Free Republic

Anyone who's followed my posts on this topic over the past three weeks knows that the Wuhan Virus is impacting global trade and commerce. I've been detailing my employers response to the Wuhan over the past three weeks through my posts on various threads here on FR. Having said all that, this evening I received a phone call from our Global Pandemic Response Line, instructing me to call into a tele-meeting. I just hung up on it, I was so disgusted. Long story very short, our "Indian technology partners" in Mumbai are being instructed by the outsourcing company our Bank's...

Opponents of job outsourcing are making a holiday-season appeal to President Trump: Stop U.S. companies from forcing American workers to train the very same cheaper foreign laborers who will soon replace them.Why it matters: Trump promised voters he'd end abuses of worker visa programs and save U.S. jobs — but as he campaigns for re-election, advocates say he hasn't done enough. Driving the news: AT&T is poised to send thousands into the new year hunting for new jobs after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements, according to conversations with current and former workers and documents obtained by Axios....

SEATTLE - The former CEO of two Bellevue tech firms was sentenced Friday to more than seven years in federal prison for a sophisticated visa fraud scheme that cheated workers out of their wages and cheated the government out of over $1 million in taxes. Pradyumna Kumar Samal, 50, a citizen of India, then used the illegally obtained cash to enrich himself and fund a luxurious lifestyle, court records show. Samal was arrested in August 2018 when he arrived on an international flight at Sea-Tac Airport and has been in custody ever since his arrest. At the sentencing hearing U.S....

Lowe’s Cos. told thousands of store workers this week their jobs were being eliminated as the company outsourced tasks such as assembling barbecue grills and janitorial services. The home-improvement chain notified maintenance staff and assemblers that put together grills, wheelbarrows and other products that they were being laid off, according to the company and employees. Those roles will be taken over by third-party companies

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors. The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs. Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have...

A new report by the Transport Workers Union says that airlines are increasingly performing heavy maintenance in foreign countries, limiting the number of aircraft maintenance jobs in the U.S. The report said that approximately 24% of heavy aircraft maintenance is performed offshore, up from about 7% in 2003. The report includes estimates that U.S. airlines spend about $2 billion annually on maintenance work in South America, China and Europe, an amount that could otherwise be spent on an estimated 8,200 jobs for U.S. mechanics. Foreign outsourcing “creates an unnecessary and devastating economic impact on future generations,” said John Samuelsen, president...

Offshore outsourcing can be a traumatic event for employees -- both for those who lose their jobs and for those who survive. It's HR's job to figure out the real impact it's having on employees -- a task that may benefit from new technology. President Donald Trump became a harsh critic of the H-1B program during his campaign for president and invited IT workers who had trained visa-holding replacements to speak at campaign rallies. Trump promised to make changes to the H-1B program, and his administration is now denying roughly one in five of the H-1B visas sought by IT...

The George W. Bush Presidential Center is helping to develop a White House immigration policy, as it is urging the government to help CEOs and investors hire an unlimited number of foreigners in place of white-collar and blue-collar Americans. Employers should be allowed to freely hire foreign graduates for middle-class jobs, said the center’s recommendations. “Congress and the Administration should eliminate, or at least increase, the visa cap” for foreign college graduates, says the center’s recommendations on immigration. “Industries like agriculture, construction, landscaping, and hospitality rely on low-skilled foreign workers to fill vacant jobs … A higher cap [on the...

American Verizon workers say mass layoffs are coming as soon as next week in exclusive statements to Breitbart News. Essentially, the deal for the 44,000 workers forces them to resign and take the severance or stay on at the corporation until they are eventually laid off and not eligible to receive the hefty severance package. As Breitbart News reported, Verizon has announced that it will outsource its IT department to Infosys, one of the biggest multi-billion dollar outsourcing firms in the U.S. that has been accused of undercutting American workers and discriminating against black and white Americans in favor of...

Chinese state-owned firm winning contracts to print foreign currencies as country seeks to expand global reach and influence China is printing foreign currencies on a massive scale as Beijing seeks to increase its influence on the world economy and geopolitics. Multiple sources in the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation confirmed to the South China Morning Post last month that money production plants across the country were running at near full capacity to meet an unusually high quota set by the government this year. Most of the demand comes from participants in the “Belt and Road Initiative” and one source,...

Harley-Davidson on Monday announced that it would move production for its European customers overseas, in order to avoid the European Union’s (EU) new import duties. President Trump slammed the move and accused the company of raising the “white flag” of economic surrender on Twitter. Trump is right. Harley-Davidson’s decision is perhaps the most incompetent public relations blunder since Starbucks said it would replace 10,000 American workers with Syrian refugees—no doubt they will pay a heavy price. In the meantime, Harley’s loss is our gain, as every individual failure makes the whole stronger.

Variety reported on Monday about Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger hosting a fundraiser next week for six vulnerable Democrat senators. Although the story did point out the irony of Disney pushing for the tax cuts that every one of the senators voted against, it skipped the more controversial detail that the senators would be receiving money from a fundraiser hosted by an executive who pushed for replacing American Disney employees with H1B visa foreign workers.  First let us go to the irony of a tax cut supporting company supporting senators who all opposed that tax cut in Bob Iger to...

Bipartisanship on the divisive issue of immigration is a rarity in Congress, but that is what happened when the House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved legislation making it harder for Indian outsourcing companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the U.S. At the same time, the bill eases rules on some U.S. high-tech firms that use H-1B visas, putting political distance between Silicon Valley and Indian outsourcers as President Donald Trump condemns the program as rampant with abuse and a source of unfair competition to American workers. The new rules apply only to companies that are heavy users of the program,...

The man from Mexico followed a manager through the factory floor, past whirring exhaust fans, beeping forklifts, and drilling machines that whined against steel. Workers in safety glasses looked up and stared. Others looked away. Shannon Mulcahy felt her stomach lurch. It was December 2016. The Rexnord Corporation’s factory still churned out bearings as it always had. Trucks still dropped off steel pipes at the loading dock. Bill Stinnett, a die-hard Indiana Pacers fan, still cut them into pieces. The pieces still went to the “turning” department, where they were honed into rings as small as a bracelet or as...

WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he has prepared an "economic-development" measure that would punish companies that globally outsource jobs. The bill would provide economic incentives for companies, Trump said in an interview published on Tuesday, and reward firms that maintain jobs in the United States, and deliver punitive measures against those that move operations offshore. "It's both a carrot and a stick," Trump said. "It is an incentive to stay. But it is perhaps even more so - if you leave, it's going to be very tough for you to think that you're going to...

GOP Senators Roy Blunt and Jerry Moran have introduced legislation which would outsource another 125,000 white-collar jobs to foreigners each year. The outsourcing bill is being pitched as a pro-technology, pro-entrepreneurship bill even though many young and middle-aged Americans in the two Senators’ home states of Missouri and Kansas are already working with technology or as entrepreneurs. The outsourcing bill is dubbed the “Startup Act,” and it closely models prior bills sought by the high-tech sector, where executives and investors are working to raise profits by further reducing the salaries paid to American college graduates and technology experts.

US defence firms offering to set up production lines in India to win deals worth billions of dollars want stronger assurances they won't have to part with proprietary technology, according to a business lobby group's letter to India's Defence Minister. These companies are also saying they shouldn't be held liable for defects in products manufactured in collaboration with local partners under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make-in-India's drive to build a military industrial base. Lockheed Martin and Boeing are both bidding to supply combat jets to India's military, which is running short of hundreds of aircraft as it retires Soviet-era MiG...

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said so-called “chain migration,” a term often used to refer to citizens or permanent residents sponsoring relatives or the clustering of certain immigrants in the same areas, cannot be included in any immigration legislation. “CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

A re-imagining of Steven J. Cannell’s 1981 cult classic The Greatest American Hero is flying back to development with a new creative team, a big new commitment and a big twist. ABC has given a put pilot commitment to the half-hour single-camera project. In it, the unlikely (super)hero at the center — Ralph Kinley (played by William Katt) in the original series — is Meera, an Indian-American woman. The Greatest American Hero comes from Fresh Off the Boat writer-producer Rachna Fruchbom and Nahnatchka Khan’s Fierce Baby. 20th Century Fox TV, where Fierce Baby is based and Fruchbom recently signed an...

At the Netroots Nation conference in Atlanta, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the darling of the progressive Left, was blunt and straightforward in her vision of the party. They’re in a rut because they’re not left wing enough and further left is where they should go. Ever since the 2016 primaries, the Warren/Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wing of the party has become more vocal, more active, and completely blinded with rage over Donald Trump’s 2016 win. Many are saying the moderate, centrist path that kept Bill Clinton in the White House for two terms is over, and that Jon Ossoff, who...