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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.
H-1B Visas are meant to cover skills not readily available in this country. I would argue that if the current workers are training their replacements, then the skill set is readily available in this country. To quote Wiki :
The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor[1] including but not limited to biotechnology, chemistry, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, law, accounting, business specialties, theology, and the arts, and requiring the attainment of a bachelor's degree or its equivalent as a minimum[2] (with the exception of fashion models, who must be "of distinguished merit and ability").[3] Likewise, the foreign worker must possess at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent and state licensure, if required to practice in that field.
Tell the university that you simply don't have the skill set required to train your replacement...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
People in India need to eat something, too, and most of them are piss poor in comparison to US standards anyway. It's hard to find a reason why they shouldn't deserve to get work on an international labor market. I bet I'm going to be downvoted for this, and fully understand the personal problems of the workers who get fired, of course, but there is also another side to these kind of stories.
At this point it's better to actively sabotage the effort while you look for other employment and then quit. I've fought this battle in a different field, it didn't do anyone any favors to go along with it, including the corporate masters who thought they were saving money. The best policy is subtle sabotage: make enemies, say vague things, give wrong directions when someone talks to you without a paper trail then deny or dissemble. The government has sold you out, unions won't work here, so at this point misbehaving and taking their money for as long as it lasts is the best policy.
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.
Trump's clarification of that question. Why you gotta lie and make it seem like he was talking about H1-Bs? This is why Trump is winning. All his opponents can do is be OUTRAGED but can't argue the issues without lying about his positions. People notice and then they hate you and support Trump. Making your own monsters, kid.
"Megyn Kelly asked about highly-skilled immigration. The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You probably had grounds to force the payment of the severance anyway, in your case, as its a UK company and under British rules severance is not contingent on anything - the company makes you redundant and pays your severance, they cannot put strings on it. You would probably have had to file in a UK court, but thats not much of an issue.
That is why you don't hear of these horror stories of "I had to train my replacement" in the UK - we simply don't have to do that.
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.
>> 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.
The cultural differences thing is real. I inherited a team of Indian H1Bs which we picked up as a favor to a VC who had over-extended himself. It took me almost a year to figure out how to manage across the cultural divide.
While the first thing most Indians will tell you is that there isn't just one "Indian culture", it's fair to say that Indian business manners tend to be a lot more hierarchical than American manners. There are of course fire-breathing outliers; people are not cultural automatons, after all. But for the most part my Indian supervisees were much more reluctant than an American would be to do anything which might be construed as challenging my authority or competence in a public way.
That took a lot of adjustment; as an American you feel free to speak your mind to power; and as a supervisor you implicitly rely on your people to tell you to your face when you're going off the rails. I found I had to manage in a different way with the Indians; it wasn't better or worse, it was just different. What worked for me was to really get to know each of them; to take them out to lunch or drinks after work. One on one, in a relaxed and informal atmosphere I could get their true opinion of things. In a meeting they'd take my spitballing suggestions as orders to go out and fall on their swords. At least at first. As we got to understand and trust each other more they became more assertive, but I had to make the first move.
It was a rewarding experience, and I highly recommend it, but I really can't imagine navigating that divide with me in the US and the team in India. If your relationship was merely a matter of handing over specifications and reviewing finished code, maybe. You'd need to have a strict, well-thought out division of responsibilities that did not rely in any way on any kind of implicit communication.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
It's not like India.
Oh... Give it a few years.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
.... 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.
But in my MBA courses they said workers are interchangeable cogs to be moved about as the enlightened management sees fit! Modern management theory couldn't possibly be complete bullshit, could it??