Posted on 04/30/2015 5:10:15 AM PDT by Reno89519
At the end of October, IT employees at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were called, one-by-one, into conference rooms to receive notice of their layoffs.
--snip--
[Disney:] "H-1B workers complement - instead of displace - U.S. Workers." It explains that as employers use foreign workers to fill "more technical and low-level jobs, firms are able to expand" and allow U.S. workers "to assume managerial and leadership positions."
--snip--
"Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," said one of the IT workers who lost his job. He trained his replacement and is angry over the fact he had to train someone from India "on site, in our country."
--snip--
It's difficult to determine how many H-1B workers, L-1 visa workers or contractor workers generally, were at this Disney site. --snip-- But one observation all of the workers recounted was the widespread use of Hindi.
--snip--
"There is no need to have any type of foreigners, boots on the ground, augmenting any type of perceived technological gap," said one worker. "We don't have one, first off."
--snip--
The use of H-1B workers to displace U.S. workers is getting more attention in Congress. In response to Southern California Edison's use of foreign labor, 10 U.S. senators recently asked three federal agencies to investigate H-1B use. But one agency, the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote back last week and told the lawmakers that large H-1B using firms "are not prohibited from displacing U.S. workers" as long as they meet certain conditions, such as paying each H-1B worker at least $60,000 a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
Unfortunate, no doubt. But if you have competitive skills and you’re going to move for work, you’re much better off moving within the US than abroad. I don’t believe your experience is a spur to a ‘brain drain’ from the US.
(I’m also in the tech world.)
Agreed, the best jobs are still in the US.
If all goes well - I won’t need to move at all.
I’m in an area where people move “to”.
Yep—and the plan has been for something of a North/South American unification for some time as well.
I was told be the COO of a major European bank over 20 years ago that Europe had unofficially taken on responsibility for Africa and Africans, and the US for Latin America and Latin Americans.
It’s really just market economics. The labor market is no longer bound by borders, companies no longer have affinity to a country, nor do politicians, since they get their campaign funding from companies. And it’s not a conservative or liberal issue either, all sides are equally part of the market expansion.
As the market has expanded and become more efficient the market drives to equilibrium so US wages drop and foreign wages climb. It’s really technology that has enabled this shift, the Internet especially. H1B is just the tip of the iceberg, most of those jobs previously located in the US have simply moved to other countries.
We can whine all we want about it, but it isn’t going to change anything. The world is shrinking and our kids just need to wake up and get a whole lot more competitive if they want to keep the standard of living their parents enjoyed. They are now competing on a global level.
A friend of mine’s daughter worked for Disney (not in IT). She really enjoyed working there, but it was standard procedure for her to be let go after a period of time. She’d get rehired almost immediately. This was done so that Disney didn’t have to give her the benefits due to a full-time regular employee. Struck me as odd, since Disney is a pretty big outfit and the creative types like her might do better work if they had some job security, but that’s not how Disney operated.
When Companies in US lay-off employees , same companies gives bonus in India.
There is plenty of blame to go around in this area. I’m aggravated every time I call certain companies and have to strain to understand the voice on the other end of the phone - Not only have our jobs been outsourced to other countries, they are now being brought in to replace American workers.
I personally know electrical engineers, good ones, with work experience and relevant clearances who cannot find a job. I know other people with insanely high aptitude scores who are well aware there are no jobs for them because they are Americans, they are moving on to other industries. I do know a bio-chemist who is doing pretty well, of course he was hired by the Chinese...
You are mistaken, we are well on our way to repeating the lessons we forgot of mistakes leading up to the second world war with the added bonus of a self-inflicted brain drain!
This is not the first time that elites have been arrogant/stupid enough to imagine that everyone else is livestock and that globalism is therefore viable, nor is it likely to be the last.
“We can whine all we want about it, but it isn’t going to change anything.”
You mean, you seek to dismiss all this by calling it whining? How can American workers compete with slave labor wages that exist in most of the world, kept at that level by governments who don’t give a damn about the prosperity of their own people? Is there a natural law missed by Einstein that requires the dismantling of American manufacturing and the removal of millions of jobs while importing millions of low-skilled illiterate third worlders?
Your wrote: “As the market has expanded and become more efficient the market drives to equilibrium so US wages drop and foreign wages climb”
The communist Chinese government sets the wages for one-fourth of the world’s population, not the market. The market equilibrium you mentioned would have kept our standard of living the same or better.
Then they haven’t kept their skills current or they have other issues. If they are current in any of these areas, they can write their own ticket:
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2844020/10-hottest-it-skills-for-2015.html
There’s a reason IT unemployment is under 3%—and 3% is considered as low as unemployment, in practicality, can go, given the friction of job change in high-demand environments.
It may well be in IT, but IT has such a wretched reputation a lot of people are just steering clear. Where I worked before they were in and out like they were on a conveyor belt, the industry itself needs to put some effort into addressing its own issues. All the scholarships are specifically for people who are not white and they’ve scared off the women who actually would be their best bet.
H1b should have served as a stopgap while they reconfigured, instead they are trying to make it a way of life.
The deal with this is also that companies don’t have to pay the taxes on foreign workers that they do on domestic workers, so you have companies like Disney now dumping American workers and making the outgoing American workers train their foreign replacements.
Wages are not being held down artificially on a global basis, they simply are where they are because in the developing world most of the educated workers are young and there is no where near enough demand to fully consume the supply.
Americans, just like any other nationality have the ability to compete and earn high wages even in this market, and do. But they have to be competitive. That means smart, hungry, and persistent learners. What I’m hearing is a lot of “entitled” whining that comes from too many years of bloated wages for very little skill. The world has changed; those who accept that fact will prosper. Those who expect the same pay for the same effort and skill, will lose their income to the hungry masses outside America. Apply basic market economics and the picture gets very clear - most of those here understand markets I hope? Isn’t that the very definition of conservative?
IT is where it is at in jobs, including in H1B hiring.
An EE who doesn’t want to work in that environment—but resents H1Bs—doesn’t really get much sympathy from me.
Like in many other fields, before one gets to be a gray hair in IT, it is best to develop and demonstrate managerial and executive skills. But again, that’s common in many professional fields. Someone can be old and still in relatively good demand in IT as an individual contributor if he (and yes, it’s usually a he) has kept current in his skills.
But again, re: H1Bs and taxes, we’re overwhelmingly talking about IT workers—and there’s just great overall demand for good IT workers out there.
(Oh, but I do also agree—they should be hired only on equal footing and costs with US workers, and only while the demand is still very high.)
Indeed. rrrod, did you read the article? They’re FIRING U.S. employees that they ALREADY have to hire low wage H1-B workers.
As long as they meet certain conditions, such as paying each H-1B worker at least $60,000 a year.
Who makes 60K at a Disney resort?.
> Mexican-Honduran couple next door have 9 kids so far with no signs of slowing down, and NO visible means of support.
Sure they do. Your taxes.
The EE is an old guy and he did go the IT route, his most recent gig was teaching at a local college. He was treated quite badly before that, and with the head full of knowledge he has, its good that he’s patriotic and a Tea Partier. A guy like that actually could pull off literal “death from above”.
The industry as a whole needs to get over hating: over-50’s, women, and whites. The government for its part needs to stop incentivising the hiring of foreign workers over Americans.
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