. That says you don't own that box, no matter what you paid.
By the way, this is the future. It's already happened with some of the early IoT gear. The manufacturer changes the terms and conditions and do whatever the hell they want and the end user either has to live with it or unplug the device. Soon everything will be like that including your car. There will be a point where you will have no choice, because everything will be "automated". Unless you knuckle under you will be living the life of the "have nots". That is the only choice available.
Why is Snark Required?
Sorry that I wanted to live instead of surviving. If I wanted to "survive", I wouldn't be working.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's pedantically true, but the panicked rapidity with which companies try to cut labor costs is directly proportional to the difference between what that company is paying for labor and what its competition is paying for labor. That's why so many small retail businesses support minimum wage hikes on a state and/or national level. It makes it easier for them to pay their workers a decent salary because they know their competition will have to do the same.
That's absurd because the reason for choosing politicians has nothing to do with corruption. Your ad hominem doesn't actually rebut my point. If anything, it's more like saying that people don't need the right to vote, because politicians are so universally corrupt that it won't do any good....
No, they actually don't. You're still as expendable as toilet paper with a union. You obviously missed the part where unions have absolutely no power once the company decides to offshore everyone. What, you think the executives are going to walk out in solidarity? When the plant closes, and nobody has a job. It doesn't matter if the workers all go on strike, because the company doesn't need them anymore anyway. And that Chinese (statistically) factory that takes over production won't be a union shop.
And the people who should be regulating those Chinese factories to ensure that workers are paid reasonably, are not forced to work unreasonable hours, etc. are the Chinese government. They (along with the governments of many other countries) have not done so to nearly the degree that we in the U.S. would prefer, which is a big part of why we have such problems with offshoring in the first place. And the U.S. government hasn't done enough to prevent Chinese companies from dumping goods into American markets made by workers in such conditions. These are all things that only government can fix, and that unions are completely powerless to defend against. And unless government is willing to enact those regulations and enforce them, the unions don't make a bit of difference except in the very short term. And if government did enact adequate regulations, then the union wouldn't be needed.
But please, educate me about how a union is going to prevent offshoring—how a union has even the slightest bit of power to do so. Better yet, educate all the folks from my hometown who lost their jobs when two of the largest union shops shifted manufacturing to other countries. Ask them whether that 20% was worth having to get by on unemployment until it ran out....
Of course there are greedy corporate executives looking to abuse their employees. I never even remotely implied otherwise. What I said was that unions have no real power to stop it, because when push comes to shove, they don't have the legal authority to tax the bajeezus out of those companies' imports to punish them when they shift most or all the jobs to another country.
In my experience, union shops generally turn into train wrecks—union grievances for daring to touch the wrong piece of equipment (even if you weren't forced to do so by management), corruption in the union leadership (to the
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
He means sanctioned in the positive sense, i.e., Unions are the current government approved labor organizations. It's not clear whether OP believes that alternative labor organizations would be marginalized in favor of the Union system, but their attitude is typical of anti-Union sentiment in the tech sector.
Sure, if you consider pointing out and fighting against deeply rooted corruption to be "propaganda." You're practicing propaganda right now, by your own vague standards.
Some unions are corrupt, doesn't mean all are. Corruption is in all aspects of society. You can use that non-argument to argue against the existence of corporations too.
No, we're seeing the rest of the world finally catch up in their ability to provide the same goods and services that - for several post-war decades - used to be the sole province of US-based businesses.
That's one aspect. The other one is the rise of globalization where corporations can move money, tech, goods and services freely but people are mostly stuck in one place.
No, you're seeing the direct result of decreased worker value.
That doesn't add up: productivity is higher than at any point in history. Workers and jobs are not fungible. Needing fewer riveters has little effect on the pool of software developers.
Get behind fewer regulations and lower taxes.
Do you have any evidence that's actually an effective technique?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The difference is that we specialise from 16, when your subject range falls to 5 areas, and to three at 17, so you end high school with serious (externally examined) qualifications in 3 subjects. If you focus on science, this can be Maths, Physics and Chemistry. Then at university you can do ONE topic, with zero other load. So on the whole our Chemistry BA graduate is potentially on a level with your Chemistry masters.
"That's why so many small retail businesses support minimum wage hikes on a state and/or national level. It makes it easier for them to pay their workers a decent salary because they know their competition will have to do the same."
Nicely argued. One of the crasser arguments of the pro-undocumented protesters is the unstated claim that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. Of course it's not - but it's victims - other than the obvious ones where the desperate migrant acts to get food by a property crime - are the small firms that are competed out of business by employers of illegals who are paid way below the minimum wage and do a good job for that wage.
A nation which consumes itself, just like South Korea and Japan. Germans on average don't have time and/or money for kids.
Software engineers will make between 2000 and 3000 euros and will pay 1200 euros rent for a family home.
Merkel now turns Germany into an Arab hellhole, because that is apparently the cheapest way to replenish the workers for this broken economic system. Have all the fun you want with Sharia soon.
America has been fucked up by the Banksters and their Marxist Shills. Now they fight tooth and nail for the Bankster candidate Clinton. They would like to finish their destructive work.
Wake up folks, your fathers are going to help you, not the internationalist scumbags.
here don't seem to be that many Americans who are getting PhDs, which is pretty much a requirement in my line of work...
Total BS. There's a glut of PhD's out there, so many in fact that it's half the reason why the underemployment rate is through the absolute roof. Businesses, schools, employers all pushed the "university, is great! Degrees are great" so how there's tones of them out there. The problem is they've gotten PhD's that you don't want, or want more money then you're willing to pay(even though you were part of the group that pushed for them) and then there's the other class who've gottenuseless degrees. So you've now run into the problem where you've got people who know their shit, but hamstrung by assholes like yourself who say "but there's no PhD's." Even though they're fully capable of doing the job, so you then turn around and say "welp gotta get them from somewhere else..." instead of realizing you're part of the problem, and changing your hiring standards.
Om, nomnomnom...
Unions do all kinds of wonderful things.
They make it incredibly difficult to fire under performing workers, for example. That lazy guy who never finishes anything on time? Yeah, can't fire him. Can't even discipline him.
Unions take your dues - which will not be small - and will use them to prop up politicians. Politicians that you may not like.
Unions may raise your wages, sure, but that will also raise the cost of your company doing business. That means your company will need to charge more, meaning more work for the non-union shops because they're less expensive.
Unions will make sure that you are promoted based on years of experience, not skill or knowledge. So that moron who doesn't know the difference between an integer and a float, but has been here 20 years? He's getting paid more than you and always will.
Speaking of, are you particularly valuable as an employee? That's nice. You may be super smart, very talented, incredibly fast at what you do, but too bad. You're getting union scale pay.
No, we don't need unions. Is your company crappy? Leave. Find a job somewhere else. That company will have to learn to treat their workers better or they'll be stuck with a perpetual revolving door, with no work getting done.
It worked at my company. We weren't being treated well. A ton of people quit. Company wised up, started treated existing employees better, increased pay and benefits. No union needed - just a free market.
Love sees no species.
I think you will find that the two kids are mandatory for humanity to survive for millennia.
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
If you're black, there's no room for you because you're not white.
If you're mexican, you terk our jerbs.
If you're a woman, there's no room for you because you don't have a penis.
If you're a man, there's no room for you because you expect to get paid.
Who's left?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the UK unions are completely optional and by law they can't do anything if you don't want to join. Many people do join though because there are big benefits for a relatively small investment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Funny you should mention the auto industry. Japan's is heavily unionised, and they are making the most popular cars in America, and they didn't need massive bail-outs during the last financial crisis.
Unions clearly ruined them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, Japanese unions do not behave like their American counterparts. You should read about the 1980s when GM set up a partnership with Toyota in California to produce the Nova (and later Geos). I believe this is the plant Tesla operates out of. The corporate culture of GM was so rotten that they could not grasp Toyota's methodology, and the GM union was so rotten that they could not work with management in the same way.
You should also study the Japanese economy, because it looks very much like what a culture concerned about keeping foreigners out looks like. Holding it up as a shining example of economic success is kind of hilarious.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You are right in that I have no idea what percentage of unions are rotten. I can only tell you that all of my experiences have been pretty poor. My wife's hospital had a strike. These are nurses, not iron workers. Tires were slashed, threats of violence were made, etc. The scabs were better nurses, by most accounts. The nurses were already the highest paid in the metro area. The hospital was (and is) bleeding money due to its role in a poor area. The only reason the strike was "resolved" is because the bought politicians leaned on the hospital.
My friend runs a small iron working shop - just him and a few long-time employees with benefits. He's had rocks through his window and his equipment is regularly vandalized.
Locally, the iron workers union burned down a church that was under construction by non-union labor.
Attempts to reform public schools are repeatedly thwarted by public teachers unions. Attempts to get rid of morally objectionable public pensions fail across the board at the hand of public unions.
In NYC, the grossly-overpaid TWU went on strike illegally in a city that is 95% dependent on transit.
Have you ever been written up for a bullshit "grievance" by dozens of cliquey union members because you said something unpleasant to one of the other members? That's fun to be on the receiving end of.
I'm sorry, I do recognize the historical importance of unions, and I do think workers need to be organized. I just don't think the current thing we call a "union" is terribly beneficial to society. Its mostly a semi-governmental bureaucracy at this stage. I'm glad it served you well, but I have not had nice interactions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Quit talking sense man. Someone else might possibly get paid more money for doing less work if we go Union. My ego cant support that.
The American war on unions has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns that most of alive at this time have ever seen. It amazes me that people have been convinced to act against both their own, and the nation's, best interest in order to increase profits for so few.
My great-aunt worked in a union shop. She wasn't even allowed to pick up trash in her own work area because that was "taking someone's job". Unions promote inefficiency. That's not propaganda.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I thought a lot of the foreign workers were educated in the US, university level.
Shilling? Nobody pays me to post here. I post as AC so that the paid moderator shills cannot silence me.
There may be more overall wealth than there was in the boomers era, but that does not make it sustainable. It is not.
What I argue is exactly what the billionaires do not want known. That the current "american dream" is unsustainable, and by far the majority of people will never achieve it anyway. The billionaires want you to believe you can, that is what their system is built on.
An economic system that requires infinite growth, with fixed resources, will by definition, self destruct. Without practical interstellar travel, it is doomed to fail. They know it, but they do not want you to know it.
You have it completely backwards.
But hey, let validation of the actual shills (the paid moderators here) lead you to believe you are correct. When actually, you, and the audience of slashdot, is being manipulated, and always has been, to believe in an unsustainable economic system.
"We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill." Much worse - you got Hillary.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
But this one hit it squarely on the head........
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
"Americans are so ridiculous when it comes to work culture. they have no joy, no pride, no self esteem, no passion. It's just work work work for them."
You're getting your Eurotrash lefty narratives mixed up. Aren't Americans supposed to be all fat and lazy?
Nothing changed. That's the point. That level of consumption never was sustainable. Unsustainable refers to usage of resources that cannot be sustained over time. We still have the same pool of resources available to us.
If we can develop interstellar travel and discover another inhabitable planet, this will change.
$60K is way more than a living wage. You don't need the house, you don't need the car, you don't need the wife, you don't need the two kids. Humanity has survived for many, many millennia on far less.
You talk about developing interstellar travel in the same post where you say humanity has lived on far less for millennia. Of course humanity used to live on far less; they weren't developing technology to take them to the stars! I'll agree that consumption is unsustainable for some. But when you talk about what humanity has needed for millennia, you're talking about living like the Native Americans. That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. In order to have an advanced society, you need to consume more resources and energy.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I get an earful from my German in-laws about the labor situation.
Apparently there is a six-month probationary period for any job before you become legally eligible for the layoff protection, the 6-week vacation and use of the company spa and vacation resort in Turkey. During the probation period, you are getting a reduced salary. So everybody gets laid off at 5 months 29 days, and must scratch for another crappy probation 'job'.
Not to refuse what you posted, but I have seen both good and bad unions. I think the 'ideal' union is like the 'ideal' government, and both are the same as the 'ideal' gas law: that is, it works on paper but that's not how the real world works.
it is the unreasonable expectation that everyone in a technical job should be able to afford a house, a car, a wife and two kids.
Now that I've finished laughing heartily at your ineptitude, and assuming you aren't a shill for the billionaire class, let me ask you this... in your honest opinion, what would constitute a reasonable expectation for being able to afford a house, car, and support a family? Do you have to be born into wealth? Fame? What would you pay a software developer? 30k? At that point, people would be better off not spending the time and money to get a college degree and just go get a data entry job or something mindless. Besides, 60k is not all that much for a software developer, especially one with many years of experience. And we haven't even touched on skill sets or certifications, both of which can push your salary up further and further if those skills and certs are in high demand.
Also, on a somewhat-related note... did everybody just forget about the Panama Papers and how the super-wealthy are screwing everybody else by dodging taxes?
Interesting to hear from someone who has lived there. From the other side of the world (USA), I see something completely different (which just goes to show you that perspective skews things). I go to National Parks or something like Point Lobos Preserve and I see and hear an awful lot of German spoken there. It seems there are quite a few German tourists. This has always made me think that the Germans are doing pretty well and enjoying a good exchange rate advantage over the US. After reading your post, I now wonder if this is just the "rich" folks?
and immediately following on the front page:
Being Lazy Is a Sign of High Intelligence, Study Suggests
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Everyone in the world has a right to live the American Dream. This is only motivated by pure racism. Plain and simple.
A right? Everyone in the world? That has to be the stupidest thing I've heard this year, and Donald trump is a Presidential candidate.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
What are you talking about? Of course they are worth the money. You take a department with 10 employees processing ar/ap and have 5 software engineers automate it. The salary is well worth the replacement of those 10 person departments at hundreds of businesses with software programs and teams of implementation engineers that bill 250/hr for about 8 months until either they get some fragile solution up and running or get replaced by another team of implementation engineers who bill 250/hr to implement the software that their 5 software engineers wrote.....
i am so very tired....
In India, the main bachelors degrees - BSc, BA, BCom - are 3 years. The ones in the Engineering colleges and the IITs - BE, BTech - are 4. That's why US universities that accept Indian F1 students require that any BSc, BA or BCom students have another year of a diploma course to supplement the 3 year degree, and then apply.
"Worker power," in the way you fantasize about it, is a part of the problem, not a solution. You're trying to wish away a few billion people living in places where the cost of living, regulatory environment, and tax landscape are far more competitive than in the US.
So having no labor rights, no environmental laws, and government that relies more on kickbacks than legitimate revenue is now being described as "competitive"?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Or cancel the program all together since there is no real need.
Unions don't need the government to be at war with them, they're often at war with themselves. They still serve some purpose but many need to re-prioritise, especially in dropping certain fringes that take up time/resources and frankly are just not good cases. I've seen a *lot* of cases of with-cause terminations where the only thing keeping a given employee from the door and with a boot-in-the-ass was a long union process. This is despite the fact that everyone pretty much knows of the issues.
For example, an employee who did not complete his work, and then blamed it on others. In fact, he often didn't come to work at the right times and was running a side-job using company resources on company time, and his work vehicle was often seen outside the local pub. He did eventually get fired but it took years to finalise that.
Another case, an employee who lacked skill/will to do the same job as his peers, despite repeated attempts at training. Had a "I don't give a f***" attitude and stank so badly one side of the room was "his" and everyone sat on the other because nobody wanted to be near him.
In both cases, the above were a detriment not only to their employer but also to all the other dues-paying members who had to compensate for their lack of giving a sh*t. The unions spend a *lot* of time and resources defending folks like these, and frankly those resources are finite which means that often other people's issues that *need* attention don't get it. In the end the useless f***s get the same raises as everyone else, which pisses off pretty much everyone including the public in cases where they have a more visible position.
If unions would give up the dead-weight and focus more time on dealing with bigger issues (safety violations, discrimination, outsourcing, etc) they would likely have more support and get more done.
(source: former union member, steward, and council-member)
They want you to believe illogical bullshit. So the claim is that education in the US can not prepare students to become employees in tech industries, that already exist and we built using students trained in that US education system, that was (the one disparaged and being torn apart to create for profit charter schools). Can no one see the illogical bullshit, if the claim was in any way or shape or form true, the would be no fucking tech industries looking to employee those improperly educated students but as those industries exist and are pretty much fully staffed with educated students, then the claim must logically be bullshit.
Basically they are loosing the lie, what they are saying is they do not want to pay one cent to train people, the want the government to do if for them for free (absolutely for free as they keep their money in offshore tax havens and do not want to pay one cent for taxes to pay for that education) and even when the government pays for all that training those corporations want to pay those trained people less, much less.
Before the psychopaths took over, corporations trained people, tried to employ them for life and continued to train them, corporations were loyal to their staff and staff were loyal to their corporations. Now the psychopaths have turned it all on it's head, loyalty to no one or nothing, lying, cheating and stealing is acceptable as you get away with it or when you get caught the penalty is lessor than the benefit and the investors, well, their assets are there to be strip mined, at the first opportunity, taking into account the rules about net getting caught or the penalty being much less than the crime.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
...and has been explained to me by coworkers from these regions, there is now a period of reverse-discrimination in India.
University admission seats are now reserved in quantity for lower castes who were previously unable to obtain an education, as are jobs upon graduation. This leaves fewer options for members of the upper castes of moderate means, leading to their desire to leave the country.
India's academic ratings are not representative of the people who come to our shores for this reason.
"Fellow employees" apparently don't include your superiors? Otherwise a grievance can most certainly include the name of the person who "wronged" you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
don't need the two kids. Humanity has survived for many, many millennia on far less.
No...I'd say humanity sort of requires it.
Yes, well, like I said, I do see the need for "ideal" unions. But as they exist right now, I don't see the cost/benefit ratio being in favor of society. I think banning lobbying by corporations and unions would go a long way towards removing some of the corruption.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What is this World University Rankings which is referenced? Because I quickly did a review of the University Rankings for Computer Science Programs at http://www.topuniversities.com... (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/computer-science-information-systems#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=) and came up with a number of India Schools in the Top 250 slots.
If you were sharing recent experience at over 50 years old being unable to find an IT job, I'd say you probably have a valid complaint. But not so much at age 35. I'm old enough to remember the Y2K era and I was in IT then. Still am. What I find is that when people say they can't find IT jobs, usually it involves one of the following issues.
1) You've got a narrow skill set. You know only how to do something that's not much in demand or antiquated and while you may be very good at it, there just aren't very many jobs around for it. For example, you may be a great mainframe programmer, but if nobody wants to use that specific mainframe, you've got nothing else to offer.
2) A ton of people who say they can't find jobs don't tell you that they live in small towns where there just aren't all that many IT jobs available and somebody else already has those jobs. Since people who live in small towns are often very reluctant to leave them, that means that there just aren't very many jobs available in IT unless someone dies or retires.
It's certainly possible, although unlikely, that neither of these applies to you and you've just had an unusual situation, but almost every case of IT workers not being able to find job who aren't old enough for it to be age discrimination is because of what I listed.
Wonder if it's because college costs a fortune and the books for each class (usually 2-3 is some cases) cost a few hundred each in the US, where "Education" is supposedly imporant while many other countires that are more civilized and less greed-based have free education....
they went from being the victims to the bullies
It's almost like you need an intermediary to protect you from the unions. We need union unions.
Sooo This. Wish I had mod points. Union theory == good; union as currently practiced != healthy for all involved.
But the beer is awesome.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Attempts to get rid of morally objectionable public pensions fail across the board
The reason they fail across the board is because the workers were hired under certain terms. You can't go backward and change the terms of someone's past employment by taking away the future they were working toward all along.
I say this as a former state employee in Illinois, where the wages were way below market but only tolerable due to health insurance and pension. I left because it was too dangerous.
Better than unions, are business structures that lack such a stark opposition in the first place... worker owned and cooperatives, Or in the S-corp form, limiting the sale of voting stock to not more than 10% per month, and no sales of such stocks held less than 1 year. Where imbalances exist Unions are the tool for the worker. On the other hand because Unions are meant to counter short-term corporate greed, we should be fairly skeptical of public sector unions either by prohibiting any political activity thereby, or allowing public employees that disagree with the overall activity and direction of the union to opt out of all fees.
it is illegal to pay an H1B worker less than the market rate
When you get enough H1B workers, they are the market rate.
Your premise is coming from an angle of "You shouldn't expect to be paid well enough to live." Even if you argue from the standpoint of our lifestyle is unsustainable, that's a pretty bogus angle. We should be able to expect to be paid well enough to live. Because if we aren't the money is only pooled at the top. I agree that our current pace is unsustainable. But the pace of approaching unsustainability is being driven primarily by wealth desparity and not lack of resources. Money and resources are being pooled at the top and having the poor, working, and middle class lower their expectations that thinking a family can have their own home is unrealistic is not going to slow the consumption of resources. It's only going to increase the wealth disparity.
Like being able to say you boss on on Dec 23. "I know you knew this project needed done by the end of the year two month ago, but didn't tell me you wanted me to do it until right now. However holiday with my family just isn't that important, so I'd love spending the next week furiously working on it 16 hours a day without help from any of my coworkers take the blame when the project fails horribly when moved to a production server "
uh, what personal time do you have if you're putting in 60-80 hours a week? idiot
My employment contracts for IT support work prohibits me from working more than 40 hour per week. I haven't worked overtime in 10+ years. I have plenty of personal time.
The solution is to fix our government. For some reason we can't seem to do that......
love is just extroverted narcissism
Unions raise wages at first. The dark side that they don't tell you about is that this causes the companies to try to find other ways to cut costs, and eventually leads to the jobs moving overseas.
Aren't they doing that every chance they get already?
Everyone in the world has a right to live the American Dream.
Except that the American Dream gets very expensive in Silicon Valley. Big houses, big cars, big women, big kids. You need $200K or more. I gave up the American Dream years ago. I live in Silicon Valley on $50K by living a modest lifestyle.
Aaaaaaand that's why Germany should think about raising the legal drinking age from 14. This guy has pickled his brain already.
is you're the beneficiary of decades of workers fighting for better wages via Unions and now that things are less that completely awful for you personally you've completely lost site of all the misery and horror that were visited on the working class for close to 5000 years. It'd be one thing if you didn't have the internet and couldn't see how things work right now, but man... The sad thing is this crap gets modded up on /.
I could spend hours pointing out the thousands of ways you benefit from Unions but I'll mention just one: Unions got the laws passed that make it illegal for companies to collude to lower wages. How high do you think your wages would be if every one of those job creators got together and agreed to lower them? Google and Apple just got caught doing that, ya know? And they're lobbying congress (and you, btw) to get those laws revoked.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The kids are the currency. They were wealthy because their parents had many children. We're poor because the Greatest Generation were the last ones to do so. The human race is in decline.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This is just plain FALSE. Americans don't got to PhD to the level universities/the US want/need to train. I am in the PhD application committee of my university for Computer Science. We get 4 permanent resident/citizen application to our PhD program in a year when it is a good year. There is so much funding out there for permanent resident and citizen for a PhD program that we usually accept ALL of them, but maybe end up not coming for various reason. Still we end up having about 20 people coming in. So our PhD student population in CS is about 10%.
There are so few citizen/resident applications to PhD program that we essentially consider them a minority to be protected.
And attending conferences and visiting colleagues at different institution pretty much show that this is the norm, not the exception.
Your "superiors" are "management" or the company and they are not your fellow employees. As it was explained to me, the worker has a job and the supervisor has a position. If you are management, and your actions have contravened the Collective Bargaining Agreement the union will lodge a grievance with the company. Unions are a good thing when both sides stick to their agreements. Unfortunately there are unconstitutional laws in the U.S. ("Right to Work" laws) which have gutted most Unions. Funnily enough at the same time wages have gone down. Go figure.
Your "superiors" are "management" or the company and they are not your fellow employees.
The fact that this makes sense to you illustrates what is wrong with unions. Everyone has a superior at a company except the big boss man at the very top. A worker bee that just happens to be superior to a union worker bee does not necessarily deserve union harassment just because of a single personality conflict.
Unfortunately there are unconstitutional laws in the U.S. ("Right to Work" laws) which have gutted most Unions.
How in the world is it "unconstitutional" to simply prevent unions from compelling people to join? I'd actually think that compelling people to join an organization would be the riskier constitutional bit.
Funnily enough at the same time wages have gone down.
Other things correlate, too. Like free trade agreements and automation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You can't go backward and change the terms of someone's past employment by taking away the future they were working toward all along.
Perhaps morally you can't, but they've been screwing workers for years by under-funding the pensions and now they are using that as leverage to actually reduce what was promised. This is a very morally hazardous situation that I wish we would fix. I don't think it is fair to promise something today with the assumption that a future generation will pick up the tab. It's not fair to the workers and not fair to the future generation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How can those universities make any money?!
There's a reason your "post" is still modded +1 while the post you so pathetically tried to refute is at +5... and it isn't because you're not a piece-of-shit shill. ;)
promise something today with the assumption that a future generation will pick up the tab.
In my specific case, 9% of my income went into that fund. And the state's portion was also not supposed to come from a future generation. But instead of contributing and earning on investment, it was all spent (what is being called "underfunded" - which sidesteps the fact that investment earnings are a significant part of the pension process - what was there earned over 7% over the last 10 years).
I withdrew my money and ran before the state did anything stupid with MY money. I can't declare bankruptcy and discharge my student loans, so I sure don't want the state trying to do something similar.
Companies have no obligation to serve US citizens. They have obligations towards their shareholders, and one of these obligations is to maximize profit. If the consequence is hiring foreign workers and bringing the US population into poverty, what does it say about capitalism?
I think the unions work against their own good sense, and many people realize this. If we had unions and management that did some cooperation, rather than always being antagonistic, it might work a little better. The object of a company is to make money. If you don't make money, you go out of business. Look at the unions in the US auto industry - Ford has had to offshore a lot of its manufacturing so they can compete, and we won't even mention GM. But the current batch of car company retirees still pays $0 for their healthcare and their prescriptions and so on. I'm not saying that organizing as labor is bad thing. I am saying that when there's too much of an extreme either way, toward labor or management, we end up in an unsustainable situation - and ironically enough, we have both in the US. Public pensions and public unions have become unsustainable, and for those of us who work for a living, we're being bled dry.
Here's a fun way to deal with two popular issues with one policy change. Mandate that 66%* of H1B's must be women. More women in IT and less H1B abuse. *my own figure
It is legal if you pay over $47,476 per year, and I assume you make more than that in a tech-related job.
No, that is not correct. There is not a magic dollar amount where you suddenly become overtime exempt. There are Federal laws regulating overtime.
Fact Sheet #17A: Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer & Outside Sales Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
Additional guidance is provided for computer-related occupations:
Fact Sheet #17E: Exemption for Employees in Computer-Related Occupations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) [emphasis mine]
If an employer claims you are overtime exempt you need to have them specify to which exempt class you belong.
I work at Microsoft for a vendor, and we get paid hourly if we work less than forty hours or flat forty salary if we work more than forty.
You need to speak to a labor attorney, that arrangement does not sound legal. An employer cannot reclassify workers as hourly or salaried on a week-to-week basis.
for humanity to survive for the next few hundred years, a precipitous drop in population to more sustainable levels would be wise.
I was having some problems in my graduate school class on Digital Signal Processing, so I went to the professor with some questions. He started out by saying, "Yes, many of the American students are finding this class tough..."
Japan's is heavily unionised, and they are making the most popular cars in America
Yes but the two most popular cars sold in the US that are manufactured by Japanese-based companies are actually made in the US.
Toyota Camry is assembled for U.S. customers at factories in Georgetown, Ky., or Lafayette, Ind.
Honda Accord comes from Marysville, Ohio.
So if it's so awful to come to the US to work, and you're so unable to find work with an employer you like better, why leave your country and come to work in the US? Please be specific.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
With a mark up to 20 bucks an hour to their American customers. Or work for 60,000 as a Software Dev filling a Principle Dev role with commensurate experience.
Yeah, it turns out kids who took student loans and owe $40k-50k in debt can't afford to work for $32,500 per year for a job that should pay north of $75k, pay rent, and bills, and meaningfully participate int he economy (say by saving for and buying a house.)
But screw the economy as a whole! As long as the bosses can get cheap labor, who gives a fuck if the next generation can't ever afford to buy a house? Or a car? Or major appliances? It's not like we manufacture those in this country anyway.
Who did what now?
I agree with you - breaking promises is not moral. I also think you did the prudent thing because governments don't exactly follow the path of morality. If your union really cared about workers rather than about their own power, they would have pushed to have cash rather than promises. If they want an annuity, push for an annuity. Instead they went for easy and now their membership is at the mercy of politicians.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If you can't multiply two 4 digit numbers in your head and give an answer in 10 seconds or less, I'm sorry, but your education system has failed you.
If you learned to read via the "whole word method" instead of phonetically, such that you can read words you've heard spoken, but never seen written before, once again, I'm sorry, but your education system has failed you.
Not being able to do these things really limits your ability and your usefulness to an employer. And that's just the simple stuff you should have mastered b 4th grade or so.
If making more money increases the speed at which you get to the point where you make no money, given that most people don't save enough money, all things being equal, most people would be better off earning n dollars for x years than earning 1.2n dollars for x/1.2 years.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Woah, woah, woah! Lay of the charter schools homie. You sound like one of those 'Educational choices are a war on education!!!' idiots. The US educational system is not homogeneous, nor is it fair to everyone. I am the farthest thing from a bleeding heart whatever, but I have seen first hand what happens in some our largest cities' public schools, and it's not what creates the kind of people that build, sustain, or even participate in our tech industry. Sadly, leaders in the communities that are educationally impoverished due to under performing schools are often complicit in perpetuating under performance. For example, I have heard them talk about firing teachers that have horrible records as "racist attacks."
Giving frustrated parents a way to get an actual education for their children while at the same time chastising a government funded entity in the only way they understand (their pocketbook full of taken-for-granted tax money) is a great way to make social progress.
You want to fight some for-profit system, start with the prisons.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Americans don't have a choice - they either work the hours their masters tell them to, or they get blacklisted and don't work at all, become homeless, and die of exposure.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
Interstellar travel is not going to solve anything about the economic system. If we can manage it on a large enough scale, it could be valuable for increasing the number of creative humans and spreading out the human race to reduce risk and putting people in different environments.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Not in California.
Unions are carving out Minimum Wage exemptions for their members, meaning they can be paid under the prevailing min. wage if the contract says so.
This will likely benefit the Unions with more memberships as business negotiate a lower wage and let the union in, but it screws the workers over.
http://www.latimes.com/local/c...
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
and neither plant is unionized.
No US Toyota plant is current unionized.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
There's a lot of pro-0.1% propaganda going around, including about unions. Unions are ways for workers to get together and negotiate on a more equal basis. Like all other organizations, they do have to be policed by their members.
What you seem to be saying is that giving the workers power is bad because they will want things like living wages and a safe working environment, and that makes US companies uncompetitive, and that the only solution is for workers to work for peanuts with few or no government services and a hellish environment. Pardon those of us who think that we should look for other options.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
How do I get one of these "paid moderator shill" gigs?
uh, what personal time do you have if you're putting in 60-80 hours a week? idiot
60-80 hours a week allows plenty of personal time. 168 hours in a week leave 112-119 waking hours with 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Subtracting just 60-80 hours leaves 32-59 hours for other things. That's a lot when you don't waste it on low-value activities like watching TV or commuting far because you chose to spend your housing budget on a larger home farther from work.
Working 60-80 hours a week for my second startup I learned to fly, made 168 skydives and 30 BASE jumps the year I counted, snowboarded some, and built a pair of stereo speakers.
OTOH, 105 hours a week for a few months at my fourth one I didn't even have time to dine with my wife. That's too much.
No, I tend to overlook the abbreviation and then it becomes "an institute", which is correct usage. Creeps in some times.
But I find it nice how so many people here trying to insinuate I am either from India or stupid (I am neither.) Apparently all these people have nothing but cheap Ad Hominem in counterarguments, which is the same as to say they have nothing valid.
I do admit I have made some pretty negative experiences especially with Chinese "experts". The thing is however that one of the drivers of H1B is bad US graduates. If you can have low-skill "engineers" with an attitude that demand high salaries in addition, or you can have them cheaply and with no attitude (because loosing their jobs gets them shipped back to India), companies go for H1B. The other thing is (and that was my point above), Indian graduates are not worse than US ones, they are a pretty similar mixed bag. Things are different here (Europe), where there are some imported teams from India, but well-qualified natives have no problem getting jobs and basically all university graduates in technical fields are well-qualified. May be one effect of not paying tuition (or only some low nominal value), because then the universities can demand a lot more and fail underperformers without repercussions.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is just plain FALSE.
Shouldn't be hard for you to prove then, after all real world seems to be very contrary to that. Especially when compsci individuals are being replaced and forced to train their H1B replacements too right?
Om, nomnomnom...
Unlimited H1-B's. Pure and simple. Oh, and each H1-B that is hired, because they are needed to fill a position that is vacant because of a scarcity of competent labor,and because the invisible hands dictates that scarcity drives price, must be paid a minimum of 2 times the going rate of Citizens employed in the field doing commensurate work with similar skills and experience. If no such benchmark can be established, they must pay 10 times the poverty rate, adjusted annually, minimum. If my employer wants to replace me with an H1-B and feels that it is worthwhile to pay twice as much for superior labor, then who am I to complain? That is a legitimate business case. If they aren't willing to pay the premium for the premium employees they seek, then they are just full of shit greedy little assholes and can go FOAD.
http://www.petition2congress.c...
Casteism
Study time
AS year one fifth time
A level year one third
BA 3 full time years
Total 4.534 years
In a US high school you won't do anything like 25% on chemistry, so they start way back
At uni you won't do 50% of your time on your major. So total study time will be less than 2.5 years.
Same level? Really?
Can't add up, can I?
3.534 not 4.534
I don't blame immigrants, dummy. I blame feminism.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
And yes. Whites have indeed become impotent.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Of course this is what would happen when schools have their technology sectors closed, funding cut, and students driven away. Exactly what stories and commenters from this site said would happen years ago.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
So....smashing, Socialism, eh comrade?
Because corporate and monied interests haven't argued they should be exempt from paying for the society in which they live, which has lead to their fortunes? Low taxes have high costs for the public, and public sector workers. Public unions serve as pushpack against those freeloaders.
As long as they are also opting out everything gained by the unions at the same time: compensation, benefits, vacation time, right to due process, health care plans.... Unless you're in favor of scab freeloading, for some reason.
Zero pedantry involved. McDonald's workers could all agree to work for 25 cents on the hour, and the corporation would still lay off workers if meant saving one of those cents per worker hour, or even a fraction of it.
And because the sort of workers that patronize minimum wage establishments....tend to make minimum wage themselves. Meaning an increase in the minimum wage means more customers for those businesses, as those people have more money to spend. Meaning those that fearmonger that an increase in the minimum wage will negatively affect those who earn it are full of shit, as they always have been.
Yes, you willfully missing a simple point is absurd. Politicians are still corrupt, and capitalists are still reckless and greedy. Which is why unions are still needed, to push back against that greed and corruption.
You've obviously ignored the fact that corporations have offshored their operations, now matter how rich they are no matter how many concessions their unions make. Americans could cut their wages below the level of destitution, and they still couldn't compete with third world labor, because that third world labor doesn't have the American cost of living.
What unions do, and you ignore, is make it painful enough for the company that they can't, as a given, do their standard BS of offering two weeks severance pay if the American workers getting laid off agree to train their replacements from Bangladesh over the phone. They might still get away with it - in which case they will still get away with it union or no union - as beholden as both parties are to "free" trade. But unions can and do throw up a roadblock to such efforts. The company may still ship their operations overseas - but it will cost them some lost revenue from strikes and lockouts before the transition is complete.
Hmmm, a side order of red herring to go with that non sequitur. American workers are not responsible for what China does. The U.S. Government, however, is responsible for selling out those workers to monied interests who DGAF about unreasonable hours, etc, in Chinese factories producing crap to ship back to American Wal-Mart's.
No. That's purely due to corporate trade laws, like NAFTA and the TPP, which Obama hopes to ram through Congress in the lame duck session. Third world labor and international shipping existed all the way through the post-WWII era, where the American middle class boomed.
Obviously you never tried US food and saw US clothing...
bickerdyke
You can get even better beer in the US nowadays. It's not that German beer is miraculously awesome, but there is hardly any bad beer. Especially compared to average US beer.
bickerdyke
...as if they wouldn't be screwed with the other option, too....
bickerdyke
Get back to us when you know what a definite article is, Sparky.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Whatever. My point being that one extra letter doesn't mean that you're an immigrant.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Or, the people they worked with before, get despirate and call them directly. Offering to hire them part time to fix or update stuff. And don't even blink when a three figue amount per hour is mentioned...
Just be careful working on 1099 forms, they don't take out taxes and you have to save it up yourself. Don't forget it, that can be a shock!
The schools have changed, since thoise companies started. Not that I believe the companies, but when was the last time you saw a Calculus course in High School?
Even the colleges have been "dumbing down" the courses.
Corporation don't pay taxes really anyways, because 1. They are fictional entities, and 2. Costs get passed down into first-order (consumer) goods for the most part anyways, Additionally the. U.S has an absurdly high top corporate rate. (40% vs 15-20 of most other similarly industrial nations), and is a large reason why U.S corporation keep as much money and revenue overseas as they can.
Public sector compensation is already quite generous, http://www.cagw.org/media/wast....
Most of what you mention is just sort of normal compensation and can be negotiated individually as appropriate (Or just look at average private-sector compensation as a baseline) . This due process thing is precisely what a lot of the best and brightest in the public sector object to, as it makes it difficult of impossible to remove low-performers and inappropriate behaviors. Why should someone be forced to support a group that advocates for policies they think are harmful or unnecessary in order to keep their job? What you call freeloading, is just a pejorative term applied to a positive externality. Unions pushed for the eight hour workday and made it the norm, but does every worker with a 8-hour day ow the Wobblies a union due? No, they did it to benefit themselves, and they did see the benefit, the setting of that social norm was just gravy.
Because they've bought off politicians to give them enough exemptions and loopholes so that, on top of low tax rates, they effectively pay nothing.
All prices area always set to maximize revenues. If companies could arbitrarily charge more money without losing more customers than they made in new profits, they wouldn't wait for new taxes or wage increases to do so. They would just do it and pocket the profits.
Zombie talking point. No, it's not high to begin with, and there are enough loopholes and write-offs that the richest corporations in the world pay little to no taxes.
"Citizens against government waste". Why not go all-out and cite Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand?
Individually you are irrelevant and completely expendable. As part of a collective labor force, you are not. You know this.
Another zombie talking point. You guys really think that once you'd join a union, you'd really stand around and think "boy, I wish Bob would start slacking off so I can do my job plus his!" And there is nothing about unions that prevents people from being fired with cause.
Now you're just putting on the clown shoes. The employer having to actually give a reason for termination is objectionable to no one but employers.
Zombie talking point #3. Union members are free to vote on what policies their union supports. Employees that work for a Koch Industries subsidiary have no say whatsoever over what Charles and David do with the wealth generated from their labor. Why do you hate democracy while loving aristocracy?
Hand waving. Why, exactly, should workers enjoy benefits won by a union that they did nothing to earn? Why don't you try stopping by your local chamber of commerce, and tell them you want all the benefits of membership without paying a cent in dues.
If the company had previously been demanding 14 hour workdays and paying employees in company script? Then yes, they did owe the union. Any more questions?
First off this sentence by sentence thing is pretty annoying, I would prefer if you used paragraphs and skipped the majority of the quotes. A sentence by sentence rebuttal is pedantic, and these comments are threaded anyways so people can go back and read the prior comment
The corruptibility of the system is an argument for simplification and for bringing the rates in line with comparable countries. Any corporation that actually paid the 39.1% (average combined federal + state rate) would fail in the world marketplace, and hence the large incentive to influence the system in their favor. Additionally a lot of tax avoidance is done through international subsidiaries, a sign that domestic tax burdens are unusually high. 39.1 percent is the third highest rate in the world. If you were in charge of an international corporation you'd be doing everything you could to avoid is as well
Corporation and other business firms are essentially organization for the transformation of capital into profit. Not all firms in the market are price-setters, many are price takers. Nonetheless among firms that set prices the strategy of revenue maximization is rare and are associated with extremely thin margins and are pursued to gain a market-share or other long-term advantage. Most price-setters take the profit maximizing strategy, which as you describe sets prices as to maximize the proportion of revenue to marginal costs. Nonetheless the story does not end when this quarter's profits are made. High margins are signals that encourage investors and new entrants into that market. Low margins will drive investment elsewhere. (Any economic analysis mush include both eh seen and unseen, the immediate and the longterm.) " As Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, explained in a Brookings Institution paper, “Although unsophisticated observers focus on the distinction between tax relief for business and for individuals, all taxes are ultimately borne by individuals in their role as labor suppliers, consumers, or suppliers of capital.” Hence, it is difficult to apply the concept of tax fairness to corporations. Any tax imposed on corporations results in either a reduction to employee wages, an increase in costs passed on to consumers, a reduction in the return to capital received by shareholders, or a combination of all three." - Joint Economic Council Study, May 2005 https://www.jec.senate.gov/pub...
>"Citizens against government waste". Why not go all-out and cite Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand?
Because the government never has any wast to redundancy? They cite primary sources including the congressional budget office and explain the difference in methodology from the FSC, mainly in correcting for the value of fringe benefits. They are consistent with the CBO analysis and other independent sources. in treating the question as total renumeration rather than as simply nominal salary
As an employer, you'd know theres a large cost in finding, hiring, and training new employees. It can take six months to a year for productivity to cover these costs. A job offer from another employer is often all the leverage you need. Unless you're talking about mind-numbing shift work that anyone with and IQ over 65 can do. Even then such work is being increasingly automated. I've also never had a job where I've said "A little more bureaucracy just what this job needs" Unions have been shrinking in the private sector because they are increasingly irrelevant.
>Another zombie talking point. You guys really think that once you'd join a union, you'd really stand around and think "boy, I wish Bob would start slacking off so I can do my job plus his!" And there is nothing about unions that prevents people from being fired with cause.
So why does New York City Schools have "rubb