Posted on 06/12/2015 9:09:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Disney ABC Television Group reversed a decision to lay off about 35 tech workers this week, following recent reports that Disney laid off hundreds of tech workers in January after forcing them to train their replacements.
Two weeks ago, Disney ABC told a team of between 30 and 35 application developers they were being laid off, some at the end of July, and that their jobs were going to an IT contractor with large offshore operations, reported Computer World. But on Thursday, Disney ABC told the workers plans had changed and they would not be laid off.
Some of the workers were already in the process of training their replacements in “knowledge transfer” sessions — the same term used to describe how the hundreds of tech workers laid off in January trained their foreign replacements.
Disney ABC refused to confirm or comment on the reversal, but Computer World reports it was confirmed by another Disney ABC source. One of the tech workers who would have been laid off told Computer World the move is related to the recent negative press.
“They [Disney officials], want this to go away — right now,” the worker told Computer World.
The workers were told the foreign work force would take over maintenance and application development, which could allow some of them to fill more interesting positions.
The January Disney layoffs were cast similarly. The workers were told the department’s emphasis was shifting to innovation, and that the foreign workforce would take over the maintenance work. They were encouraged to apply for the new positions opening up.
One of the laid off workers told The Daily Caller News Foundation he was initially optimistic, but a few months into the “knowledge transfer” process, after getting zero responses to his applications for the new positions, he realized the jobs didn’t exist. He knows of just a few people who managed to stay on with Disney.
For its part, Disney says it fired 250 workers, but rehired 120 in some capacity.
Disney ABC’s decision not to lay off the 35 workers also follows news the Department of Labor is investigating Tata and Infosys, two outsourcing firms Southern California Edison used to layoff hundreds of American workers after forcing them to train their replacement.
Of course they knew. They knew virtally all the people they were terminating were going to have problems finding jobs. They knew none of them were likely to be hired by the vendor, as some companies mandate. And they didn't care. But that's far from committing a criminal act.
If it violates the letter of the law then it is illegal, is it not? The feds may turn a blind eye to it, but that doesn't make the illegal legal, just unprosecuted.
It is. So where it the violation of the law?
The bottom line still is that Disney conspired to replace American workers with illegal replacement workers. The replacement works themselves may be here legally, but they being illegally deployed to jobs
Half true. Did Disney conspire? If not conspire, they certainly knew the vendor's strategy. But are threplacement workers illegal? Not under the laws in place.
H1B Ping.
That might not be such a good decision. You'd lose your severance pay, plus any unemployment benefits. True, it would send a message, and make the training more difficult (less trainers). But quitting would be tough if you're a family man.
It might be better to stay on and do the training. And do the training with less, shall we say, enthusiasm. If you were to forget to cover a few key points, or if you were to misplace a few important manuals, who could blame you? After all, we're all getting older.
SHOCKER....the Mouse publicly caves after a little too much bad press. I’ll bet they pursue this with a lot more stealth going forward.
Hi Ho! Hi Ho!
It’s off to work we go....
Offer no safe passage to them or anyone that protects them.
Thanks Cincinatus' Wife.
>>but to happen at Disney ‘where dreams come true’
Especially if they’re H1B dreams.
>>I find it appalling some Disney CEO up there would...
“According to the AFA Journal, Elizabeth Birch, a prominent homosexual activist, said to Disney CEO Michael Eisner “30 percent of your employees are gay,” and Eisner replied, “You’re wrong, Elizabeth. It’s 40 percent.”
http://nauticom.net/www/wassall/archives_ellenepisodetipoficeberg.html
“Layoff” is a NOUN.
‘Singh, singh, etc.’
Great tune - - -
Disney will pay for this for years, not months. Disney is all about the American Dream. That’s Disney’s blessing and curse, since the American Dream is being painted as racist and sort of imperial or colonial.
You can’t put 250 families out on the street, force them to train their foreign replacements, and then raise your ticket prices on the very people likely to buy in to your brand.
This is going to stick around for a long, long time. It’s going to compromise AT LEAST their park operations, but probably their mainline kids movie business.
Disney: Where dreams come to an end. The variations on this are going to be myriad. Before it is over, the street will want a head.
Haven't we been down this road before?
Review this Department of Labor PowerPoint presentation The Employment of Non-Immigrants on H-1B Visas. See slide 18 for starters. There are more slides about prevailing wage, displacing workers, etc.
Personally, I'd like to know what the loopholes are that people keep citing. The definition of H-1B visas is a specialty skill that cannot be found in the local occupation pool. It's difficult to prove the definition of labor hardship when the supposedly skilled worker has to be trained by the current job holder. It's also difficult to prove a specialty skill when that skill is keeping Mr. Lincoln walking and talking for another 30 years, something that Disney has been able to do daily for the the last 30 years.
Go ahead and defend them, though. You'll be the only one doing it.
-PJ
“Knowledge Transfer?” That sounds like something they do in the Church of Scientology.
‘We live in So Cal - - ‘
As do we. Our Christian daughter tapped danced on a float at Disneyland in 1987. It was an hour commute, but she did it. Then she went to college.
For the last few years she has taken each of 3 daughters to Disneyland on or near their birthdays - just the two of them - instead of them having a kids’ birthday party - their choice.
Disney has always been known for paying on the cheap. We know someone who worked there in the 1950’s - same deal.
But you know what? People don’t care, because they are working at D-I-S-N-E-Y-L-A-N-D.
Some would probably pay Disney to work there.
Did you know Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan were friends? There was a great Disney exhibit at the Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley just over a year ago or so.
How would the public react if all the ticket takers were cheap Indian laborers, and so were the restaurant workers and shop cashiers and ride operators?
I'm not talking about a few here and there. Disney hospitality workers all wear nametags proudly displaying their hometown heritage. But what if Disney suddenly replaced 250 park workers with Indian workers?
-PJ
Let's start with slides 10, 11, and 12 for a start, which lay out the basic provisions the employer agrees to abide by. It's pretty simple: pay the same as U.S. citizens you employ, treat the same as U.S. citizens you employ, don't use them as strike breakers, tell your existing employees you plan on hiring them. Your slide 18 lists some of the steps that can get an employer on Wilfull Violators list. There are three steps:
1) The employer will not displace any similarly employed U.S. worker within 90 days before or after applying for H-1B status, or an extension of status for any H-1B worker. I doubt HCL America had many U.S. employees to begin with and I doubt they displaced any they had with H-1Bs for the Disney contract. So this is a non-issue.
3) The employer, before applying for H-1B status for any alien worker pursuant to an H-1B LCA, took good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the alien worker is sought, at wages at least equal to those offered to the H-1B worker. Also, the employer will offer the job to any U.S. worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the H-1B worker. I have no doubt that HCL America has reams of paper showing how they tried really, really hard to find Americans for the job but, alas, they just couldn't find one with the right qualifications. So they had to look abroad. And:
2)The employer will not place any H-1B worker employed pursuant to the LCA at the worksite of another employer unless the employer first makes a bona fide inquiry as to whether the other employer has displaced or intends to displace a similarly employed U.S. worker within 90 days before or after the placement of the H-1B worker. The money shot. The clause everyone claims was violated. But look at the timeline - within 90 days after the placement of the worker. All these turnovers were three months which, if we looked into it, meant that the Disney employee was probably laid off 91 days after the H-1B arrived, or 92 days or 93. So the law wasn't violated.
So there are your loopholes. It's ridiculously easy to bring an H-1B onboard assuming you can get the visa. And it's ridiculously easy to stay off the Willful Violators list. And even if you make the list it's pretty meaningless.
Go ahead and defend them, though. You'll be the only one doing it.
I'm not defending them. What Disney did to their employees is completely unfair and unnecessary, except that it adds a few bucks to the bottom line. But the solution isn't castigating Disney. And it isn't increasing then number of H-1Bs by 500 percent like Ted Cruz would like. It requires rewriting the law, tightening up on the requirements, increasing the penalty for violators, and shaming companies who do this oursourcing. Show me a member of Congress who wants to do all that and I'll support them to the hilt.
Good point.
I’m an IT guy... I could very easily accidentally train my replacement to screw up the first 10 systems he touches...
The context of most of the questions (and even the paradigm of the PowerPoint) is of hourly workers. This is why there is an emphasis on collective bargaining, strike-lockout, working conditions, and 30-90 day layoff windows. It was not designed for replacing salaried exempt workers with non-exempt wage workers. The very nature of salaried employment is permanent, not temporary, as opposed to an H-1B temporary work visa. But this is what is now happening in the IT field.
In a sense, this is the white collar version of union busting. Corporations are trying to transform the IT field from a salaried employment model to a wage model. H-1B temporary foreign workers are the pawns being used to bust the salary model.
The original IT model made sense as a specialty skill from the 1970s through the 1990s, as I posted on other threads. Mainframe program did require college training at the time, and there were few of us with the aptitude and training. But the proliferation of personal computers changed all that. The industry matured, and the technology when applied to itself made the deploying of IT much less mystical than it was 30 years ago.
The shame for Disney, SoCal Edison, and the rest, is that they could have let attrition solve the problem for them. They could have eased in the commodity workers as they retired the salaried workers. It might have taken a little bit longer and cost a little bit more (maybe), but it would have saved on business disruption and public relations. It's the massive layoff transformation of loyal workers that did them in.
-PJ
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