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Outsourced IT Workers Ask Sen Feinstein For Help, Get Form Letter in Return (computerworld.com)
Reader dcblogs writes: A University of California IT employee whose job is being outsourced to India recently wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for help. Feinstein's office sent back a letter addressing manufacturing job losses, not IT, and offered the worker no assistance. "I am being asked to do knowledge transfer to a foreigner so they can take over my job in February of 2017," the employee, wrote in part. The employee is part of a group of 50 IT workers and another 30 contractors facing layoffs after the university hired an offshore outsourcing firm. The firm, India-based HCL, won a contract to manage infrastructure services. Since the layoffs became public, the school has posted Labor Condition Applications (LCA) notices -- as required by federal law when H-1B workers are being placed. UCSF employees have seen these notices and made some available to Computerworld. They show that the jobs posted are for programmer analyst II and network administrator IV. For the existing UCSF employees, the notices were disheartening. "Many of us can easily fill the job. We are training them to replace us," said one employee who requested anonymity because he is still employed by the university.
Democrats tagline about being the party for the little guy is every bit as truthful as Republicans ideas about being the party of fiscal responsibility. They're both so full of shit that they could make billions in the fertilizer business. Lets be clear - all politicians today are there for their own personal enrichment and power. If you ain't the one who paid their bribes, you ain't getting anything back except maybe a form letter.
H-1B abuse like this is one of many reasons why some people feel that their only choice is to vote for Trump's insanity. Desperate people do desperate things.
I wonder how much Feinstein gets from various pro-offshoring groups to be completely tone-deaf to her own constituents.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You thought senators and secretaries of state were supposed to work for your benefit?
Almost too cute.
She's 50% of Silicon Valley's home state senate team. Expecting her to take a position anywhere remotely opposed to H1B seems as likely as a NY Senator opposing Wall Street.
It hits too close to home.
This may be a silly question since I've never been in this kind of situation, but why doesn't the IT staff all collectively refuse to train their outsourced replacements? Or go on strike? Even if they aren't unionized, they could go on strike (I assume). Am I just making some bad assumptions here?
Why would you then train him at all? You got your 4 weeks notice, go to work, throw them a manual and let them figure it out. If they complain, say "he doesn't understand me very well".
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Easy to say, not so easy to do when it happens to you.
For starters, having a job makes it much, much easier to find a new one. Telling your employer to go pound sand has a way of leading to unemployment in short order.
Second, very few Americans have any sort of massive bank of accrued leave; meaning unless they keep working, two weeks from now, they stop getting paid.
And finally, companies often make these situations too good to turn down - Train your replacement, and we'll give you a bonus of six+ months' salary, but only if you stay until they tell you to.
Sure, we may all feel morally indignant about these situations, but how many of us would really choose "unemployment" over a check for $80k? I'd dare say not very many.
Usually they make your severance dependent upon it.
Haven't been in exactly the same situation, but was given three months notice when the US branch of a UK company decided it was time to shut down the US branch and have the development be centralized at the UK offices. I had to train my UK counterparts during that three months, or else not get severance.
In my case the situation was understandable (which is not to say I agreed with it), and we went our separate ways on good terms. I can't imagine how horrible the workers described above felt, and Diane Feinstein is up there with DWS as one of the worst Democrats ever.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What are you smoking? The current groupthink is to give full rights to non-citizens. Did you smuggle yourself into this country illegally? There are a lot of people who want to give you a driver's license, the right to vote, and free health insurance. Clearly, the job of the US government is to provide benefits to everybody, regardless of their citizenship status. The only qualifications are to either be born in the US, or be crafty enough to break the law and get yourself in.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Scott Adams (who writes Dilbert) is on vacation in Switzerland, and his recent blog post had this snippet, which got me really angry:
[...] I also asked the Swiss man what kind of problems they have in Switzerland. He laughed again. The answer is “none.” Literally.
Good economy.
Plenty of jobs.
No racial strife.
Low crime rate.
Highest standard of living.
No real pollution.
No litter.
No homeless that I could see.
The reason it angered me is that here's a country where the government tries to give the citizens a good life. They have fixed all of the major problems and are just letting their citizens live in quiet enjoyment.
The Swiss government is considering implementing a guaranteed minimum income.
Over here in the US, our infrastructure is crumbling, our healthcare is at 3rd world level, jobs are scarce (and we're outsourcing more and more), and two thirds of the people are on the brink of poverty, and the government spies on and opresses everyone.
It's as if the government sees the people as some sort of harvest-able crop whose purpose is to provide taxes, where their only efforts are towards maximum yield.
Simply shoving money into people's hands doesn't seem to work very well. The US could adopt the European welfare model, which is generally a simple, limited cash payment combined with strict government supervision of the job search.
Alternatively, the US could adopt a model in which local and state governments act as an employer-of-last-resort; that is, if you can't find any other employment, you can always work for the government, but you basically have to do whatever job they give you. Payment would have to be below other entry-level jobs, and some payment might be in-kind (housing, food, basic healthcare, education/training).
>> If you are losing your job, you at leasy want to get some money to survive.
Thats why you need to never take on debt unless absolutely necessary, then pay it off ASAP and save while you are working.
My biggest life rule is to ensure I always have an emergency fund that is a minimum of 6 months (ideally a year) of pay (after tax/deductions), I maintain a minimal lifestyle (no "toys" or luxuries) until I have that in the bank, and I never touch it for ANY reason other than to absolute emergencies to keep myself alive/fed/housed/clothed.
A side-effect of doing that is that you become free to live like a man, with some self-respect, not a corporate slave/sheep.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Farm jobs, 1790, 90% of the labor force. Manufacturing took all our hard-working farm jobs. <-- technological improvement
Dock and rail worker jobs, 1920. The shipping pallet cut 4 days work down to 4 hours. <-- technological improvement
Manufacturing jobs, 1990. Globalization took away all our jobs. <-- moving jobs
IT jobs, 2015. H1B foreigners are taking our jobs. <-- moving jobs
There seems to be a problem with your comparison. Frankly, I don't think moving all our manufacturing to China was a good move and the H1B program is a disaster.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The groupthink is to support a set of universal "human rights", with an emphasis on groups at the most disadvantaged end of the scale. This emphasis on universalism has removed any emphasis on the rights of local populations if their rights status is judged "higher" than other groups.
And the calculus of judging rights status of groups is kind of weighted, which is why you see groups who at face seem oppressed (ie, white poor, unemployed Appalachian coal miners) judged as "privileged" by universalists who weight some criteria (like race) as privilege status above others (economic power).
Regional disadvantages are disregarded because privilege and power are aggregated and its presumed that all regional members share these. If the US is a rich country, then all US citizens are presumed to actually possess these privileges, even if specific members of the US don't share any of these.
.... If they illegally refuse to pay you what was agreed upon, go file a judgment against the company.
Having had several friends go through filing lawsuits for restitution against actions that were clearly, obviously, and evidently illegal... I'd say your advice is idiotic.
A friend of mine once explained how a lawsuit works. Your lawyer and the opposition lawyer have a stack of hundred-dollar bills in front of them, and each is given a lighter. They take turns flaring off the hundreds in front of the judge. The one whose pile runs out first looses.
Most companies won't try to fight you in court, they'll just pay you off to get rid of you.
Most companies will fight just on general principles, and because they figure you will fold, and in any case won't have the resources to take it all the way to trial. They have in-house lawyers who are being paid anyway.
I find that consistently being a thorn in their side gets good results. My soon to be former congress critter John Kline suffered from this. I was invited to one of his constituent town halls once and he was on a tear about bringing out troops home from Obama's wars and I asked him when we would be bringing all of our troops home. He blathered on about how he agreed with this and that we should bring troops home from Obama's wars as soon as possible. I responded that I was referring to bring all of our troops home that we also have stationed in Europe and Asia as Europe are big boys and that China, Japan, Korea, and India need to step up and take care of their parts of the world and that we don't need to play world police. I never got invited back to one of his town halls but he has called me personally twice since then when I have written him and after the first call has always responded to my letters personally. The first time he called me was about my letter on the USA FREEDOM act where he disagreed with my assessment of what it would do and said that the law didn't say that. My response that he was either retarded or willfully ignorant and then I read him the part of the proposed law that said exactly what I was complaining about. I pointed out that I would be informing everyone I know about this and working diligently to show that he is unfit for office. The thing is that you have to keep after them and follow through otherwise they forget and I usually send about one letter a week to my US elected officials. I feel that I am somewhat responsible for his decision to not run again and the world may be a better place, but neither Angie Craig, or Jason Lewis seem all that great either but at least Lewis has taken a stance on things instead of offering platitudes.
Time to offend someone
It's kinda funny too - as I've had to train my Indian replacements (at Adobe). I heard from the layoff survivors that not a single one of them had any clue what I was talking about or showing them.
In other words - its a pointless waste of time. You simply can't uproot a whole office and replace everyone and expect smooth sailing.