Posted on 06/04/2015 5:39:40 AM PDT by Rockitz
ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.
While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.
Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
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Disney executives said that the layoffs were part of a reorganization, and that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.
But the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.
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“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You don't work in IT I see.
Fossil, a fashion watchmaker, said it would lay off more than 100 technology employees in Texas this year, transferring the work to Infosys. The company is planning “knowledge sharing” between the laid-off employees and about 25 new Infosys workers, including immigrants, who will take jobs in Dallas. Fossil is outsourcing tech services “to be more current and nimble” and “reduce costs when possible,” it said in a statement.
Among 350 tech workers laid off in 2013 after a merger at Northeast Utilities, an East Coast power company, many had trained H-1B immigrants to do their jobs, several of those workers reported confidentially to lawmakers. They said that as part of their severance packages, they had to sign agreements not to criticize the company publicly.
A bitterly funny note:
In late November, this former [H-1B-replaced Disney] employee received his annual performance review, which he provided to The New York Times. His supervisor, who was not aware the man was scheduled for layoff, wrote that because of his superior skills and “outstanding” work, he had saved the company thousands of dollars. The supervisor added that he was looking forward to another highly productive year of having the employee on the team.
The employee got a raise. His severance pay had to be recalculated to include it.
An area that (for now) will not have competition for H-1B students: Work involving .MIL. A friend's son had a job waiting for him two months before he got his BSEE degree. Defense contractor in most cases can't use foreign nationals, etc. for defense work. My friend said contractors are not ablest find enough US citizens to hire.
Very well stated. I think you are right.
‘Those “displaced” workers will have jobs in a few hours if they have IT skills.’
As a national average “there are 50% more graduates than job openings in the STEM fields.” - http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/05/16/scholars-debunk-claims-of-high-tech-workers-shortage-question-industry-s-free-pass/ (In any market, local conditions will sometimes differ from the national average - so, no, your personal experiences don’t trump this national data.)
I will say this, I am in central Texas and every time we post a senior developer all I get is Indians applying. Thus the slots go unfilled. Doesn’t help that the unemployment rate around here is 3.2% and probably lower in high tech. I see Americans staying put in their current jobs for the most part and not looking to move.
*****
Time to Boycott Disney World if it hires all those foreign workers from India?
Prices are already horribly too high.
Untouchables from India? I wonder how many of those workers from India will be of the Untouchable caste, when most Indians in India look down on so-called untouchables and won't work beside them.
The Indian Caste system is one of the most horrible inventions in history that mankind has ever created. Look at how terrible Untouchables are treated in Nepal after the recent earthquake. How do you think Disney will pay for those foreign workers? It will naturally raise prices.
How much of this is because the headquarters of these companies are tied to the train wreck that is California?
It seems to me that you’ve got some sort of apocalypse going on out there with drought and obscenely high rent. If they want to cut their costs, job one would be to move their operations to a more hospitable state. That seems much more reasonable than to elevate global warming to a religion and go all dystopian with having to train the world at the expense of the USA.
You might be surprised that there are American jobs being done in federal agencies where divisions have been outsourced to Indian firms. I worked at one of those places (GSA).
All of this puts the whole market out of wack.
I’ve been making that point for a while now on FR. If you want to continue to have a decent job in the US without getting outsourced or replaced by an H-1B applicant, have a security clearance or be able to get one.
The American Enterprise Institute is using this meaningless stat so that congressmen and senators on the right and left can conveniently throw it out and take big corporate cash to vote to increase the number of H-1B visas.
The Ex-IT worker who was making 80K/yr is now working 2 part time jobs at minimum wage.
Don’t you see how that helps the economy /s
The past five years have seen tens of thousands of engineers and IT professionals laid off and having trouble finding work, even as technology executives complain they can’t find the right high tech skills and therefore need a major increase in the number of H1-B guestworkers. Those engineers and IT workers who still have jobs have seen their salaries remain essential remain flat since 2000.
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/the-changing-pattern-of-stem-worker-employment
The IEEE is the electrical engineering equivalent of the ASME
Total bunk... we get no US candidates.
There is also the view of people as disposable and too expensive once they hit 40, regardless of experience. And not everyone can move into management to keep a job.
What salary do you post? Maybe that is the problem.
From the article:
HCL America, a branch of a global company based in Noida, India, won a contract with Disney in 2012. In a statement, the company said details of the agreement were confidential. “As a company, we work very closely with the U.S. Department of Labor and strictly adhere to all visa guidelines and requirements to be complied with,” it said.
You think Disney didn't know exactly what was going to happen when they chose an Indian company? Do you think Disney can hide behind this arm's-length transaction to avoid accountability for worker-laundering? What would it be called if Disney funnelled cash through a foreign company instead?
-PJ
Of course they did.
Do you think Disney can hide behind this arm's-length transaction to avoid accountability for worker-laundering?
Sure they can.
What would it be called if Disney funnelled cash through a foreign company instead?
Money laundering I suppose, which is illegal. But outsourcing to an foreign vendor is not.
That's the debatable point, isn't it? H-1B is illegal to permanently displace a qualified American worker.
-PJ
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