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 ...
Lotta Corporate Memory walked out the doors. Then the suits will wonder why the next quarter's bottom line dropped, despite the lower labor cost.
I am dealing with that, and have for some time.
But again Disney didn't use an H-1B to displace a qualified American worker. They outsourced their IT functions and got rid of the employees because, in effect, they didn't have jobs for them anymore. Disney isn't responsible for their vendors hiring practice.
I know this sounds like nit-picking but it's the route that U.S. corporations have been using for years and years to get rid of their IT staff. And the Indian body-shops have been using H-1Bs to keep their costs down and allow them to meet their customer's required savings and also make a profit. It's isn't fair. It certainly wasn't what H-1Bs were intended for. But it also isn't illegal.
Many people in IT in large companies were there in the mainframe days when IT truly was a specialty skill. If those workers were loyal company people, they stayed and made their careers at the company - remember, we're talking about the 1980s now. These people continued to add value to the company as their knowledge grew with the company growth. They retrained through the PC revolution, Y2K, and the growth of the Web. They also saw salary inflation as anyone would who stayed with a company for a career.
At some point in a large company, organizational inertia takes over. Think about the impacts of 25+ years of cost-of-living adjustments, merit raises, and promotions on a careerist's income relative to what a new-hire might get in the same field.
Today, IT has become a commodity service, but the single-company career IT worker is earning a 30 year employee salary, not an IT salary.
This is what companies are trying to change with H-1B visa workers. They are displacing long-time salaried employees with short-term commodity-wage workers.
-PJ
“Disney did not fire it’s U.S. IT workers and replace them with H-1Bs. They outsourced their IT functions to an outside vendor and fired their IT workers.”
I didn’t have a hamburger. I had a fried ground beef sandwich on a Kaiser roll.
... and, in the process, lose much of the knowledge that makes their company function. Circuit City tried this with their sales force. By the (short) it took them to realize that their customers came for that experienced knowledge, and not for brash, young workers who treat it as a chore, it was too late and they lost it all. I see that around me in the contractors and H1Bs replacing career people. It is just a job, there is no passion. They could not care less if something is wrong. They might have to work to fix it.
Total bunk... we get no US candidates.
Your personal experiences don’t trump this national data no matter how often you pretend otherwise. What percentage of the national STEM labor force have you hired?
Don't forget the even easier ones like gender studies and environmental science. Oh, and queer theory.
It's the same thing Southern Cal Edison just did.
There's a reason these loopholes were put in place.
The company, whichever it is, can't displace qualified American worker with H-1B workers. That part is against the law. The argument is about loopholes. The PowerPoint that I posted from the Dept. of Labor lays out that a company must first demonstrate that they searched for qualified American candidates.
Even if we take Disney out of the equation and substitute HCL America in its place, that requirement still falls to HCL America, does it not? They have to demonstrate that there were no qualified Americans in order to use H-1B visa workers. I suppose they would also have to show that it is temporary work, as H-1B is a temporary visa.
It would be hard work to prove that filling a permanent position with a temporary visa-holder is not a de facto replacement, unless Disney and they show that the work and positions had been reclassified from permanent to temporary. You cannot fill a permanent role with a temporary worker unless you plan to cycle new people through it as their visas expire. Disney still owns the positions and the work.
-PJ
I don't see that training plan working out too well.
Because on paper they result in a terrific cost savings for the company doing the outsourcing. Quality may go to hell but that doesn't seem to matter. Only dollars and cents on the expense report.
You ever hear of “over qualified”? Been there, done that, and wore out the t-shirt.
Was laid off in ‘03 by a major telecommunications firm not long after they attempted to merge with WorldCom and cancelled the attempt. Got a call from someone wanting someone to fill an IT position. After fulfilling all their requirements I was told I was over qualified for the position.
The voice on the call sounded like someone from a foreign country. It only took me a few moments to realize someone was ensuring the “qualifications” for employment could NOT be met by local talent. Those “qualifications” seem to include training level, age and potential salary demands.
This should be a crime.
I agree with everything you said except the timing of the main frame beginnings...that began in the 70s or even sooner. I began my first career as an analyst/programmer in the late 60s.
I learned something new today on another thread. It's called the Dunning–Kruger effect.
I say give it a few years and then ask Disney what "qualified" looks like. What does qualified look like to the unqualified who thinks he's not, and to the "over-qualified" who doesn't recognize the relative skill gaps of others.
-PJ
A 30-year company veteran would have started in the 1980s when the mainframe was the thing, and COBOL, PL/1, PASCAL, and FORTRAN were still the languages, plus JES/JCL for the job scheduling. That was a time of specialty skill that commanded college degrees and high salaries.
For those who stayed and made a career in a company's IT department, contributing significantly to a company's presence and growth in an increasingly global and technical world over the last 30 years of technology revolution, it is a sad way to be recognized for a dedicated career to be unceremoniously dumped onto the street with yesterday's Tomorrowland burgers.
-PJ
Disney performed a slight-of-hand to eliminate a chunk of their IT to then outsource to a firm of H1-Bs. This would be illegal if Disney did this, itself.
It should be illegal to do it this way, as well.
So how’s that hope and change working out for all you liberal Obama voters working at Disney?
Remember: it’s racist to complain about immigrants and our open borders. :)
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
-The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2
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